G. Henderson and I. Henderson, The Art of the Picts: Sculpture and Metalwork in Early Medieval Scotland

Abstract

It must be widely acknowledged that the only scholars able to confront the beast that is Pictish art on the scale achieved in this volume are George and Isabel Henderson. The authors present an analysis of the styles, forms, features and creatures that make up Pictish art from about the seventh to the ninth centuries and put it firmly in its rightful place amongst other traditions associated with Insular art. It is a much needed and welcomed discussion of value to scholars concerned not only with early medieval Scotland, but also with early medieval Europe. The authors principally use art historical methods and interpretations concentrating on images, styles, and influences to highlight the complexity of Pictish society. A great deal of progressive research has been undertaken particularly on Pictish sculpture by archaeologists interested in decoding the symbols, location, and landscape, but often with minimal regard for the iconography of the sculpture itself. Whilst reading The Art of the Picts, one cannot help but wonder how much further such research could go if we understood the stories represented by each dot on a distribution map. The symbols and stories are surely as significant as, and part of, monumentality and society's actions and reactions to the sculpture. The book has three main parts comprising an introduction to Insular art focusing on the Pictish contribution, a survey of Pictish metalwork, and a wide-ranging discussion on Pictish sculpture. The Introduction and first three chapters arm the reader admirably with a background on Insular art. The first chapter in particular is a succinct summary of the main features of the style and well illustrated so that relative novices to the field will find it accessible. The agenda of the volume is clearly laid out in the two subsequent introductory chapters: to promote Pictish art as an equal partner in the creation of the much celebrated Insular art style while simultaneously maintaining the Picts'own innovative and artistic character. The Pictish symbols are initially discussed in these introductory chapters as 'formal artistic creations'. However the thorny question of meaning is tackled in the first of two chapters devoted to the form and function of sculptural monuments. Following a summary of the main theories, the authors offer their own impressions based on their experience of the art of the symbols both in stone and surviving in metalwork. They postulate a development of symbols from use in caves to field monuments suggesting the symbols conveyed messages of guardianship and strength, as related art on Iron Age artefacts might be interpreted. On conspicuous field monuments, they suggest the symbols and the stones they marked were natural foci for assembly and authority. Arguably, such messages and functions for symbol stones do not necessarily contravene theories on the symbols as elements of language, names, or the association of monuments with features such as burials.

1 Introduction: Stones in Substance, Space and Time

“…For many regions, including Scotland (e.g. Allen and Anderson 1903;Henderson and Henderson 2004), Scandinavia (e.g. Brate 1911;Brate and Wessén 1936;Sawyer 2001) and Ireland (e.g.…”

Excavating a parchmenerie : archaeological correlates of making parchment at the Pictish monastery at Portmahomack, Easter Ross

“…The insular inscription, dedicating one of early medieval Europe's most accomplished sculptural monuments to an individual, indicates that literate craftsmen worked at Portmahomack (Higgitt 1982). The art of their sculpture shows that the members of the Tarbat community as a whole would have been familiar with, and capable of producing, the finest Insular manuscripts that have survived, such as the Lindisfarne Gospels, at one end of the eighth century, and the Book of Kells at the other (Henderson & Henderson 2004). Now the parchmenerie that has been excavated endorses the notion that they had the blank folios on which to write and illuminate insular texts in the heart of northern Pictland, then almost at the known limits of the Christian world.…”