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100-423: An acroterion , acroterium , (pl. akroteria ) is an architectural ornament placed on a flat pedestal called the acroter or plinth , and mounted at the apex or corner of the pediment of a building in the classical style. An acroterion placed at the outer angles of the pediment is an acroterion angularium ( angulārium means ‘at the corners’). The acroterion may take a wide variety of forms, such as

200-764: A "more specific phase from the 6th to 9th centuries, between the conversion to Christianity and the Viking settlements". C. R. 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". The Insular style is most famous for its highly dense, intricate and imaginative decoration, which takes elements from several earlier styles. Late Iron Age Celtic art or "Ultimate La Tène ", gave

300-553: A 1941 essay, the architectural historian Sir John Summerson called it "surface modulation". The earliest decoration and ornament often survives from prehistoric cultures in simple markings on pottery, where decoration in other materials (including tattoos ) has been lost. Where the potter's wheel was used, the technology made some kinds of decoration very easy; weaving is another technology which also lends itself very easily to decoration or pattern, and to some extent dictates its form. Ornament has been evident in civilizations since

400-710: A European adaptation of the Islamic arabesque (a distinction not always clear at the time). As printing became cheaper, the single ornament print turned into sets, and then finally books. From the 16th to the 19th century, pattern books were published in Europe which gave access to decorative elements, eventually including those recorded from cultures all over the world. Andrea Palladio's I quattro libri dell'architettura (Four Books on Architecture) (Venice, 1570), which included both drawings of classical Roman buildings and renderings of Palladio's own designs utilizing those motifs, became

500-541: A Pictish origin for these forms, or another common source. The carvings come from both pagan and early Christian periods, and the Pictish symbols, which are still poorly understood, do not seem to have been repugnant to Christians. The purpose and meaning of the stones are only partially understood, although some think that they served as personal memorials, the symbols indicating membership of clans , lineages, or kindreds and depict ancient ceremonies and rituals Examples include

600-585: A Pompeian home would typically divide the wall into three or more sections under which there would be a dado taking up roughly one-sixth of the height of the wall. The wall sections would be divided by broad pilasters connected by a frieze which bands across the top of the wall. The ornament found at the Casa Degli Amorini Dorati in Pompeii reflected this standard style and included objects that had clearly been reused, and rare and imported objects. Several of

700-471: A book cover or formed part of a larger altar frontal or high cross . The Ardagh Chalice and the Derrynaflan Hoard of chalice, paten with stand, strainer, and basin (only discovered in 1980) are the most outstanding pieces of church metalware to survive (only three other chalices, and no other paten, survive). These pieces are thought to come from the 8th or 9th century, but most dating of metalwork

800-407: A distinctive rougher finish to their vellum, compared to the smooth-polished surface of contemporary continental and all late-medieval vellum. It appears that, in contrast to later periods, the scribes copying the text were often also the artists of the illuminations, and might include the most senior figures of their monastery. In England the pull of a Continental style operated from very early on;

900-399: A feature of later medieval art, especially Gothic art, in areas where specific Insular motifs are hardly used, such as architecture. The mixing of the figurative with the ornamental also remained characteristic of all later medieval illumination; indeed for the complexity and density of the mixture, Insular manuscripts are only rivalled by some 15th-century works of late Flemish illumination. It

1000-493: A feature of the latter class. The history of art in many cultures shows a series of wave-like trends where the level of ornament used increases over a period, before a sharp reaction returns to plainer forms, after which ornamentation gradually increases again. The pattern is especially clear in post-Roman European art, where the highly ornamented Insular art of the Book of Kells and other manuscripts influenced continental Europe, but

1100-465: A history of ornament ) of 1893, who in the process developed his influential concept of the Kunstwollen . Riegl traced formalistic continuity and development in decorative plant forms from Ancient Egyptian art and other ancient Near Eastern civilizations through the classical world to the arabesque of Islamic art . While the concept of the Kunstwollen has few followers today, his basic analysis of

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1200-501: A major abbey church in the Insular period remain hard to imagine; one thing that does seem clear is that the most fully decorated manuscripts were treated as decorative objects for display rather than as books for study. The most fully decorated of all, the Book of Kells, has several mistakes left uncorrected, the text headings necessary to make the Canon tables usable have not been added, and when it

