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Classifying Taste

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Icons of Irishness from the Middle Ages to the Modern World

Part of the book series: The New Middle Ages ((TNMA))

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Abstract

As the story goes, in the summer of 1850, an elaborately decorated brooch was found along a beach somewhere outside of Dublin.1 It was a small, circular object, measuring less than nine centimeters in diameter. Its round frame was pierced through the center with a triangle-headed pin. Made of gilt silver, the brooch’s surfaces were covered with dazzling panels of golden granulation and filigree. Colorful enamel bosses and glistening gemstones marked the joints between fields of intricate spirals and animal interlace. It was truly a magnificent discovery. An aura of mystery surrounded the brooch’s appearance, and it was quickly dated to the early Middle Ages (see figure 2.1). The fabulous piece remained in a private collection for nearly twenty years, where it became the model for replicas that were marketed and sold to elite members of Irish and British society.2

Here… great soft surfaces of silver are left untouched, and on their quiet curve the ornaments emerge with extraordinary brilliance, glittering of colours and variegated surface.

Françoise Henry, on the Ardagh Chalice, Irish Art in the Early Christian Period

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Notes

  1. The item was the so-called Tara Brooch. Bibliography on the brooch includes: Ian Finlay, Celtic Art; an Introduction (London: Faber, 1973), pp. 121–25

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  2. Françoise Henry, Irish Art in the Early Christian Period, to 800 A.D. (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1965), pp. 118–119.

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  31. This scene is commonly identified as either the Arrest of Christ or the Ecce Rex Iudaeorum or Second Mocking of Christ, in which Jesus is dressed in mock-royal robes. Some have suggested that it may represent an ecclesiastic attacked by two armed men, St. Columcille being arrested and exiled, or Norsemen attacking the abbot of a local community. It is tempting to believe that the images depict historical figures, for that would easily explain the inclusion of familiar Irish costume. If that is the case, then the image represents a high-ranking Irishman—possibly an ecclesiastic— being attacked by lower-class lay warriors. For more on the iconography of this scene, see Harbison, The High Crosses of Ireland, 1:143. A. K. Porter, The Crosses and Culture of Ireland (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1931), p. 42.

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  1. Maggie M. Williams
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© 2012 Maggie M. Williams

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Williams, M.M. (2012). Classifying Taste. In: Icons of Irishness from the Middle Ages to the Modern World. The New Middle Ages. Palgrave Macmillan, New York. https://doi.org/10.1057/9781137057266_3

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