Artists of the Book of Kells

In the second volume of her ground breaking and monumental study of Irish art, Francoise Henry examines the Book of Kells and distinguishes in it the work of four main artists.  This gives us a way to explore the various elements of illustration in the Book of Kells.

 Irish Art during the Viking Invasions

The first artist Francoise Henry calls The Goldsmith:

 One feels tempted to call him 'the Goldsmith', for his work at first sight seems wrought in precious metals, in enamel and niello. He composes a page by drawing a few wide patterns, the irregular shape of letters or the outline of the cross, in broad bands of golden yellow, silvery blue, purple or red. Inside these legible frames, out of them, around them, flows in a continuous stream a fantastic decoration of minute spirals endlessly interlocked with each other, animal bodies plaited and knit, snakes twisted into patterns of eight, little men so ingeniously folded and bent inside a circle that they look like geometrical figures gone crazy. The delicacy of his work is incredible.
(Irish Art II, p. 72)

What most consider the best and most distinctive of the Goldsmith's work is the Chi Rho Page (34r) and it does indeed give a sense of detailed metal work:
 

Folio 34r: 1.18 Christi autem generatio, the conception: the Chi Rho page

The second artist Francoise Henry calls the Portrait Painter:
  
  Another painter was the official portraitist of the Book. He made the two big figures of Evangelists, that of the teaching Christ and perhaps those of the symbols in square frames and the ‘Quoniam’ at the beginning of the Gospel of St Luke. He seems to have been trained in the same methods of ornamentation as the Goldsmith. He works as minutely when he chooses, but without the poetical meandering virtuosity of his colleague.(Irish Art II, p. 75)

What Francoise Henry calls the the portrait of the teaching Christ is usually now known as the Doubtful Portrait (32v) since experts are divided as to whether it is meant to represent Christ or is a misplaced portrait of one of the other evangelists:

Folio 32v: Portrait of Christ

The third artist, Francoise Henry calls the Illustrator.  Our previous artist, the Portrait Painter...

  cuts a rather tame figure beside the Illustrator, the wild, erratic painter who made the Arrest, the Temptation. the Virgin and Child, the ‘Tunc crucifixerant’ and probably the symbols at the beginning of St John’s Gospel. This artist does not pause much over the niceties of elaborate ornament. He cares nothing for beautiful architectural frames. He casually weaves a few ferocious-looking beasts in a border, twists luxurious branches sprouting out of a vase, sets two lions snarling at the keystone of an arch or on the side of a frame, and knots another one into the shape of a T.  His notion of colour sets one’s teeth on edge. (Irish Art II, p. 75)

The Illustrator provides the only appearance of the devil in the Book of Kells in the Temptation of Jesus at the Temple:

  Folio 202v: Temptation of Jesus

And indeed, the devil looks to have been burnt to a crisp in hellfire:

 One of the Illustrator's most famous works is The Virgin and Child (7v), which is considered to be the only such depiction to be found in the early gospel manuscripts:

Folio 7v: Virgin and Child with angels

 Francoise Henry gives no characterizing name to the fourth artist, but following her lead a later explorer of the Kells, Harry Ades, calls him the Joker:

 Beside these chief painters, there is a very attractive fourth who has composed little more than one or two big pages...but who has displayed all his graceful fantasy and his dashing verve in many of the small capitals, in the cartouches of the text, in the border of the Genealogy, and in the animals drawn between the lines. He has certainly collaborated with the Goldsmith and added the little animal scenes in the big Chi-Rho page. He is a fastidious draughtsman. He combines a delightfully smiling sense of observation where shape is concerned with a breathless impetuosity in the description of movement. He sketches with a sharp pen cats, cocks and hens, a goat, a greyhound, all roaming through the pages, draws a horseman riding over a word, a warrior with a shield and spear sitting on a line, a cormorant nesting on top of a letter. Thanks to him there is a note of everyday life in that haughty universe of the Book of Kells.  (Irish Art II, p. 76)

The Joker is believed to have added such touches as the cat and mice (or some think kittens) on the Goldsmith's Chi Rho Page (34r)

He is also believed to have added some visual interest to the Genealogy of Jesus in the Gospel of Luke:  the whimsical totem pole of first letters of all the begats (Q  “Qui fuit”) and the soldier in the bottom right:  

 Folios 200r-202r: 3.22-38 Genealogy of Jesus

Proceed to the next Book of Kells Post:  Exploring the Book of Kells Text