1300-684: A millennium, and after a period when they were replaced by Gothic forms , powerfully revived in the Italian Renaissance and remain extremely widely used today. Ornament in the Roman empire utilized a diverse array of styles and materials, including marble, glass, obsidian, and gold. Roman ornament, specifically in the context of Pompeii, has been studied and written about by scholar Jessica Powers in her book chapter "Beyond Painting in Pompeii's Houses: Wall Ornaments and Their Patrons." Instead of studying ornamental objects in isolation, Powers argues that, if

1400-516: A more elaborate initial with colouring, showing Insular characteristics still more developed, even in such an outpost. From the same scriptorium and of similar date, the Bobbio Orosius has the earliest carpet page , although a relatively simple one. Durham Gospel Book Fragment . The earliest painted Insular manuscript to survive, produced in Lindisfarne c. 650, but with only seven leaves of

1500-641: A number of original themes, including figures of plants and animals of the region. The Ancient Greek civilization created many new forms of ornament, which were diffused across Eurasia , helped by the conquests of Alexander the Great , and the expansion of Buddhism , which took some motifs to East Asia in somewhat modified form. In the West the Ancient Roman Latinized forms of the Greek ornament lasted for around

1600-461: A rich and linked tradition of plant-based ornament for over three thousand years; traditional ornament from other parts of the world typically relies more on geometrical and animal motifs. The inspiration for the patterns usually lies in the nature that surrounds the people in the region. Many nomadic tribes in Central Asia had many animalistic motifs before the penetration of Islam in the region. In

1700-494: A society where common stylistic influences were spread across a great number of types of object in art, applied art and decorative art . Across all the islands society was effectively entirely rural, buildings were rudimentary, and architecture has no Insular style. Although related objects in many more perishable media certainly existed and have not survived, it is clear that both religious and secular Insular patrons expected individual objects of dazzling virtuosity, that were all

1800-540: A statue, tripod, disc, urn, palmette or some other sculpted feature. Acroteria are also found in Gothic architecture . They are sometimes incorporated into furniture designs. The word comes from the Greek akrōtḗrion ( ἀκρωτήριον 'summit, extremity'), from the comparative form of the adjective ἄκρος , ("extreme", "endmost") + -τερος (comparative suffix) + -ιον (substantivizing neuter form of adjectival suffix -ιος ). It

1900-800: A stunning cross-carpet page and portraits of the evangelists Mark and Luke. The gospels of Matthew and Mark and the beginning of Luke survives. From its time in Wales, pages include marginalia representing some of the earliest examples of Old Welsh writing. The manuscript has been at Lichfield Cathedral since the late 10th century, except for a brief period during the English Civil War. St Petersburg Bede . Attributed to Monkwearmouth-Jarrow Abbey in Northumbria between about 730–746, this contains larger opening letters in which metalwork styles of decoration can clearly be seen. There are thin bands of interlace within

2000-632: A suitable style. "The great question is," Thomas Leverton Donaldson asked in 1847, "are we to have an architecture of our period, a distinct, individual, palpable style of the 19th century?". In 1849, when Matthew Digby Wyatt viewed the French Industrial Exposition set up on the Champs-Elysées in Paris, he disapproved in recognizably modern terms of the plaster ornaments in faux-bronze and faux woodgrain: Both internally and externally there

2100-481: A term for a school of late Carolingian illumination in north-eastern France that used Insular-style decoration, including super-large initials, sometimes in combination with figurative images typical of contemporary French styles. The "most tenacious of all the Carolingian styles", it continued until as late as the 11th century. Large stone high crosses , usually erected outside monasteries or churches, first appear in

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2200-458: Is a good deal of tasteless and unprofitable ornament... If each simple material had been allowed to tell its own tale, and the lines of the construction so arranged as to conduce to a sentiment of grandeur, the qualities of "power" and "truth," which its enormous extent must have necessarily ensured, could have scarcely fail to excite admiration, and that at a very considerable saving of expense. Contacts with other cultures through colonialism and

2300-807: Is also noticeable that these characteristics are always rather more pronounced in the north of Europe than the south; Italian art, even in the Gothic period, always retains a certain classical clarity in form. Unmistakable Insular influence can be seen in Carolingian manuscripts, even though these were also trying to copy the Imperial styles of Rome and Byzantium. Greatly enlarged initials, sometimes inhabited, were retained, as well as far more abstract decoration than found in classical models. These features continue in Ottonian and contemporary French illumination and metalwork, before

2400-459: Is also often thought to have been begun in Iona and then continued in Ireland, after disruption from Viking raids; the book survives nearly intact but the decoration is not finished, with some parts in outline only. It is far more comprehensively decorated than any previous manuscript in any tradition, with every page (except two) having many small decorated letters. Although there is only one carpet page,

