{Celtic Art: The Sacred Head}[19th February 1991]

[Redbook8:270-272][19910219:1155i]{Celtic Art: The Sacred Head}[19th February 1991]

19910219.1155

[continued]

‘[La Tène art]* is generally speaking a small-scale art created for a warrior aristocracy that, in Stuart Piggott’s words, “demanded flamboyant display from its head-hunting, charioteering, chieftans and their petty courts; or somber trappings and imagery in the forest sanctauries of a religion in which human sacrifice and the cult of the severed head** played an important part. It is strange and unfamiliar to us as it was to the Greeks and the Romans. So much of the finest work comprises small, intense and intricate pieces of intricate workmanship in gold, silver or bronze, which capture and concentrate preciousness, virtuosity, symbolism and beauty.” It was among the 6th- and early 5th-century BC[E] Celtic-speaking inhabitants of the land lying northward of the Alps that this art was invented, for invention it was. There is no single source, native or foreign, and no gradual unfolding. In fact it is rare to find an art style so different from anything that went before, whose archeological setting can be studied and understood, yet which itself remains profoundly elusive and unpredictable.’

***

*[Square brackets per ms]

**cf Sistine [chapel] ceiling?

or R~

***– ibid [Encylopaedia of Visual Art 2]: 212

[continued]

[PostedBlogger24for26082023]