The drawing representing (as I apprehend) the Temptation of the Saviour occurs on fol. 202 v., and is copied in my Plate XI.
Here the bust of the Saviour is represented at the summit of an elaborately ornamented conical design, which I suppose represents a ‘pinnacle of the temple’ rather than the ‘exceeding high mountain.’
The head of the Saviour is surrounded by a cruciferous nimbus, like that of the Virgin in the above-described drawing, and He appears to hold a roll in His left hand.
Two very rudely designed angels hover above His head, and two others occupy the upper angles of the picture, the interstices of the latter being filled in with foliage and branches springing from vases; that on the right hand being in an unusual position.
The strangely emaciated black figure of the Tempter (destitute of tail, but with hoof-like feet), and the crowd of heads at the side and bottom of the design, as also the bust within a frame holding two rosette-bearing rods, merit particular notice.
My interpretation of the Irish Figure was made solely from a study of the picture itself, without suggestion from any quarter. I had great difficulty in making up my mind whether the meaning were a personage at a window in the building, or whether it were simply a framed picture exhibited in front of the building. I was not then aware of Professor Westwood’s description, which takes the latter view. It is obvious that this view gives to the representation the nature of a reflection or comment more pointedly than the view which I have taken in the text.
I will here add another quotation from Professor Westwood, in which he describes and characterizes the Book of Kells: ‘It is the most astonishing book of the Four Gospels which exists in the world, and it is in Trinity College, Dublin, where it was placed along with the books of Archbishop Usher, after his death in 1656, where it has since remained, and where I trust it will ever remain, as the glory of Ireland’ (The Book of Kells: a Lecture, &c., p. 6).
For a partial illustration of the contents of this Appendix, see the illustration facing p. 77.
APPENDIX D
THE BRITISH ORIGIN OF THE ENAMELLED FIGURE
(p. 91)
I am greatly indebted to my friend Mr. C. F. Bell, the Assistant Keeper of the Ashmolean Museum, for the following observations upon the technical characteristics of early cloisonnée enamels. These observations are very germane to, and indeed were partly occasioned by, the questions which surround the Enamel in the Alfred Jewel.
Setting aside the reliquary at Poitiers, which, if it could really justify its claim to having been a gift of Justinian II to St. Radigund, would be by far the oldest piece of Byzantine enamel work in existence, as well as all such specimens as have no inscriptions or documentary evidence to indicate their age, there exist, apparently, only two enamelled objects of supposed Byzantine workmanship that can be maintained to be older than the Alfred Jewel. These are the iron crown of Monza and the golden altar of Saint Ambrose at Milan.
With regard to the first, apart from the controversy as to whether it truly was amongst the jewels given to the cathedral by Theodolinda, there seems to be some uncertainty as to whether there is any cloisonnée enamel about the crown at all. Du Sommerard, who was allowed to make a drawing of it which is reproduced in his Arts au Moyen Age (Album, série x, pl. 14), speaks of incrustations of jewels, but makes no mention of enamel. His carefully coloured illustration shows the plaques described by Labarte (Arts Industriels, i. 312), but the emerald-green ground that figures in the description is not indicated. Du Sommerard’s plate fails in one or two other particulars to tally with Labarte’s description; and as the latter speaks of his difficulty in obtaining a sight of the crown, it is possible that he mistook in this instance, as he appears to have done in the case of the Limburg reliquary, what M. Molinier (Trésor de Saint Marc de Venise, p. 48) calls la verroterie cloisonnée—that is, presumably, glass mosaic inlaid in golden cells—for cloisonnée enamel. At any rate, some fresh opinion is surely needed to establish the iron crown as a monument of this class of enamel work.