2500-401: Is decorated by cross motifs, ribbon interlace, lattice work, carpet pages, and the evangelist symbols. After large initials the following letters on the same line, or for some lines beyond, continue to be decorated at a smaller size. Dots around the outside of large initials are much used. The figures are highly stylised, and some pages use Germanic interlaced animal ornament, whilst others use

2600-465: Is dominated by a cross, but the whole surface of the cover is decorated, with interlace panels between the arms of the cross. The cloisonné enamel shows Italian influence, and is not found in work from the Insular homelands, but the overall effect is very like a carpet page. Cathach of St. Columba . An Irish Latin psalter of the early 7th century, this is perhaps the oldest known Irish manuscript of any sort. It contains only decorated letters, at

2700-464: Is the Garland of Howth , which is in a damaged condition. Two of its illuminated pages remain, decorated with the common motifs of the Insular style. A distinctive Insular type of book is the pocket gospel book , inevitably much less decorated, but in several cases with Evangelist portraits and other decoration. Examples include the Book of Mulling , Book of Deer , Book of Dimma , Book of Armagh , and

2800-677: Is the most impressive remaining Anglo-Saxon cross, though as with most Anglo-Saxon crosses the original cross head is missing. Many Anglo-Saxon crosses were much smaller and more slender than the Irish ones, and therefore only had room for carved foliage, but the Bewcastle Cross , Easby Cross and Sandbach Crosses are other survivals with considerable areas of figurative reliefs , with larger-scale figures than any early Irish examples. Even early Anglo-Saxon examples mix vine-scroll decoration of Continental origin with interlace panels, and in later ones

2900-462: Is uncertain, and comes largely from comparison with manuscripts. Only fragments remain from what were probably large pieces of church furniture, probably with metalwork on wooden frameworks, such as shrines, crosses and other items. The Insular crozier had a distinctive shape; the survivals, such as the Kells Crozier and Lismore Crozier all appear to be Irish or Scottish, and from rather late in

3000-515: The OED in 1908, and is also used by linguists for the Insular Celtic languages . 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, the term is now used more widely across all the arts. It has the advantage of recognising the unity of styles across Britain and Ireland, while avoiding

3100-539: The Book of Kells , Lindisfarne Gospels , Book of Durrow , brooches such as the Tara Brooch and the Ruthwell Cross . 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 designation as Insular derives from the phrase Insular script , first cited by

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3200-627: The British Museum , the National Museum of Ireland , the National Museum of Scotland , or local museums in the islands. Each of their designs is wholly individual in detail, and the workmanship is varied in technique and superb in quality. Many elements of the designs can be directly related to elements used in manuscripts. Almost all of the many techniques known in metalwork can be found in Insular work. Surviving stones used in decoration are semi-precious ones, with amber and rock crystal among

3300-576: The Eassie Stone and the Hilton of Cadboll Stone . It is possible that they had subsidiary uses, such as marking tribal or lineage territories. It has also been suggested that the symbols could have been some kind of pictographic system of writing. There are also a few examples of similar decoration on Pictish silver jewellery, notably the Norrie's Law Hoard, of the 7th century or perhaps earlier, much of which

3400-593: The Great Male Renunciation . Ornament in architecture and furniture resumed in the later 19th century Napoleon III style , Victorian decorative arts and their equivalents from other countries, to be decisively reduced by the Arts and Crafts movement and then Modernism . The detailed study of Eurasian ornamental forms was begun by Alois Riegl in his formalist study Stilfragen : Grundlegungen zu einer Geschichte der Ornamentik ( Problems of style: foundations for

3500-731: The Gregorian mission from Rome had brought the St Augustine Gospels and other manuscripts now lost with them, and other books were imported from the continent early on. The 8th-century Cotton Bede shows mixed elements in the decoration, as does the Stockholm Codex Aureus of similar period, probably written in Canterbury . In the Vespasian Psalter it is clear which element is coming to dominate. All these and other members of

3600-556: The Hiberno-Scottish mission and Anglo-Saxon missions. The influence of Insular art affected all subsequent European medieval art, especially in the decorative elements of Romanesque and Gothic manuscripts. Surviving examples of Insular art are mainly illuminated manuscripts , metalwork and carvings in stone, especially stone crosses . Surfaces are highly decorated with intricate patterning, with no attempt to give an impression of depth, volume or recession. The best examples include

