Celtic Art

I

Introduction

Celtic Art, the art of the ancient Celts. Celtic art emerged as an identifiable tradition in about 600 bc and flourished until the mid-1st century ad, when the expansion of the Roman Empire and the Roman conquest of the Celts of Britain, Gaul, and Germany largely extinguished Celtic culture.

In the 6th century bc the locus of the Celtic world was in the area covered by Austria, southern Germany, Switzerland, and south-eastern France. In the following century, the centre of gravity of Celtic culture shifted north-westward to the Rhineland and eastern France, and in due course its influence expanded both westward and eastward to cover a great part of Europe. Celtic art has been found as far afield as Ireland and the northern isles of Britain; in continental Europe from Spain to the Black Sea; and in a part of central Turkey where Celts are known to have settled in the 3rd century bc.

II

The Phases of Celtic Art

Celtic art emerged in the environment of the Hallstatt Culture, an early Iron Age culture, identified as Celtic, that was centred in what is now Austria, Switzerland, and Bavaria. Although this culture existed from 750 to 450 bc, it is in the Late Hallstatt period (6th to early 5th century bc) that identifiably Celtic artistic features emerge. Characteristic Celtic traits are also found in the later La Tène Culture, which succeeded the Hallstatt, flourishing from about 450 bc up to the Roman conquest. The initial focus of La Tène Culture was what is now Switzerland, the Rhineland, and France; in its later phases it spread westward as far as Britain and Spain, and eastward as far as the Black Sea. Thus the term “La Tène art” can refer specifically to the art of the type site of La Tène, on Lake Neuchâtel, and also more generally to the whole period and extent of the Celtic world, from the 5th century bc to the 1st century ad. To divide the period as a whole, the terms La Tène I, II, and III, or Early, Middle, and Late La Tène, are used on the basis of developments in such key Celtic artefacts as brooches, swords, and scabbards.

As far as Celtic art of the La Tène period is concerned, the system of subdivision devised by Paul Jacobsthal in his classic Early Celtic Art (1944) is widely accepted. In Jacobsthal’s classification, four main styles are identified within the main framework of La Tène Culture: the Early Style, the Waldalgesheim Style, the Plastic Style, and the Sword Style.

The Early Style (c. 480-c. 350 bc) is characterized by finds made at chieftains’ graves in Germany and France. From Reinheim and Rodenbach, for example, come sumptuous gold torcs and bracelets, inspired by Greek and Etruscan models. Graves at Kleinaspergle and Basse-Yutz have yielded remarkable bronze flagons. In general, Classical and Oriental motifs abound, the most common being lotus buds, palmettes, and acanthus leaves.

The Waldalgesheim Style (c. 350-c. 290 bc), named after an important burial site near Bonn, echoes the period of Celtic expansion into Greece and Italy. Here, new developments can be seen on a range of jewellery and chariot fittings. The Classical influence remains strong, but there is a freer and more individualistic use of the Classical decorative models.

The Plastic Style (c. 290-c. 190 bc), characteristic of the more westerly parts of the Celtic world, is typified by a fresh emphasis on three-dimensional effects on ornaments; human and animal representation is more prominent and becomes stylized.

The Sword Style (after c. 190 bc), characteristic of the more easterly parts of the Celtic world, is named after the engraved decoration on swords and scabbards. In contrast to the flamboyant, figurative tendencies of the Plastic Style, these designs are invariably flat, linear, and abstract, though based on vegetal motifs of later Greek origin.

These subdivisions are based mainly on artefacts found in the west-central strongholds of the La Tène Culture. There are certain doubts as to their applicability both to the far western extent of the Celtic world (especially Britain and Ireland) and to its eastern extremities.

Celtic art is known today mainly in the form of grave goods, as votive offerings, or as hoards buried for safe keeping. A sizeable proportion of the surviving examples of Celtic art owe their preservation to the Celts’ custom of burying their chiefs and leaders bedecked with fine jewellery, equipped with prestigious weaponry, and provided with all that they would need to feast and drink in the afterlife. These chiefly burials suggest a sumptuous lifestyle in which imported artefacts mingled with Celtic ones, and give the best view of the ambience within which Celtic art developed. In addition to the wealth of objects that accompanied Celtic chiefs to the afterlife, votive offerings were made in such holy places as rivers, lakes, or artificial ponds; the fulfilment of vows and pledges to the gods would have required the dedication of the choicest possessions or spoils of war, and these offerings are another aspect of Celtic art that is known today. Sometimes hoards of precious objects were buried for safety, and lay undiscovered until recent times.