To turn to the altar of Saint Ambrose. It was made in 838; and Labarte admits that the Latin inscriptions upon it, and the Latin name of its artist, proclaim the Italian origin of the greater part of the work. But the enamels which form a comparatively unimportant part of the decoration ‘doivent,’ he says, ‘avoir été exécutés par un des artistes grecs qui travaillaient en grand nombre en Italie à cette époque. On remarquera que les carnations des figures sont rendues en émail blanc opaque’ (Histoire des Arts Industriels, iii. 10). Of these enamels the most striking appear to be eight small, circular medallions upon the doors at the back of the altar. These medallions do not form an integral portion of the work, but are affixed, in the manner of jewels, to the framework of the silver-gilt bas-reliefs, and may in fact be amongst those very English enamels whose discovery upon the early shrines in continental churches and museums Mr. Starkie Gardner predicts (Catalogue of European Enamels exhibited at the Burlington Fine Arts Club, 1897, p. ix). Each represents a diademed head seen in full face, a palm branch, or perhaps a wing, appearing above each shoulder against a translucent green background. In motive they thus present an extraordinarily close parallel to the Alfred Jewel (Du Sommerard, Arts au Moyen Age, Album, série ix, planches 18 and 19).
The earliest enamels of incontestably Byzantine origin, which can be dated with accuracy by documentary evidence, seem to go no further back than the beginning of the tenth century. It cannot, however, be said that these works, with those of closely subsequent periods, have the appearance of being the productions of the school in its infancy and early development. Very considerable technical accomplishment is shown in the manipulation of the extremely narrow gold cloisons, disposed for the most part in straight or slightly curved lines, and filling even the spaces of the drapery with closely laid chevrons or parallel stripes; while the innumerable minute cells thus formed are filled with homogeneous, brilliant, many-hued enamels. A warm tone of pink is invariably used to represent flesh.
An impressive object, possessing certain characteristics in common with the Jewel and other supposed Celtic-Saxon enamels, is the eagle fibula found at Mainz, and now in the museum there. The present setting of the enamelled eagle has been supposed to be Frankish, of the latter part of the tenth or earlier years of the eleventh century, and the eight small enamelled jewels inserted in the border confirm this view, as they closely resemble the jewels incrusted upon the frame of the Crucifixion plaque in the Reiche-Capelle at Munich, which has usually been attributed to that age (Von Hefner-Alteneck, Trachten des christlichen Mittelalters; Schlumberger, Nicephorus Phocas). The figure of the eagle, presumably, consisted originally of five plaques, one representing the head, another the tail, two others the outspread wings, and a fifth the body of the bird. This last is missing, its place having been supplied, apparently at the time the setting was made, by a plaque of engraved gold. This circumstance seems in favour of the idea that the enamels are of foreign workmanship, and earlier than the setting.
The cloisons of neither the eagle nor the Roach Smith ouche are as narrow as those employed by the Byzantine enamellers, although they are at most only half the width of those made use of in the Alfred Jewel. The doubling of the cloisons into loops, not commonly seen in Byzantine work but remarkable in the Jewel, is also noticeable in the eagle. Amongst the five colours employed in the eagle are the dark, translucent green, and the yellow, considered by Mr. Gardner as characteristic of Celtic-Saxon enamels, and also the opaque white such as is used for the flesh tint in the Jewel and the ouche, and, as Labarte particularly remarks, in the closely analogous heads upon the altar of Saint Ambrose.
Of all these monuments the enamel of the Alfred Jewel is at once the coarsest and most primitive in execution. Having been protected by the rock-crystal pane, its surface is presumably in much the same state as when it left the maker’s hands. It was, evidently, when it came out of the furnace, extremely uneven and rough, and had to be subjected to a grinding process, traces of which are still apparent. The gold cloisons are dull with minute scratches, and where two ran close together they have become one confused, ragged line. Both the eagle and the ouche, although exposed for long periods to the direct action of the soil, preserve a far higher degree of polish.
Yet the rough workmanship by itself cannot, it must be remembered, be held to preclude the Byzantine origin of this enamel, since, as there is not known to exist a single indisputably dated work of the Byzantine school in its primitive stages, it is impossible to assert that this school was not, during the lifetime of king Alfred, producing work as rude in execution as the Jewel. It may be that such a specimen will some day make its appearance, and determine the Eastern origin of this enamel and all cognate works. It is also possible that the discovery of an undoubtedly Irish example may place above all dispute the contention that it is of Celtic-Saxon origin, and finally justify the absorption into the same class of the ouche, the eagle, the eight medallions upon the altar of Saint Ambrose, nay, even of the crown of Theodolinda itself.