3700-561: The Islamic ornaments there, including arabesques , calligraphy , and geometric patterns . Interest in classical architecture was also fueled by the tradition of traveling on The Grand Tour , and by translation of early literature about architecture in the work of Vitruvius and Michelangelo . During the 19th century, the acceptable use of ornament, and its precise definition became the source of aesthetic controversy in academic Western architecture, as architects and their critics searched for

3800-606: The Lindau Gospels (now in the Morgan Library , New York ) was made in southern Germany in the late 8th or early 9th century, under heavy Insular influence, and is perhaps the best indication as to the appearance of the original covers of the great Insular manuscripts, although one gold and garnet piece from the Anglo-Saxon Staffordshire Hoard , found in 2009, may be the corner of a book-cover. The Lindau design

3900-646: The Monymusk Reliquary has always been in Scotland. In general it is clear that most survivals are only by chance, and that we have only fragments of some types of object—in particular the largest and least portable. The highest quality survivals are either secular jewellery, the largest and most elaborate pieces probably for male wearers, or tableware or altarware in what were apparently very similar styles—some pieces cannot be confidently assigned between altar and royal dining-table. It seems possible, even likely, that

4000-686: The Old Testament on the east side, and the New on the west, with a Crucifixion at the centre of the cross. The 10th-century Muiredach's High Cross at Monasterboice is usually regarded as the peak of the Irish crosses. In later examples the figures become fewer and larger, and their style begins to merge with the Romanesque, as at the Dysert Cross in Ireland. The 8th-century Northumbrian Ruthwell Cross , unfortunately damaged by Presbyterian iconoclasm ,

4100-589: The Picts of Scotland north of the Clyde-Forth line between the 6th–8th centuries are particularly striking in design and construction, carved in the typical Easter Ross style related to that of Insular art, though with much less classical influence. In particular the forms of animals are often closely comparable to those found in Insular manuscripts, where they typically represent the Evangelist's symbols, which may indicate

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4200-646: The Seagram Building , where Mies van der Rohe installed a series of structurally unnecessary vertical I-beams on the outside of the building, and by 1984, when Philip Johnson produced his AT&T Building in Manhattan with an ornamental pink granite neo-Georgian pediment, the argument was effectively over. In retrospect, critics have seen the AT&;T Building as the first Postmodernist building . Insular art Insular art , also known as Hiberno-Saxon art ,

4300-586: The Temptation and Arrest of Christ are included, as well as a Madonna and Child, surrounded by angels (the earliest Madonna in a Western book). More miniatures may have been planned or executed and lost. Colours are very bright and the decoration has tremendous energy, with spiral forms predominating. Gold and silver are not used. The Book of Kells is held in Trinity College Dublin . A lesser known Insular manuscript in Trinity College Dublin's library

4400-409: The incipit initials are so densely decorated, with only a few letters on the page, that they rather take over this function. Human figures are more numerous than before, though treated in a thoroughly stylised fashion, and closely surrounded, even hemmed in, by decoration as crowded as on the initial pages. Books, however, are the most directly depicted objects in the illustrations. A few scenes such as

4500-456: The " International Style ". What began as a matter of taste was transformed into an aesthetic mandate. Modernists declared their way as the only acceptable way to build. As the style hit its stride in the highly developed postwar work of Mies van der Rohe , the tenets of 1950s modernism became so strict that even accomplished architects like Edward Durrell Stone and Eero Saarinen could be ridiculed and effectively ostracized for departing from

4600-538: The "Tiberius" group of manuscripts were written south of the river Humber , but the Codex Amiatinus , of before 716 from Jarrow, is written in a fine uncial script, and its only illustration is conceived in an Italianate style, with no Insular decoration; it has been suggested this was only because the volume was made for presentation to the Pope. The dating is partly known from the grant of additional land secured to raise

4700-461: The 8th century in Ireland, perhaps at Carndonagh , Donegal , a monastic site with Ionian foundations, apparently later than the earliest Anglo-Saxon crosses , which may be 7th-century. Later Insular carvings found throughout Britain and Ireland were almost entirely geometrical, as was the decoration on the earliest crosses. By the 9th century figures are carved, and the largest crosses have very many figures in scenes on all surfaces, often from

4800-451: The Celtic (Irish and Pictish ) and Anglo-Saxon elites had long traditions of metalwork of the finest quality, much of it used for the personal adornment of both sexes of the elite. The Insular style arises from the meeting of their two styles, Celtic and Anglo-Saxon animal style , in a Christian context, and with some awareness of Late Antique style. This was especially so in their application to

