December 1 - A History of Art - The Lindisfarne Gospels

Today's art work is an example of early medieval art. In the first half of the 7th century, Irish missionary Saint Aidan arrived in Northumbrian from Iona. He founded a monastery at Lindisfarne, where the Lindisfarne Gospels were created by Irish monks. Their spectacular illuminations and jewel-encrusted binding reflect the importance of God's word, spoken through the Bible. Costly in time and materials, superb in design, the manuscript is among our greatest artistic and religious treasures.

the Lindisfarne Gospels is the work of one remarkably gifted artist who produced both words and images, giving the manuscript a particularly coherent sense of design. According to a note added at the end of the manuscript less than a century after its making, that artist was a monk called Eadfrith, who was Bishop of Lindisfarne between 698 and 721.

His superb skill and power of invention are strikingly evident in the opening pages of each gospel. A painting of the gospel’s Evangelist is followed by a ‘carpet’ page, so-called because the whole page is covered with intricate pattern. Next is the ‘incipit’ page, that is, an opening page in which the first letters of the gospels are greatly elaborated with interlacing and spiral patterns strongly influenced by Anglo-Saxon jewellery and enamel work.

The outline of the design was drawn on the reverse of the page, which was then lit from behind so the design could be painted on the correct side. Eadfrith employed an exceptionally wide range of colours, using animal, vegetable and mineral pigments.

This extravagance was a measure of the status accorded at the time to this magnificent manuscript. It was an enormous act of faith on the part of Bishop Eadfrith. In some places the manuscript remains partly unfinished, suggesting Eadfrith’s cherished work was ended prematurely by his death in 721.