Book Of Tolls Analysis

The Book of Kells is considered to be one of Ireland's most valuable national treasures as well as the finest illuminated manuscript created in early medieval Europe.Illustrated by monks, the Book of Columba, as it is also called, serves as the best representative sample of gospel books of its time .Although its content is mainly Christian, its has influenced many different aspects of history, such as art and especially calligraphy because of its elaborate illustrations and ornamentation.The objective of this paper is to briefly present the literary and artistic importance of the book not only for Ireland but for the whole world. There are many different assumptions as to where and when was The Book of Kells created but most experts …show more content…
Farr).There is no other Insular manuscript that combines that variety of decoration with compexity and in that big scale. First of all the colours used were able to represent the whole spectrum of shades known in Britain and Ireland until that time. However the most fascinating fact was that they were gathered and brought to the Abbey from all over the world. So for example colours were bought from places such as Afghanistan, where lapis lazuli was processed, producing an astonishing blue shade, as well as the Mediterranean region.(manuscripts of the eightand early ninth centuries,page 104). On the other hand is really amazing how in a work of art of that scale, there is complete absence of gold elements which were though replaced by different shades of yellow, golden pigments, etc. In addition to that, the illustrators would use many different colours on top of another in order to create the illusion of depth in their …show more content…
According to Henry (1974) there could be three different scribes used in the textual part of the manuscript. In her work she suggests that dissimilarities are mainly found in the writing styles as well as in the colours used. Henry's work was so detailed, that she also attributed specific sections of the textual work to each scribe. Based on Henry's analysis, the book was made into this marvelous performance that it is by a team of workers that should be closely linked to each other. On the other hand, there are some scholars who claim that there is only one scribe used. For example Meyer (1950), based this argument on the possibility that multiple writing styles could be used to represent the same scribe while Brown (1972) states that the author deliberately introduced the different styles in the