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.

V.

Jewellery and Personal Adornment

Celtic love of personal adornment was remarked upon by Greek and Roman commentators, and is amply demonstrated by the wealth of objects known to us today as grave goods and votive offerings. Both men and women wore jewellery. In addition to demonstrating wealth, such personal ornament is believed to have been functional in at least two other ways: it might have indicated the wearer’s social status and it might also have been prized for reputed talismanic powers. Thus, anyone of the requisite status would have worn certain items as insignia at all times.

The most prestigious form of personal ornament was the torc, a heavy neck ring sometimes made in tubular form but more usually made of twisted strands of copper and gold and usually having annual terminals; the terminals are sometimes decorated with a scrolling abstract pattern or take the form of animal heads. Up until the 3rd century bc, the torc was associated most strongly with women; some of the finest examples have been discovered in the graves of two princesses, at Reinheim, near Saarbrücken, and at Waldalgesheim, which both date from the 4th century bc, while Dio Cassius, writing in the 1st to 2nd century ad, records that Boudicca went into battle wearing around her neck “a large golden necklace”. Some of the finest Celtic divinities in sculptures wear or carry torcs and, according to Y Gododdin, the long poem written by the 6th-century Welsh bard Aneirin, men went forth to their deaths “wearing gold torcs”. One of the finest collections of torcs is the spectacular hoard of almost 200 examples discovered at Snettisham, Norfolk, over two years from 1948 to 1950. They had been buried in several groups in the second half of the 1st century bc; some were newly made, others worn, and others broken, and scholars are uncertain whether they were deposited as offerings, stored, or hidden for safe keeping.

The occurrence of armlets and bracelets in aristocratic burials (for example, that of the Waldalgesheim princess and the graves of aristocratic men at Rodenbach) suggests that they too might have carried significance as status symbols. Less common, but still widespread, are massive bronze belt-buckle plates. Additionally, bronze pins (hairpins and clothes pins) and especially brooches could be accorded the same lavish treatment: many were decorated in relief or inlaid with enamel or coral. Plainer examples were also made, presumably for a wider market. Necklaces of beads made of glass of different colours, amber, or other materials were also worn.

The Celtic tradition of making and decorating circular bronze mirrors produced some of the finest abstract patterns in Celtic art. While the viewing surface of the mirror was polished, the back, round and flat, was decorated with fine engraving, chasing, or hatching in which swirling patterns sometimes give the fleeting illusion of human or animal heads. Although such a mirror was found in the grave of the 4th-century princess at Reinheim, most examples, which are also the finest, were made in Britain in the lst century bc: among the best known, named after their place of discovery, are the Holcombe mirror and the Desborough mirror (British Museum, London).

VI.

Feasting and Drinking

Another focal point of aristocratic Celtic life was feasting and drinking. The Otherworld also played a prominent role in Celtic beliefs (see Celtic Mythology). Preparation for the Otherworld Feast appears to have been the central concept in the chiefly burials of the Hallstatt Culture, with their magnificent sets of drinking horns, mead vats, bronze plates, and food bowls. Similarly, the aristocratic burials of the Early La Tène period (for example, that at Basse-Yutz) include wine flagons as necessary equipment for the afterlife. In the Late La Tène period in Britain, bronze-plated buckets have a similar function: the vessel known as the Aylesford bucket (British Museum) has a band of relief decoration in the form of abstract and zoomorphic motifs, and two cast-bronze handles in the shape of helmeted human heads. (This particular example was found to contain cremated remains.) Where they survive in more workaday contexts, tubs, bowls, and other utensils in metal, wood, or pottery show a commensurate level of decoration.

Wrought-iron firedogs provide further evidence of the importance of feasting in Celtic society. As Diodorus Siculus relates, the Gauls partook of banquets with “hearths blazing with fire, with cauldrons and spits containing large pieces of meat”. Among the most spectacular examples are the firedogs from Capel Garmon, Gwynedd, in which the uprights are looped, possibly to support spits, and those from the La Tène III burial at Welwyn Garden City (British Museum), with ox-head finials. It is tempting to imagine that these firedogs must have functioned within the context of the banquet, either as a sort of rotisserie or to hold logs or basting and carving equipment.

VII.

Objects of Ritual and Veneration

Despite the statues that surmounted certain early chiefly burials, deities were traditionally not depicted in Celtic art. However, continuing links with Mediterranean cultures, where gods were regularly represented in human form, may have encouraged the practice to take root among the Celts. In Romano-Celtic contexts, well-understood iconographic codes or even inscriptions clearly signal that a divinity is depicted: the relief of the Romano-Celtic goddess Sulis Minerva from Bath is a classic example. In the earlier Celtic period, however, such identification is more difficult, although finds of horned heads, Janus-heads, and figures in the form of half-human and half-animal creatures are presumably indicative of mythic significance or ritual purpose.

