Ancient Celtic Art [pp. 162-177]

AKcIEArT CEL7YC A~T. 175
in that branch was destroyed by the fanaticism of the sixteenth
and seventeenth centuries. But it does not seem that statuary
was ever much practised in ancient Ireland. Stone.cutting and
moulding had been in use among the pagan Celts, and it was
to elaborating it into relief carving of natural objects, and finally
of the human figure, that their descendants turned their efforts.
In their more ornamental buildings flat surfaces were covered
with tracery hardly less elaborate than the metal shrines and
illuminated writings which seem to have suggested its use. But
it is in the detached monuments erected to record public events
or to mark the tombs of the mighty dead that the best and most
characteristic sculptor's work was employed. The crosses, covered with relief pictures, in stone, which`were the favorite monumental form in the days of old, are still numerous in Ireland and
constitute almost as typical a class of its antiquities as the round
towers themselves. A modern artist has engraved twentythree of those monuments of Celtic times, and he has by no
means exhausted the list. Every stage of progress in this form
of monument is represented in existing examples, from th~ plain
Cross of Finglas, and the flat stone marked with ~ncised lines
which covered the ordinary graves, to the conibination of sculpture and ornament of the finest kind on the crosses of Tuam and
Monasterboice. In some of the erect monuments the form of
the flag is scarcely different from that laid over the graves. In
others the form of the cross is marked by four circular holes in
a plain slab, which in yet other examples is developed still more
by projections at the top and sides in continuation of the arms.
The next step was to give the body of the stone itself a circular
form, with the ends of the arms projecting beyond it; and finally
spandrels were pierced within the circle itself, giving the wellknown form of the Celtic cross surrounded by a circle. It is on
crosses of this form, which itself was evidently the outcome of
considerable practice in monumental work, that the sculptured
decorations were chiefly executed. We fortunately know the
date of several of these, from which we can form an idea of the
condition of the art at different ages. The great cross at Clonmacnoise, erected as a memorial of the monarch of Ireland, Flan,
in the year 912, is indeed a beautiful work, but its execution is far
surpassed by that of the crosses of Monasterboice and Tuam.
The latter, having been erected in I 123, indicates that a progress
had been made in sculpture almost up to the date of the Norman
invasion. The Tuam cross is estimated to have been thirty feet
in height, though it has been diminished by subsequent breaking,