Early-medieval Irish art, since its rediscovery in the 19th century, has been as widely misunderstood as it has been mythologised. It has been interpreted as fey, whimsical, and otherworldly. It has been incorporated into our national consciousness as one of those glories of the past that seem to set us apart from the underachievers of ancient times. Although it petered out in medieval times, we invoke it as evidence of a surviving tradition of artistry when, in truth, the discontinuity between then and now is glaring. The modern reception of early Irish art is so inextricably bound up in the competing nationalisms of these islands that debate about its nature and origins has sometimes been tiresome and futile. Side by side with all this has been a tradition of scholarship that has advanced the description and analysis of this complex art and attempted to place it in its wider historical context. No easy task, but a new understanding of early Irish history, new discoveries and fresh techniques of examination of objects and buildings make it an urgent one. Peter Harbison's new survey, like Francoise Henry's great pioneering work, was first published in France by Zodiaque and is now brought out in a handsome edition in English by Thames and Hudson. The large format and the splendid colour and black-and-white plates do justice to the works of art and sites and monuments of the time.
Harbison brings together the evidence of metalwork, manuscripts and sculpture, to relate major developments to their historical contexts. The normal apparatus of scholarly evasiveness usually makes for tedious reading, but Harbison, who never passes off conjecture as fact, writes well and his text is in no way dull. Necessary technical information is conveyed deftly as needed, so side excursions are never required. The main art forms are treated thematically and chronologically and, if there is a bias in the book, it is towards those areas in which the author has made an especially distinguished contribution - high crosses and architectural sculpture (comparatively neglected in earlier works of synthesis).
Manuscripts naturally receive a great deal of attention and the books of Kells and Durrow, while given extended treatment do not overwhelm the narrative. The history of insular manuscripts is complex and here the publishers might have permitted some illustrations of non-Irish but related material to make the argument easier to follow. The Carolingian and Italian sources to which the author looks for the origins of much Irish iconography of the 9th and 10th centuries would have benefited from comparative illustration also. The corpus of metalwork has been spectacularly increased in recent years and this is reflected in the coverage - Harbison points the significance of new discoveries, such as the Derrynaflan Hoard, in changing the way we must think about artistic production and patronage in early-medieval Ireland. The iconography and symbolism of this sophisticated art is pointed up. It is no longer possible to believe with Francoise Henry that the decoration of metal objects was thinly disguised pagan ornament - everywhere the stamp of Christianity is evident.
One major area of new thinking concerns the development of sculpture - instead of a long internal evolution, the sophisticated High Crosses probably emerged fairly rapidly and probably under the aegis of royal patrons collaborating with leading churchmen in the ninth and tenth centuries. Regional styles are therefore roughly contemporary and not successive stages in the process. The development of church architecture has benefited from new dating evidence. South-western simple stone churches such as Gallarus Oratory, were largely local and specialised phenomena rather than ancestral to the complex rectangular masonry churches elsewhere.
Above all, the art of the period can be seen to have been as much outward-looking as conservative: the kings and clerics who commissioned important works were behaving just as their continental counterparts were doing at the time. The artists were learning, directly and indirectly, from work abroad. The keen eye can catch these subtle influences from distant lands, and there's none keener than Peter Harbison's. No nativist he.
Michael Ryan is an archaeologist and Director of the Chester Beatty Library. Pindar Press will shortly publish his collected papers on early Irish art