Insular book illumination

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Book of Durrow (around 700, beginning of the Gospel of Mark)
Book of Kells (around 800, beginning of the Gospel of John, In principio erat verbum )
The Codex St. Gallen 51 was created by Irish monks on the mainland (St. Gallen, 8th century, Mark the Evangelist)

As insular Illumination a style which is Illumination designated who, since the Christianization in the sixth century in Ireland and in the missionary work from there Northumbria formed. While in the center of the declining Western Roman Empire the late antique book illumination lived on on a modest level and merged into the Merovingian , an unmistakable, independent style of illustration developed on the outermost periphery of Europe, far away from the turmoil of the Migration Period and outside the earlier Roman civilization .

Development of insular illumination

The insular illumination, especially in the design of the initials, combined the Germanic animal style and the ornamentation of the native Celtic handicrafts , such as the knot pattern , with the semi-uncial and the braided band of antiquity. The highly complex, often intertwined and the entire page filling ornaments took over the calligraphically also masterful script to the point of illegibility and also dominated the relatively rare figurative representations, which are mostly evangelists. These almost always fix the viewer frontally and strictly symmetrically, their robes are highly abstract braids. Almost all insular manuscripts are evangelists .

Due to the perfection of the ornamentation, which, in contrast to Merovingian art, is freely drawn, the magnificent insular manuscripts preserved - predominantly evangelists  - are among the highlights of book illumination of all times. The beginning of Irish illumination was marked around 625 by the so-called "Catach" of St. Columban of Iona . Around 700 the Book of Durrow was created in Ireland or Northumbria , which echoes the late antiquity, and between 715 and 721 the Book of Lindisfarne in the monastery of the same name . The latest and most magnificent work is the Book of Kells from around 800 . Less demanding were the small-format so-called “pocket evangelists ” made for wandering missionaries, such as the Cadmug gospels from the eighth century, which were probably manufactured in large numbers.

Another school in the double monastery Wearmouth-Jarrow, on the other hand, handed down late antique models true to the original. The main work in this direction is the Codex Amiatinus (before 716). In the south of England, Canterbury was the center of the Roman mission. Examples of illustrated manuscripts created here are the Vespasian Psalter around 735 and the Stockholm Codex Aureus around 750.

The European continent has been particularly true of Ireland and southern England missionary . All over France, Germany and even Italy, monasteries with Irish monks, the so-called Schottenklöster, sprang up in the sixth and seventh centuries . These included Annegray , Luxeuil , St. Gallen , Fulda , Würzburg , Regensburg , Echternach and Bobbio . Numerous illuminated manuscripts reached the mainland via this route and had a strong influence on the respective regional formal languages, especially in terms of writing and ornamentation. Around 690 the gospel book of St. Willibrord was written , which he brought to Echternach . Further Gospels were illustrated in Trier (around 730) and St. Gallen (around 750). While book production in Ireland largely came to a standstill from the end of the eighth century due to the raids of the Vikings , illuminated manuscripts in Irish tradition continued to emerge on the mainland for a few decades. In the Ottonian times, the insular book illumination was to be used again as a source of inspiration.

See also

literature

  • Richard Freitag: The Irish Pocket Gospels. Diss. Munich 1983.
  • Ernst Günther Grimme: The History of Occidental Illumination . 3. Edition. Cologne, DuMont 1988. ISBN 3-7701-1076-5 .
  • Christine Jakobi-Mirwald: The medieval book. Function and equipment . Stuttgart, Reclam 2004. ISBN 978-3-15-018315-1 , ( Reclam's Universal Library 18315), (especially chapter: History of European book painting pp. 222-278).
  • Otto Pächt : Illumination of the Middle Ages. An introduction. Edited by Dagmar Thoss. 5th edition. Prestel, Munich 2004. ISBN 978-3-7913-2455-5 .
  • Ingo F. Walther / Norbert Wolf: Codices illustres. The most beautiful illuminated manuscripts in the world. Masterpieces of book illumination. 400 to 1600 . Taschen, Cologne et al. 2005, ISBN 3-8228-4747-X .
  • Kunibert Bering: Art of the Early Middle Ages . 2nd revised edition. Reclam, Stuttgart 2008, ISBN 978-3-15-018169-0 , ( Art Epochs . 2) ( Reclams Universal Library . 18169).
  • Book illumination . In: Severin Corsten , Günther Pflug , Friedrich Adolf Schmidt-Künsemüller (eds.): Lexicon of the Middle Ages . Teilbd. 2: Beggars up to the Valencia Code . License issue. Unchanged reprint of the 1999 study edition. Wissenschaftliche Buchgesellschaft , Darmstadt 2009, ISBN 978-3-534-22804-1 , Sp. 837-893, (contributions by K. Bierbrauer, Ø. Hjort, O. Mazal, D. Thoss, G. Dogaer, J. Backhouse, G. Dalli Regoli, H. Künzl).

Web links

General

Commons : Insular book illumination  - collection of images, videos and audio files

Individual manuscripts

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ St. Gallen, Abbey Library , Cod. 51.
  2. ↑ So u. a. Jakobi-Mirwald, p. 232.
  3. ^ Dublin, Royal Irish Academy
  4. ↑ Dublin, Trinity College , Ms. 57.
  5. ↑ London, British Library, Ms. Cotton Nero D. IV.
  6. ↑ Dublin, Trinity College, Ms. 58.
  7. ↑ Fulda, University and State Library , Cod. Bonif. 3.
  8. ↑ Florence, Laurenziana, Amiat. I.
  9. ^ London, British Library, Cotton Vespasian AI
  10. ^ Stockholm, Kungliga Bibliotek, MS. A. 135.
  11. ^ Paris, Bibliothèque nationale, Ms. lat. 9389.