The same is true of wooden, ceramic, or metal figurines, in human or animal form, found in such clearly votive contexts as pits or shafts, or springs or lakes: even if the precise message is lost, the general aura of thanksgiving, prayer, and protection is undoubted. On that basis, and given Classical accounts of Celtic votive practices, many items of martial or domestic provenance found in such contexts can be presumed to have had ritual significance vested in them by the very act of depositing them there.

For the most part, of course, the precise ritual context of these objects is lost. A partial exception is the unique silver vessel known as the Gundestrup Cauldron, dating from the 1st century bc and discovered in a peat bog in Jutland, Denmark, in 1891. Its panels are embossed with a sequence of tableaux depicting divine and human figures. Although none can be firmly identified, the most elaborate scene may depict the horned god Cernunnos holding up a ram-horned snake and a torc, symbols of fertility and plenty. The Celts associated cauldrons with feasting in the Otherworld and with regeneration. A Welsh legend, for example, tells of a magic cauldron that could return slain warriors to life if they were cooked in it overnight; one of the plates on the Gundestrup Cauldron appears to illustrate such a theme. Scholarly speculation as to the cauldron’s function and the interpretation of the scenes continues.

VIII.

Other Objects and Materials

Pottery did not in general receive exalted attention in Celtic art. Although it was made, and has survived, in plentiful quantities, it is far less important in Celtic art than, for example, in Greek art. The Celts valued high-grade Greek ware, but did not attempt to replicate it, at least in clay. Scattered survivals of artwork in other media show us that other materials could be attractive to the Celtic craftsmen: bone, for example, was made into combs. It is also clear from items that have been preserved under exceptionally favourable circumstances, and from such indirect evidence as the descriptions provided by Classical authors, depictions in Classical sculpture, or the survival of certain tools that a great deal of Celtic woodcarving, leatherwork, and textiles have perished and thus remain largely unknown.

IX.

Conclusion

A.

The Artist in Celtic Society

The most spectacular manifestations of Celtic art sprang from the patronage of the rulers and aristocracy of the warlike Celts. Later Celtic society gave a high place to the master craftsman: the early medieval Irish law tracts recognized the master blacksmith and other senior artisans as achieving status by virtue of their craft; and it would not be surprising if similar honours were accorded to their predecessors in ancient times. Unfortunately, the evidence is meagre. While the presence of workshops can be detected by their archaeological remains, the work of individual workers identified, or even deductions made about the use of individual tools on single artefacts or groups of related artefacts, the circumstances in which most surviving pieces of Celtic art were commissioned and created can only be guessed at. The way in which artistic styles spread across the Celtic world suggests a combination of local imitation by resident skilled workers, and travelling of highly regarded craftsmen to work for rich patrons at their behest.

B.

The Dynamics of Celtic Art

Like any other evolved artistic tradition, Celtic art assimilated exotic influences and harmonized them with its own characteristics. The crucial stage in its evolution appears to have occurred in the 6th and 5th centuries bc, when increased trade and concentration of wealth (presumably interconnected) gave both the stimulus and, through imports, the models for Celtic patrons and craftsmen to follow. To a native European tradition of decoration and representation going back a long way in European prehistory were added Near Eastern vegetal motifs, presumably filtered through Greek art, and the shapes and proportions of Etruscan and Greek bronze ware and pottery. Other sources, such as Scythian, are sometimes mentioned, but the indebtedness and practical connections are less clear-cut.

However eclectic it may be, Celtic art is not simply a repository of foreign influences, any more than it is the unique, pure creation of the Celtic mind. Artistic and technical powers combined with aristocratic wealth and taste to make the opportunity to create something vital and new. It is instructive to compare such imported items as Greek craters and drinking ware found in the chiefly burials of the Celts with the native productions that stand beside them. The latter imitate the exotic models, but also transpose them confidently into a preferred medium or select certain elements to combine with home-grown concepts, or even embellish the imports with native work. From this milieu it is easy to see a native dynamic emerge and gather momentum.

Certainly from the earliest La Tène period Celtic art displays aesthetic conventions that unify and even define the Celtic areas of Europe, despite the presence, at times, of regional and even local developments. Although much is unclear, this unity must have owed something to the mobility of craftsmen and ideas within the whole Celtic area, as well as shared cultural, social, and religious characteristics.

C.

Epilogue

In continental Europe at the time of the Roman conquest, Celtic culture was quite quickly assimilated to that of Rome. In Britain, it appears that, despite solid Romanization in southern Britain, there was in general a greater degree of continuity with the past (see Roman Conquest of Britain). Christianity had reached Britain during the Roman period, and it was in the Church that a new patron of the arts emerged, and was responsible for an efflorescence of recognizably Celtic art in the 7th century ad. This took the form of richly decorated metalwork for sacramental ware, monumental sculpture, and manuscript illumination. The monastic context in Ireland and northern Britain gave rise to a fine flowering of Celtic art in which (as had happened a millennium before in Austria and southern Germany) the exotic stimuli—in this case Germanic beasts and Classical or Christian figures and postures—were grafted on to the traditional Celtic vision and skills to produce such masterpieces as the Ardagh Chalice, the Book of Kells, and the Irish high crosses.