The Book Of Kells: Part 4

Mistakes

The text of the Book of Kells is full of errors (Simpson, 2010). The majority of these errors are minor spelling mistakes on the part of the scribes; a good number of which were never corrected. However, the most glaring error in the book is the duplication of a full page of text.

Rubrication

The Book of Kells does not include any instances of rubication. In place of the traditional red letter headings, illumination and paintings were used to denote the beginning of sections.

Decoration, Illuminations and Paintings

Due to the wide variety of artistic embellishments present in the manuscript it is necessary, for the purpose of clarity, to define the three subject headings of this section. To that end, for the purpose of this blog decoration will be defined as any non-textual ink based adornment or small pigment based doodle; illuminations will be pigment based embellishments or figural drawings incorporated into the text pages of the manuscript; and full page art piece will be defined and described under the heading of paintings.

While the Book of Kells’ age makes it a rare treasure, it is the decorations, illustrations and paintings that have earned the manuscript its justly deserved fame. Any discussion of the art of the manuscript must by its nature be a brief survey as one can find multiple monographs dedicated to the beauty of the artwork to be found within. This review will seek to point out the highlights and illustrate what makes the manuscript so special.

All but two of the surviving pages, 29v and 301v contain decorations or illuminations and there is evidence that these pages were intended to be embellished before the manuscript was left unfinished. It was not only illuminations that were left incomplete. There is strong evidence that at least one page (123v), was intended to house a painting, which was never begun; this will be covered in more detail below. It is also believed, based on the structure of the surviving pages, that other folios containing paintings have been lost.

Brown (1980, p. 90) states it well when he says that “More than any other Insular manuscript, the Book of Kells has a profusion of illustrations and ornaments, the elements of which are found in other manuscripts but nowhere in such variety.”

Decorations:

Decorations made using dots of red lead. Folio 124r

Decorations in the manuscript are most commonly seen in either the brownish iron Gaul ink used for the majority of the text or pure red lead. Common motifs include small clusters of grapes (200r) and geometric designs completed through the use of dots or lines. The latter is incorporated into a painting to great effect in folio 124r,

Lion. Folio 206r

Illuminations:

Cat. Folio 183v

As anyone who has seen even a simple page from the Book of Kells would tell you, the illuminations are fantastic. Depictions of at least of 18 different animals have been notated (Simpson, 2010); the most common of which is the cat, but others include the otter, eagle and snake. It is noted that the inclusion of many of the symbols are intended to be a reference to Jesus. It is believed that repeated inclusion of the peacock, fish, lion, and snake were intended to reinforce the message that the book was the word of God. It is also noted that the animals with which the monastic illustrators and scribes were less familiar were drawn in a less realistic manor. This can be clearly seen by comparing the illustration of a cat with that of a lion or a snake.

Along with animals, another common illumination is the initial capital at the beginning of a verse. There are over 2000 illuminated initial capital letters (Simpson, 2010). These letters often include, or are made entirely of, either human and/or animal forms. Examples of both can be seen on folio 253v where two men pulling each other’s beards are used to create the letter N, while a two animals eating humans are used to create a letter A.

Paintings:

It is believed (Meehan, 1994) that if completed the plan for the manuscript would have included a page of evangelist symbols and portrait page and a decorated page at the beginning of each of the four gospel book. There are 33 surviving pages that can be described as containing paintings. As stated above the pages containing paintings were often single folios, not bifolia, this may be the reason why, if they were completed, they have not survived through to the present day.


Onlookers. Folio 124r

The cost of the velum and pigments required to produce the Painted pages required that they be well thought out and planned before an illuminator ever touched a page. It is believed that these practice runs would have been undertaken using wax tablets, (Simpson, 2010) a medium that would have allowed for trial and error as a reheating of the wax allowed a fresh attempt at the artwork. A double border on all sides encloses the decorated pages in the Book of Kells. The areas between the two lines are often filled with interlace and knot work. The initial design of the pages were done using tools such as set squares, compasses and rulers to ensure true lines and angles. The more intricate interlace work appears to have been completed by hand.

A common practice among the illuminators was to paint a group of onlookers into the border of the painting to draw the eye of the reader to the important section. This can be seen in the paining of the Virgin and Child (7v) as well as folio 124r, a page of ornamental text describing the crucifixion of Christ. It is the presence of these onlookers that lead scholars to the conclusion that the blank page adjunct to it, (123v) was intended to contain an image of the crucifixion (Simpson, 2010). Of all the full page paintings contained in the book, my favorites are 291v and 129v.

The painting of St. John (291v), while not as complex as many other pages, is remarkable to me for a number of reasons. The apostle is depicted holding the tools of the scribe. He holds a book in his left hand, a quill pen in his right and has a bull horn, commonly used a an ink well, at his feet. From an artistic perspective, I am drawn to the artist’s use of the natural color of the vellum to fill in the negative space in his halo. The portrait is also noteworthy for its illustration of damage done in by Mullen in his 1821 cropping of the margins. The painting is meant to show a figure whose hands and feet are still intact standing behind the image. However, through the process of cropping, only the beard and lower section of the halo remain of the person's face.

The other image that I find to be fascinating is that of the four evangelists (129v). Their symbols are Matthew as a man, Mark as a lion, Luke as a calf, and John as an eagle. The page is broken into four sections using a cross. Each evangelist has their own section in which their symbol is enclosed in a circle of Orpiment yellow. Although it is busier than the portrait of St. John, I again find the still restrained ornamentation and the use of negative space in this painting to be pleasing.