4900-569: The Christian period have been found in archaeological contexts that suggest they were rapidly hidden, lost or abandoned. There are a few exceptions, notably arm-shaped reliquaries such as the Shrine of Saint Lachtin's Arm , and portable book-shaped (" cumdachs ") and house-shaped shrines for books or relics , several of which have been continuously owned, mostly by churches on the Continent—though

5000-472: The Insular period. These later works, which also including the 11th century River Laune and Clonmacnoise Croziers are heavily influenced by Viking art and have interlace patterns in the Ringerike or Viking art#Urnes-styles . The Cross of Cong is a 12th-century Irish processional cross and reliquary that shows Insular decoration, possibly added in a deliberately revivalist spirit. The fittings of

5100-521: The Mediterranean world, above all the codex or book. 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. These are presumed to have interrupted work on the Book of Kells ; no later Gospel books are as heavily or finely illuminated as the masterpieces of the 8th century. In England

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5200-816: The Roman temple, the extravagant use of ornament served as a means of self-glorification, as scholar Owen Jones notes in his book chapter, Roman Ornament. Roman ornament techniques include surface-modeling, where ornamental styles are applied onto a surface. This was a common ornamental style with marble surfaces. One common ornamental style was the use of acanthus leaf, a motif adopted from the Greeks. The use of acanthus leaf and other naturalist motifs can be seen in Corinthian capitals, in temples, and in other public sites. A few medieval notebooks survive, most famously that of Villard de Honnecourt (13th century) showing how artists and craftsmen recorded designs they saw for future use. With

5300-482: The aesthetic rules. At the same time, the unwritten laws against ornament began to come into serious question. "Architecture has, with some difficulty, liberated itself from ornament, but it has not liberated itself from the fear of ornament," John Summerson observed in 1941. The very difference between ornament and structure is subtle and perhaps arbitrary. The pointed arches and flying buttresses of Gothic architecture are ornamental but structurally necessary;

5400-477: The applied arts, including pottery , furniture , metalwork . In textiles , wallpaper and other objects where the decoration may be the main justification for its existence, the terms pattern or design are more likely to be used. The vast range of motifs used in ornament draw from geometrical shapes and patterns, plants, and human and animal figures. Across Eurasia and the Mediterranean world there has been

5500-454: The arrival of the print , ornament prints became an important part of the output of printmakers, especially in Germany, and played a vital role in the rapid diffusion of new Renaissance styles to makers of all sorts of object. As well as revived classical ornament, both architectural and the grotesque style derived from Roman interior decoration, these included new styles such as the moresque ,

5600-562: The artist. There are four Evangelist portraits , clearly derived from the classical tradition but treated without any sense of depth; the borders around them are far plainer than the decoration of the text pages, and there is clearly a sense of two styles which Eadfrith does not attempt to integrate wholly. The carpet-pages are enormously complex, and superbly executed. Lichfield Gospels Likely made in Lichfield around 730, this deluxe gospel-book contains eight major decorated pages, including

5700-450: The beginning of recorded history , ranging from Ancient Egyptian architecture to the assertive lack of ornament of 20th century Modernist architecture . Ornaments also depict a certain philosophy of the people for the world around. For example, in Central Asia among nomadic Kazakhs, the circular lines of the ornaments signalled the sequential perception of time in the wide steppes and the breadth and freedom of space. Ornament implies that

5800-446: The beginning of each Psalm, but these already show distinctive traits. Not just the initial, but the first few letters are decorated, at diminishing sizes. The decoration influences the shape of the letters, and various decorative forms are mixed in a very unclassical way. Lines are already inclined to spiral and metamorphose, as in the example shown. Apart from black, some orange ink is used for dotted decoration. The classical tradition

5900-435: The book remaining, not all with illuminations. This introduces interlace, and also uses Celtic motifs drawn from metalwork. The design of two of the surviving pages relates them as a two-page spread. Book of Durrow . The earliest surviving Gospel Book with a full programme of decoration (though not all has survived): six extant carpet pages, a full-page miniature of the four evangelist's symbols, four full-page miniatures of

6000-489: The book, which was a new type of object for both traditions, as well as to metalwork. The role of the Kingdom of Northumbria in the formation of the new style appears to have been pivotal. The northernmost Anglo-Saxon kingdom continued to expand into areas with Celtic populations, but often leaving those populations largely intact in areas such as Dál Riata , Elmet and the Kingdom of Strathclyde . The Irish monastery at Iona

