DOI Page / Citation link:
https://doi.org/10.11588/diglit.14715#0022
6
THE ART OF ILLUMINATION.
Kildare up to the twelfth century. This has been described by Giraldus
Cambrcnsis, who went to Ireland, as secretary to Prince John, in a.d. 1185,
and his account of it might have been written as a description of the Book of
Kells itself, so exactly does it apply to that book.
" Of all the wonders of Kildare," he says, " I have found nothing more
wonderful than that marvellous book, written in the time of the Virgin (St.
Brigid), and, as they say, at the dictation of an angel. The book contains
the Concordance of the Evangelists according to St. Jerome ; every page of
which is filled with divers figures, most accurately marked out with various
colours. Here you behold a magic face divinely drawn; there the mystical
forms of the Evangelists, each having sometimes six, sometimes four, and
sometimes two wings; here an eagle, there a calf; there again a human
face, or a lion, and other figures of infinite variety, so closely wrought
together, that if you looked carelessly at them, they would seem rather like
a uniform blot than an exquisite interweaving of figures, exhibiting no skill
or art, where all is skill and perfection of art. But, if you look closely, with
all the acuteness of sight that you can command, and examine the inmost
secrets of that wondrous art, you will discover such delicate, such subtle,
such fine and closely wrought lines, twisted and interwoven in such intricate
knots, and adorned with such fresh and brilliant colours, that you will
readily acknowledge the whole to have been the result of angelic, rather
than human skill. The more frequently I beheld it, the more diligently I
examined it, the more numerous are the beauties I discover in it, the more
I am lost in admiration of it."
As an instance of the wonderful delicacy and accuracy of the drawings
in the Book of Kells, Mr. Westwood examined one of them by the aid of a
microscope, and counted, in the space of a quarter of an inch, 158 interlace-
ments, of a slender riband pattern, formed of white lines edged with black
ones, upon a dark ground, without detecting a false line, or an irregular
interlacement.
But whatever doubt may be felt as to the exact date of the Book of Kells,
none can be entertained as to the age of the Book of Durrow, the writing of
which is also ascribed to St. Columba, and in which the illuminations are in
the same style of art, though inferior in beauty of execution ; for in this
manuscript we find the usual request of the Irish scribe for a prayer from
the reader, expressed in words of which the following is a translation :—
" I pray thy blessedness, O holy presbyter Patrick, that whosoever shall
take this book in his hands may remember the writer, Colomba, who have
myself written this Gospel in the space of twelve days, by the Grace of our
Lord."
THE ART OF ILLUMINATION.
Kildare up to the twelfth century. This has been described by Giraldus
Cambrcnsis, who went to Ireland, as secretary to Prince John, in a.d. 1185,
and his account of it might have been written as a description of the Book of
Kells itself, so exactly does it apply to that book.
" Of all the wonders of Kildare," he says, " I have found nothing more
wonderful than that marvellous book, written in the time of the Virgin (St.
Brigid), and, as they say, at the dictation of an angel. The book contains
the Concordance of the Evangelists according to St. Jerome ; every page of
which is filled with divers figures, most accurately marked out with various
colours. Here you behold a magic face divinely drawn; there the mystical
forms of the Evangelists, each having sometimes six, sometimes four, and
sometimes two wings; here an eagle, there a calf; there again a human
face, or a lion, and other figures of infinite variety, so closely wrought
together, that if you looked carelessly at them, they would seem rather like
a uniform blot than an exquisite interweaving of figures, exhibiting no skill
or art, where all is skill and perfection of art. But, if you look closely, with
all the acuteness of sight that you can command, and examine the inmost
secrets of that wondrous art, you will discover such delicate, such subtle,
such fine and closely wrought lines, twisted and interwoven in such intricate
knots, and adorned with such fresh and brilliant colours, that you will
readily acknowledge the whole to have been the result of angelic, rather
than human skill. The more frequently I beheld it, the more diligently I
examined it, the more numerous are the beauties I discover in it, the more
I am lost in admiration of it."
As an instance of the wonderful delicacy and accuracy of the drawings
in the Book of Kells, Mr. Westwood examined one of them by the aid of a
microscope, and counted, in the space of a quarter of an inch, 158 interlace-
ments, of a slender riband pattern, formed of white lines edged with black
ones, upon a dark ground, without detecting a false line, or an irregular
interlacement.
But whatever doubt may be felt as to the exact date of the Book of Kells,
none can be entertained as to the age of the Book of Durrow, the writing of
which is also ascribed to St. Columba, and in which the illuminations are in
the same style of art, though inferior in beauty of execution ; for in this
manuscript we find the usual request of the Irish scribe for a prayer from
the reader, expressed in words of which the following is a translation :—
" I pray thy blessedness, O holy presbyter Patrick, that whosoever shall
take this book in his hands may remember the writer, Colomba, who have
myself written this Gospel in the space of twelve days, by the Grace of our
Lord."