> From: Pippin Michelli [SMTP:[log in to unmask]]
> .
> The fight still continues about the Books of Durrow and Kells, and it has
> more recently been suggested that Durham A.II.17 may be by an Irish scribe
> rather than a native Anglo-Saxon as originally thought.
>
I don't see how it can ever be really resolved, given the constant
interflow of personnel between Iona (where the Book of Kells was produced)
and Durrow and Durham.
> However, all that being as it may, iconography and style do not
> necessarily
> go together, particularly when passing from a culture which accepts
> figurative imagery to one which evidently did not until it was
> Christianized - and even then kept its images very conceptual. We have to
> allow that these highly intellectual scribes were sophisticated enough to
> take what they wanted from their models and no more.
>
Agreed.
> But even limiting ourselves to iconography, which Irish images are we
> saying
> are Byzantine in origin? The Book of Durrow's Matthew symbol has nothing
> Byzantine about it - it looks more like the front of a typical Irish
> crozier. In the Book of Kells - the figures stand, cross their legs, have
> ceremonial beards, and wear rather odd multicoloured clothes which
> emphasise
> the unnatural position of their legs - these aren't Byzantine or Coptic
> either. Byzantine Evangelists, such as those at Ravenna or in the Rossano
> Gospels, or Coptic ones such as those in the Rabbula Gospels, are seated,
> frontally or in profile, and wear white (ish). We have an Irish
> crucifixion
> iconography with a pair of birds on Christ's shoulders, which to my mind
> seems more Scandinavian than Byzantine or Coptic;
>
The image of two birds on the shoulders of a figure appears
throughout Irish and Welsh mythology and Gaulish pre-Christian iconography.
Why does it have to be Scandinavian in origin?
> and as for the carpet
> pages, I will never forget my superviser long ago bursting out with -
> "now,
> this is Nordenfalk going. off. his. rocker!"
>
> So I'm not that convinced of the "Byzantine" connection except in the most
> general terms - they must have got their original texts from somewhere
> (Italy I should think, or somewhere between Ireland and there), but they
> clearly had minds and agendas of their own.
>
> Well - was this relevant? Why are we discussing Byzantine monks in
> Ireland?
> C - was this your doing??
>
I believe Pat Sloane made the original suggestion. I asked what
evidence there was for the suggestion.
Francine Nicholson
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