6100-476: The cause of aesthetic simplification, dismissing the knots of intricately patterned ornament that articulated the skin of his structures. With the work of Le Corbusier and the Bauhaus through the 1920s and 1930s, lack of decorative detail became a hallmark of modern architecture and equated with the moral virtues of honesty, simplicity, and purity. In 1932 Philip Johnson and Henry-Russell Hitchcock dubbed this

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6200-700: The classically inspired Carolingian and Ottonian art largely replaced it. Ornament increased over the Romanesque and Gothic periods, but was greatly reduced in Early Renaissance styles, again under classical influence. Another period of increase, in Northern Mannerism , the Baroque and Rococo , was checked by Neoclassicism and the Romantic period . Ornament in male clothing went out of fashion around 1800, in

6300-570: The colorful rhythmic bands of a Pietro Belluschi International Style skyscraper are integral, not applied, but certainly have ornamental effect. Furthermore, architectural ornament can serve the practical purpose of establishing scale, signaling entries, and aiding wayfinding, and these useful design tactics had been outlawed. And by the mid-1950s, modernist figureheads Le Corbusier and Marcel Breuer had been breaking their own rules by producing highly expressive, sculptural concrete work. The argument against ornament peaked in 1959 over discussions of

6400-427: The commonest, and some garnets . Coloured glass, enamel and millefiori glass, probably imported, are also used, as seen in the late 6th century Ballinderry Brooch . The gilt-bronze Rinnegan Crucifixion Plaque (NMI, late 7th or early 8th century) is the best known of a group of nine recorded Irish metal Crucifixion plaques and is comparable in style to figures on many high crosses; it may well have come from

6500-400: The continent of Europe; carpet-pages are not found, but many large figurative miniatures are. Panels of interlace and other Insular motifs continue to be used as one element in borders and frames ultimately classical in derivation. Many continental manuscripts, especially in areas influenced by the Celtic missions, also show such features well into the early Romanesque period. "Franco-Saxon" is

6600-511: The decorative wall panels were identified as being from the Greek East or Egypt, not from Pompeii. This points to the elaborate trade routes that flourished across the Roman Empire, and that home owners were interested in using materials from outside of Pompeii to embellish their homes. In addition to homes, public buildings and temples are locations where Roman ornament styles were on display. In

6700-531: The development of forms has been confirmed and refined by the wider corpus of examples known today. Jessica Rawson has recently extended the analysis to cover Chinese art , which Riegl did not cover, tracing many elements of Chinese decoration back to the same tradition; the shared background helping to make the assimilation of Chinese motifs into Persian art after the Mongol invasion harmonious and productive. Styles of ornamentation can be studied in reference to

6800-420: The eastern coast as a satellite in 635. However Northumbria remained in direct contact with Rome and other important monastic centres were founded by Wilfrid and Benedict Biscop who looked to Rome, and at the Synod of Whitby it was the Roman practices that were upheld, while the Iona contingent walked out, not adopting the Roman Easter dating until 715. What had finally settled into a broad consensus as to

6900-414: The end of this period), this is a Gospel Book in the style of the Book of Durrow, but more elaborate and complex. All the letters on the pages beginning the Gospels are highly decorated in a single composition, and many two-page openings are designed as a unit, with carpet pages facing an incipit ("Here begins..") initial page at the start of each Gospel. Eadfrith was almost certainly the scribe as well as

7000-431: The evangelists' symbols, four pages with very large initials, and decorated text on other pages. Many minor initial groups are decorated. Its date and place of origin remain subjects of debate, with 650–690 and Durrow in Ireland, Iona or Lindisfarne being the normal contenders. The influences on the decoration are also highly controversial, especially regarding Coptic or other Near Eastern influence. The manuscript

7100-418: The existence of workshops in the mid-to-late medieval period, the craftsman may not always have had been responsible for the full design of the works, for example the execution of portions of the Ardagh Chalice evidences a lack of skill compared to the rest of the piece. There are a number of large penannular brooches , including several of comparable quality to the Tara brooch . Almost all of these are in

7200-425: The finest church pieces were made by secular workshops, often attached to a royal household, though other pieces were made by monastic workshops. The evidence suggests that Irish metalworkers produced most of the best pieces, however the finds from the royal burial at Sutton Hoo , from the far east of England and at the beginning of the period, are as fine in design and workmanship as any Irish pieces. Even excepting

