These were combined with animal forms probably mainly deriving from the Germanic version of the general Eurasian animal style, though also from Celtic art, where heads terminating scrolls were common. Late Iron Age Celtic art or "Ultimate La Tène", gave the love of spirals, triskeles, circles and other geometric motifs. ![]() The Insular style is most famous for its highly dense, intricate and imaginative decoration, which takes elements from several earlier styles. ![]() Insular decoration One of hundreds of small initials from the Book of Kells Dodwell, on the other hand, says that in Ireland "the Insular style continued almost unchallenged until the Anglo-Norman invasion of 1170 indeed examples of it occur even as late as the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries". Some sources distinguish between a "wider period between the 5th and 11th centuries, from the departure of the Romans to the beginnings of the Romanesque style" and a "more specific phase from the 6th to 9th centuries, between the conversion to Christianity and the Viking settlements". It has the advantage of recognising the unity of styles across Britain and Ireland, while avoiding the use of the term British Isles, a sensitive topic in Ireland, and also circumventing arguments about the origins of the style, and the place of creation of specific works, which were often fierce in the 20th century, and may be reviving in the 21st. Initially used mainly to describe the style of decoration of illuminated manuscripts, which are certainly the most numerous type of major surviving objects using the style, it is now used more widely across all the arts. The term was derived from its use for Insular script, first cited by the OED in 1908, and is also used for the group of Insular Celtic languages by linguists. Carpet pages are a characteristic feature of Insular manuscripts, although historiated initials (an Insular invention), canon tables and figurative miniatures, especially Evangelist portraits, are also common. The best examples include the Book of Kells, Lindisfarne Gospels, Book of Durrow, brooches such as the Tara Brooch and the Ruthwell Cross. Surfaces are highly decorated with intricate patterning, with no attempt to give an impression of depth, volume or recession. Surviving examples of Insular art are mainly illuminated manuscripts, metalwork and carvings in stone, especially stone crosses. The influence of Insular art affected all subsequent European medieval art, especially in the decorative elements of Romanesque and Gothic manuscripts. Ireland, Scotland and the kingdom of Northumbria in Northern England are the most important centres, but examples were found also in southern England, Wales and in Continental Europe, especially Gaul (modern France), in centres founded by the Hiberno-Scottish mission and Anglo-Saxon missions. In England the style merged into Anglo-Saxon art around 900, whilst in Ireland the style continued until the 12th century, when it merged into Romanesque art. These are presumed to have interrupted work on the Book of Kells, and no later Gospel books are as heavily or finely illuminated as the masterpieces of the 8th century. The finest period of the style was brought to an end by the disruption to monastic centres and aristocratic life caused by the Viking raids which began in the late 8th century. This is now applied to decorating new types of objects mostly copied from the Mediterranean world, above all the codex or book. One major distinctive feature is interlace decoration, in particular the interlace decoration as found at Sutton Hoo, in East Anglia. ![]() Most Insular art originates from the Irish monastic movement of Celtic Christianity, or metalwork for the secular elite, and the period begins around 600 with the combining of Celtic and Anglo-Saxon styles. Art historians usually group Insular art as part of the Migration Period art movement as well as Early Medieval Western art, and it is the combination of these two traditions that gives the style its special character. The term derives from insula, the Latin term for "island" in this period Britain and Ireland shared a largely common style different from that of the rest of Europe. Insular art, also known as Hiberno-Saxon art, was produced in the post-Roman era of Great Britain and Ireland. David from the Durham Cassiodorus, early 8th century (?), Jarrow This page (folio 292r) of the Book of Kells contains the lavishly decorated text that opens the Gospel of John. Post-Roman British and Irish style of art
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