The Art of the Picts: Sculpture and Metalwork in Early Medieval Scotland

The Art of the Picts: Sculpture and Metalwork in Early Medieval Scotland

George and Isabel Henderson Thames and Hudson, 40 [pounds sterling] ISBN 0 500 23807 3

The Picts, to most people outside Scotland, are a totally mysterious and marginal dement in the ancient population of northern Britain. Their art is as obscure as their history, and their language and literature a mere blip on the consciousness of even the most educated. Yet to any archaeological tourist of Scotland their presence is attested by settlement sites, sculptured stones and pieces of rich metalwork in the National Museums of Scotland. Specialist literature concerning them abounds, mostly in edited proceedings of conferences that contain papers of sometimes dubious merit concerning their history and culture, but there are practically no works of synthesis of any depth. This lacuna is now triumphantly filled so far as Pictish art is concerned by this splendid new book by Isabel Henderson (the foremost specialist on the subject), and her husband (emeritus professor of the History of Art at Cambridge and a specialist in early medieval art).

The art of the Picts was first isolated, systematised and discussed a hundred years ago by Joseph Anderson and J. Romilly Allen in their standard corpus of Pictish art, which was reprinted as recently as 1993. A particularly important part of this work was the illustrated catalogue by Allen of all the then known sculptured stones, which he and Anderson forced into a classificatory system which became a stylistic and chronological straight-jacket to all subsequent scholars. Anderson's discussion of the ornament on both stones and metalwork was perceptive and far in advance of most other scholars. He related the ornament, as we do today to the art of such insular manuscripts as the Book of Kells and the Book of Durrow; indeed, he saw Pictish art as derivative from these sources. He sought a meaning for the Pictish images in Christian art as it was understood in the late nineteenth century, and many of his interpretations survive. Not so his chronology, which has been much refined in the last fifty years. In this book the Hendersons bring this century-old work up in date, breaking from the classificatory and chronological schema erected in 1903, and revising the iconographical interpretation in the light of modern scholarship. They particularly emphasise the individual Pictish quality of the art and demonstrate that aspects of it are an important clement of contemporary Insular art.

The most difficult element in Pictish art are the 'symbols' which chiefly appear incised or in relief on their stone sculpture. Some of these motifs are zoomorphic (of naturalistic cast) and some represent objects (combs, for example); but more are abstract, consisting of linear, spiral, and geometrical patterns which have been highly classified with such terms as 'Z-rods', 'mirror-cases' and 'crescent and V-rod'. Sometimes the symbols appear with no other decorative elements (usually in pairs), but they also occur in highly elaborate historiated schema, ultimately, but not initially, in a Christian context. In this book it is emphasized for the first time that the symbols do not fade away as the ornament of the stones becomes more dominated by the cross and Christian imagery, rather they become more emphatic. The authors get no nearer the meaning of these peculiar symbols and admit it, speculating that they are, 'in some degree fossils of an earlier [Iron Age] culture'. Having, in effect, dismissed many of the attempts to interpret the language of the symbols, they present their own speculation. Namely, that they are visual expressions of power, emphasised by their presence on huge silver collars and on significant stones set in the landscape- signs of a common cultural tradition in the widest areas of Pictish influence and sophistication. Not such a bad idea! One thinks, for example, of the much more clearly understood and rather later rune stones of Sweden, with their memorial inscriptions, some of which record good works and ownership.

The Hedersons have happily moved away from the Allen and Anderson classification of the sculptures and have considered them in a larger and looser context. They have particularly examined the differing functions of the stones, distinguishing such forms as simple upright slabs, free-standing crosses, tomb slabs, and even church furniture. This is a refreshing flight from the simplistic description of 'stones' (implying slabs) too often used in their description. The authors are also particularly impressive--and not over-influenced by a need to find a meaning for every scene--in their discussion of Christian iconography on the monuments. They range from the Late Antique to the late Anglo-Saxons in their search for sources, and to me, a sceptic in such matters, they do so rather convincingly.

This is not an easy read; full of flee-flowing thoughts and wide-ranging allusions, it is sometimes rather high-falutin'--as, for example, in comparing the contorted animals on the flange of the Sutton Hoo shield boss with Stubbs's Fighting stallions. The reader has to dig diligently to find information-nowhere more so than in trying to discover the internal chronology of the art, the authors having eschewed the 'pseudo-chronology' of Allen and Anderson; indeed, there is a tendency in discussion to wander too loosely over the period covered. There are no easy summaries and arguments are sometimes left hanging, without conclusion. But there is much that is new and thought-provoking and, what is more, all Pictish art is here; not since Allen and Anderson have we had such a clear and useful compendium.

Of course I have criticisms, but they are opinionated criticisms of opinions. It is hard to believe, for example, that there are neither illustrations, nor serious discussion of the centrality of its ornament in Insular terms, of the Lindisfarne Gospels. Yet, although the manuscript is often mentioned, the very real parallels of its ornament to Pictish motifs are not clearly displayed; the reader is left to scrabble from footnote to source in an unhelpful fashion. This example is an expression of a feeling that, in establishing the Pictishness of Pictish art, the Hendersons have undervalued the real influences of Anglo-Saxon art. But I do not wish to carp; we have waited long for this study, and it has been well worth waiting for.

Sir David Wilson was director of the British Museum from 1977 to 1992. His book The Bayeux Tapestry has just been reprinted by Thames and Hudson.

David M. Wilson welcomes the first major modern overview of Pictish art

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