7300-502: The former type becomes the norm, just as in manuscripts. There is literary evidence for considerable numbers of carved stone crosses across the whole of England, and also straight shafts, often as grave-markers, but most survivals are in the northernmost counties. There are remains of other works of monumental sculpture in Anglo-Saxon art, even from the earlier periods, but nothing comparable from Ireland. The stone monuments erected by

7400-597: The full repertoire of Celtic geometric spirals. Each page uses a different and coherent set of decorative motifs. Only four colours are used, but the viewer is hardly conscious of any limitation from this. All the elements of Insular manuscript style are already in place. The execution, though of high quality, is not as refined as in the best later books, nor is the scale of detail as small. Lindisfarne Gospels Produced in Lindisfarne by Eadfrith , Bishop of Lindisfarne , between about 690 and his death in 721 (perhaps towards

7500-420: The generations of cattle, amounting to 2,000 head in all, which were necessary to make the vellum for three complete but unillustrated Bibles, which shows the resources necessary to make the large books of the period. Many Anglo-Saxon manuscripts written in the south, and later the north, of England show strong Insular influences until the 10th century or beyond, but the pre-dominant stylistic impulse comes from

7600-433: The information is provided, objects must be approached in their original context. This information might include the location where the work was found, other objects located or found nearby, or who the patron was who might have commissioned the work. Jessica Powers' chapter primarily discusses the Casa Degli Amorini Dorati in Pompeii, where 18 wall ornaments were found, the most of any Pompeiian home. Interior wall ornament in

7700-490: The love of spirals, triskeles , circles and other geometric motifs. 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. Interlace was used by both these traditions, as well as Roman art (for example in floor mosaics ) and other possible influences such as Coptic art , and its use

7800-441: The members of letters. It also contains the earliest historiated initial , a bust probably of Pope Gregory I , which like some other elements of the decoration, clearly derives from a Mediterranean model. Colour is used, although in a relatively restrained way. Book of Kells Usually dated to around 800, although sometimes up to a century earlier, the place of origin is disputed between Iona and Kells , or other locations. It

7900-491: The more dazzling because of the lack of visual sophistication in the world in which they were seen. Especially in Ireland, the clerical and secular elites were often very closely linked; some Irish abbacies were held for generations among a small kin-group. Ireland was divided into very small "kingdoms", almost too many for historians to keep track of, whilst in Britain there was a smaller number of generally larger kingdoms. Both

8000-515: The most influential book ever written on architecture. Napoleon had the great pyramids and temples of Egypt documented in the Description de l'Egypte (1809) . Owen Jones published The Grammar of Ornament in 1856 with colored illustrations of decoration from Egypt, Turkey, Sicily and Spain. He took residence in the Alhambra Palace to make drawings and plaster castings of the ornate details of

8100-449: The new discoveries of archaeology expanded the repertory of ornament available to revivalists. After about 1880, photography made details of ornament even more widely available than prints had done. Modern millwork ornaments are made of wood, plastics, composites, etc. They come in many different colours and shapes. Modern architecture , conceived of as the elimination of ornament in favor of purely functional structures, left architects

8200-641: The origins of the style may be disturbed by the continuing assessment of the large numbers of decorated metalwork finds in the Staffordshire Hoard , found in 2009, and to a lesser extent the Prittlewell princely burial from Essex , found in 2003. Christianity discouraged the burial of grave goods so that, at least from the Anglo-Saxons, we have a larger number of pre-Christian survivals than those from later periods. The majority of examples that survive from

8300-433: The ornamented object has a function that an unornamented equivalent might also fulfill. Where the object has no such function, but exists only to be a work of art such as a sculpture or painting, the term is less likely to be used, except for peripheral elements. In recent centuries a distinction between the fine arts and applied or decorative arts has been applied (except for architecture), with ornament mainly seen as

8400-407: The panels on the walls of the Casa Degli Amorini Dorati were removed during archeological work in the 1970s, revealing that the panels had been stuck on different walls before the one on which they were found. Jessica Powers argues that these panels illustrate the home owner and correlating patrons' willingness to utilize damaged or secondhand materials in their own home. Moreover, the materials used in

8500-403: The problem of how to properly adorn modern structures. There were two available routes from this perceived crisis. One was to attempt to devise an ornamental vocabulary that was new and essentially contemporary. This was the route taken by architects like Louis Sullivan and his pupil Frank Lloyd Wright , or by the unique Antoni Gaudí . Art Nouveau , popular around the turn of the 20th century,

