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Eastern Influence on Carvings at St. Andrews and Nigg, Scotland*

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  02 January 2015

Cecil Mowbray
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Extract

Amongst the early Christian monuments of the British Isles the Scottish cross-slabs form a well defined group. They are related to the Irish and Manx crosses of the 7th and 8th centuries and show occasionally some connexion with Northumbrian art. But, out of motives borrowed from these different sources, there was evolved in Scotland a type of monument peculiar to that country. The erect slab was constantly preferred to the free-standing cross, and, although a flat style of carving, similar to the Irish style, was used, and many of the Irish motives—spirals, interlacing and occasionally animal-interlacing—were adopted, the spirited rendering of hunting scenes and fantastic animals, and the use of the cross, framed in the slab as in a page of manuscript, gave to these monuments a definite originality.

Type
Research Article
Information
Antiquity , Volume 10 , Issue 40 , December 1936 , pp. 428 - 440
Copyright
Copyright © Antiquity Publications Ltd 1936

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Footnotes

*

I am greatly indebted to Mlle. Henry for the help she has given me in writing this paper.

References

† Throughout this paper the word Scottish is used with its modern meaning and not in the early medieval sense.

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7 But here we are dealing with an object which may have been made in eastern Europe. It is of doubtful date and shows traces of eastern influence in the figures of elephants and the ornamental use of vegetation. See Hubert, , Les Celtes, 1, pp. 101, 152.Google Scholar

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11 See the bas-relief in the British Museum of a lion hunt in the reign of Assur-Nasir. pal (880 B.C.).

12 There may also be some connexion with the Coptic mounted saint.

13 MSS. Grec 139, f. 16, Bibliothèque Nationale, and Studium Psalter, Add. MS. 19352, British Museum.

14 See the bas-reliefs in the British Museum of the building of Sennacherib’s Palace, Nineveh. A Persian example is on the Tak-i-Bostan rock sculptures, where elephants are entwined in vegetation.

15 Catalogue of Eastern Silver and Gold Vessels from the Oriental Provinces of the Russian Empire (St. Petersburg. 1909). no. 161.Google Scholar

* I wish to thank Dr Kitzinger for calling my attention to this carving, which in his opinion can be dated at about A.D. 800. For a description and illustrations of the cross see Collingwood, ‘Northumbrian Crosses of the pre-Norman Age’, 76 and Archaeologia Aeliana 1925, ser. 4, 1, 159.Google Scholar

16 Romilly Allen, 75.

17 Waddell, Helen, Desert Fathers: ‘St. Jerome’s Life of St. Paul’, 48.Google Scholar

18 Henry, F., La Sculpture Irlandaise (1933) 1, p. 133.Google Scholar Although this version of the scene occurs on several monuments in Ireland, the only example with a patena is on the Bantry stone, County Cork.

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21 Strzygowski, , op. cit. 240.Google Scholar

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23 Romilly Allen, p. 82. Two examples of incised interlacing occur in England. One is at Ilkley, in Yorkshire ; the other at Irton, in Cumberland.

24 For a more detailed account of the chronology and classification of the Scottish slabs, see an article to appear shortly in the Proceedings of the Society of Antiquaries of Scotland.

25 Henry, F., La Sculpture Irlandaise vol. 1, 164.Google Scholar

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27 Henry, F., ‘L Tnscription de Bealin’, Revue Archéologique, 1930.Google Scholar

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29 Ibid.

30 Brown, Baldwin, Arts in Early England, 3, 85.Google Scholar Hippocentaurs occur on Anglo-Saxon sceattas which may be so late as to show the influence of the Carolingian renaissance.

31 Waddell, H., Desert Fathers: ‘St. Jerome’s Life of St. Paul’, 45.Google Scholar

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33 Skene, , op. cit., 299.Google Scholar

34 The road from Iona to Nigg would be an easy one, following the present route of the Caledonian canal.

35 Romilly Allen, 381, 384, 385, 389, 391.