The metals used by Celtic craftsmen were generally available in Celtic territories. The tin used in bronze was said to have been mined in Cornwall and transported to the Continent. Some gold may have originated in Bohemia. Various other materials were imported from elsewhere: pink coral came from the Mediterranean, amber from the Baltic, and ivory (of which there are few examples) presumably from Africa. Silk fibres preserved in certain chieftains’ burials in Germany indicate that trade routes reaching as far as central Asia or even China brought luxury goods to the wealthiest Celts in the 6th century—the builders of the great hill forts of Mont Lassois, on the upper Saône, and at Heuneberg on the upper Danube. Routes to the Celtic hinterland also included the Greek colony and trading post of Massalia (Marseille). There were also trading links with the Etruscans in northern Italy and with the Greeks of the Adriatic; later on the Black Sea and the Danube also played a part.

III

Metalwork

While there is no doubt that the Celts were consummate metalworkers, it is due to the durability of metal that this aspect of Celtic art appears so prominent to us today. Gold and bronze were used primarily for objects of prestige. Silver was also used, though much less frequently than gold or bronze; in some contexts it was used together with gold to produce electrum. When it first reached the Celtic world (c. 700 bc), iron was also used for prestigious objects, although it subsequently became associated primarily with utilitarian pieces.

The two metalworking techniques most commonly used by the Celts were casting by the cire perdue method, and beating into sheets. It was by the cire perdue method that the decorated finials of gold torcs, or the ornamentation on bronze harness, for example, were produced. Where a panel or sheet of metal was to be decorated, it could be hammered on its inner side to produce a positive relief on the outer side. This repoussé (“pushed back”) effect could be achieved by beating the metal on a previously engraved surface; by using this prepared surface as a template, repeating patterns could be made. A variety of scratching, scribing, and chiselling effects were used to decorate plain surfaces, and in some cases compasses were used to produce accurate patterns.

Metalwork, and particularly bronze, was often inset with enamel: in the fully developed champlevé (“raised field”) technique, the recessed areas on the metal’s surface were filled with powdered glass and the object heated to bring the glass to melting point and, hence, conversion into enamel. Pink coral and amber were also inlaid into metal, and produced a particoloured effect.

IV

The Accoutrements of Warfare

As fighting and warfare were important in Celtic life, and as Celtic society valued martial prowess, so artistic skill was lavished on weapons and armour, and on harness and chariots. While such objects were the vital equipment with which the Celts went into battle, they were also gifts fit for the gods and the accoutrements of rank with which brave warriors passed into the afterlife.

The short daggers with elaborate openwork hilts found in Hallstatt chiefs’ graves were very likely worn as symbols of rank. The principal equipment of the Celtic warrior consisted of sword, spears, and shield. Of these, the sword hilt and scabbard, often made of bronze, tended to attract the highest artistic skills. Spear-points too were sometimes decorated. While functional shields were generally made of wood and leather, some highly ornate oval bronze shield covers, with applied repoussé panels bearing curvilinear decoration and enamel inlay, are known. Three such examples have been found in the River Thames, and were clearly ceremonial in function. The finest is Battersea Shield, which was recovered from the Thames at Battersea, in south-west London.

A ceremonial rather than practical function is also presumed for some handsome but impractical swords. Most surviving weapons have been found in graves, destined to accompany their owner to the next life, but a number of the most splendid items were consigned to the waters in a manner that seems to find an echo in the return of Excalibur, the sword of King Arthur, to the lake. Helmets figure in some pictorial representations and in Classical accounts; and some splendid examples are known: that found in the Thames near Waterloo Bridge, in central London, in the mid-19th century bears swirling asymmetrical decoration and a pair of conical horns.

Harness, made of bronze or iron, was similarly decorated; such pieces as bits, terrets, linchpins, and decorative mounts were endowed with the classic Celtic repertoire of abstract and zoomorphic patterns, produced either as low relief or in enamel inlay. Warriors were occasionally buried with their chariots, and full array of armour: one of the best known of such burials is that discovered at Wetwang Slack, Humberside, in 1984.