8600-514: The smallest of all, the Stonyhurst Gospel (now British Library ), a 7th-century Anglo-Saxon text of the Gospel of John, which belonged to St Cuthbert and was buried with him. Its beautifully tooled goatskin cover is the oldest Western bookbinding to survive, and a virtually unique example of Insular leatherwork, in an excellent state of preservation. Both Anglo-Saxon and Irish manuscripts have

8700-455: The southern Anglo-Saxon regions, though northern areas also had direct contacts with the Continent. The origins of the overall format of the carpet page have often been related to Roman floor mosaics, Coptic carpets and manuscript paintings, without general agreement being reached among scholars. Unlike contemporary Byzantine art , and that of most major periods, Insular art does not come from

8800-456: The specific culture which developed unique forms of decoration, or modified ornament from other cultures. The Ancient Egyptian culture is arguably the first civilization to add pure decoration to their buildings. Their ornament takes the forms of the natural world in that climate, decorating the capitals of columns and walls with images of papyrus and palm trees. Assyrian culture produced ornament which shows influence from Egyptian sources and

8900-567: The style its special character. 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. One major distinctive feature is interlace decoration, in particular the interlace decoration as found at Sutton Hoo , in East Anglia . This is now applied to decorating new types of objects mostly copied from

9000-521: 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 . 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

9100-473: 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. 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

9200-554: Was Latinized by the Romans as acroterium . Acroteria is the plural of both the original Greek and the Latin form. According to Webb, during the Hellenistic period the winged victory or Nike figure was considered to be "the most appropriate motif for figured akroteria.” Ornament (art) A wide variety of decorative styles and motifs have been developed for architecture and

9300-452: Was described by architect Adolf Loos in his 1908 manifesto, translated into English in 1913 and polemically titled Ornament and Crime , in which he declared that lack of decoration is the sign of an advanced society. His argument was that ornament is economically inefficient and "morally degenerate", and that reducing ornament was a sign of progress. Modernists were eager to point to American architect Louis Sullivan as their godfather in

9400-529: Was established by Saint Columba (Colum Cille) in 563, when Iona was part of a Dál Riata that included territory in both Ireland and modern Scotland. Although the first conversion of a Northumbrian king, that of Edwin in 627, was effected by clergy from the Gregorian Mission to Kent, it was the Celtic Christianity of Iona that was initially more influential in Northumbria, founding Lindisfarne on

9500-557: Was in part a conscious effort to evolve such a "natural" vocabulary of ornament. A more radical route abandoned the use of ornament altogether, as in some designs for objects by Christopher Dresser . At the time, such unornamented objects could have been found in many unpretending workaday items of industrial design, ceramics produced at the Arabia manufactory in Finland, for instance, or the glass insulators of electric lines. This latter approach

9600-587: Was late to use capital letters for initials at all (in Roman texts it is often very hard to even separate the words), and though by this time they were in common use in Italy, they were often set in the left margin, as though to cut them off from the rest of the text. The Insular tendency for the decoration to lunge into the text, and take over more and more of it, was a radical innovation. The Bobbio Jerome which according to an inscription dates to before 622, from Bobbio Abbey , an Irish mission centre in northern Italy, has

9700-507: Was melted down on discovery, and the 8th-century St Ninian's Isle Hoard, with many brooches and bowls. The surviving items from both are now held by the National Museum of Scotland . The true legacy of Insular art lies not so much in the specific stylistic features discussed above, but in its fundamental departure from the classical approach to decoration, whether of books or other works of art. The barely controllable energy of Insular decoration, spiralling across formal partitions, becomes

9800-534: Was produced in the post-Roman era of Great Britain and Ireland . 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. 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

9900-432: Was stolen in 1006 for its cover in precious metals, it was taken from the sacristy , not the library. The book was recovered, but not the cover, as also happened with the Book of Lindisfarne. None of the major Insular manuscripts have preserved their elaborate jewelled metal covers, but we know from documentary evidence that these were as spectacular as the few remaining continental examples. The re-used metal back cover of

10000-414: Was taken to new levels in Insular art, where it was combined with the other elements already mentioned. There is no attempt to represent depth in manuscript painting, with all the emphasis on a brilliantly patterned surface. In early works the human figure was shown in the same geometric fashion as animal figures, but reflections of a classical figure style spread as the period went on, probably mostly from

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