HOME
*



picture info

Irish Art
The history of Irish art starts around 3200 BC with Neolithic stone carvings at the Newgrange megalithic tomb, part of the Brú na Bóinne complex which still stands today, County Meath. In early-Bronze Age Ireland there is evidence of Beaker culture and a widespread metalworking. Trade-links with Britain and Northern Europe introduced La Tène culture and Celtic art to Ireland by about 300 BC, but while these styles later changed or disappeared under the Roman subjugation, Ireland was left alone to develop Celtic designs: notably Celtic crosses, spiral designs, and the intricate interlaced patterns of Celtic knotwork. The Christianization of Ireland in the fifth century AD saw the establishment of monasteries, which acted as centres of scholarship, and led to the flowering of the Insular art style with its highly decorative illuminated manuscripts, metalwork and stonework (High crosses). From around 1200 to 1700, however, Irish art was relatively stagnant, and Irish culture was ...
[...More Info...]      
[...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]  


picture info

High Cross
A high cross or standing cross ( ga, cros ard / ardchros, gd, crois àrd / àrd-chrois, cy, croes uchel / croes eglwysig) is a free-standing Christian cross made of stone and often richly decorated. There was a unique Early Medieval tradition in Ireland and Britain of raising large sculpted stone crosses, usually outdoors. These probably developed from earlier traditions using wood, perhaps with metalwork attachments, and earlier pagan Celtic memorial stones; the Pictish stones of Scotland may also have influenced the form. The earliest surviving examples seem to come from the territory of the Anglo-Saxon kingdom of Northumbria, which had been converted to Christianity by Irish missionaries; it remains unclear whether the form first developed in Ireland or Britain. Their relief decoration is a mixture of religious figures and sections of decoration such as knotwork, interlace and in Britain vine-scrolls, all in the styles also found in insular art in other media such as ...
[...More Info...]      
[...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]  


picture info

Iron Age
The Iron Age is the final epoch of the three-age division of the prehistory and protohistory of humanity. It was preceded by the Stone Age ( Paleolithic, Mesolithic, Neolithic) and the Bronze Age ( Chalcolithic). The concept has been mostly applied to Iron Age Europe and the Ancient Near East, but also, by analogy, to other parts of the Old World. The duration of the Iron Age varies depending on the region under consideration. It is defined by archaeological convention. The "Iron Age" begins locally when the production of iron or steel has advanced to the point where iron tools and weapons replace their bronze equivalents in common use. In the Ancient Near East, this transition took place in the wake of the Bronze Age collapse, in the 12th century BC. The technology soon spread throughout the Mediterranean Basin region and to South Asia (Iron Age in India) between the 12th and 11th century BC. Its further spread to Central Asia, Eastern Europe, and Central Europe is ...
[...More Info...]      
[...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]  


picture info

Bronze Age
The Bronze Age is a historic period, lasting approximately from 3300 BC to 1200 BC, characterized by the use of bronze, the presence of writing in some areas, and other early features of urban civilization. The Bronze Age is the second principal period of the three-age system proposed in 1836 by Christian Jürgensen Thomsen for classifying and studying ancient societies and history. An ancient civilization is deemed to be part of the Bronze Age because it either produced bronze by smelting its own copper and alloying it with tin, arsenic, or other metals, or traded other items for bronze from production areas elsewhere. Bronze is harder and more durable than the other metals available at the time, allowing Bronze Age civilizations to gain a technological advantage. While terrestrial iron is naturally abundant, the higher temperature required for smelting, , in addition to the greater difficulty of working with the metal, placed it out of reach of common use until the end of ...
[...More Info...]      
[...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]  


picture info

Torc
A torc, also spelled torq or torque, is a large rigid or stiff neck ring in metal, made either as a single piece or from strands twisted together. The great majority are open at the front, although some had hook and ring closures and a few had mortice and tenon locking catches to close them. Many seem designed for near-permanent wear and would have been difficult to remove. Torcs are found in the Scythian, Illyrian, Thracian, Celtic, and other cultures of the European Iron Age from around the 8th century BC to the 3rd century AD. For the Iron Age Celts, the gold torc seems to have been a key object. It identifies the wearer as a person of high rank, and many of the finest works of ancient Celtic art are torcs. The Celtic torc disappears in the Migration Period, but during the Viking Age torc-style metal necklaces, now mainly in silver, came back into fashion. Torc styles of neck-ring are found as part of the jewellery styles of various other cultures and periods. ...
[...More Info...]      
[...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]  


picture info

Gold Lunula
The Gold lunula (plural: lunulae) is a distinctive type of late Neolithic, Chalcolithic or (most often) early Bronze Age necklace or collar shaped like a crescent moon; most are from Prehistoric Ireland. They are normally flat and thin, with roundish spatulate terminals that are often twisted to 45 to 90 degrees from the plane of the body. Gold lunulae fall into three distinct groups, termed Classical, Unaccomplished and Provincial by archaeologists. Most have been found in Ireland, but there are moderate numbers in other parts of Europe as well, from Great Britain to areas of the continent fairly near the Atlantic coasts. Although no lunula has been directly dated, from associations with other artefacts it is thought they were being made sometime in the period between 2400–2000 BC; a wooden box associated with one Irish find has recently given a radiocarbon dating range of 2460–2040 BC. Of the more than a hundred gold lunulae known from Western Europe, more than eighty ...
[...More Info...]      
[...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]  


picture info

Ardagh Chalice
The Ardagh Hoard, best known for the Ardagh Chalice, is a hoard of metalwork from the 8th and 9th centuries. Found in 1868 by two young local boys, Jim Quin and Paddy Flanagan, it is now on display in the National Museum of Ireland in Dublin. It consists of the chalice, a much plainer stemmed cup in copper-alloy, and four brooches — three elaborate pseudo-penannular ones, and one a true pennanular brooch of the thistle type; this is the latest object in the hoard, and suggests it may have been deposited around 900 AD. The chalice ranks with the Book of Kells as one of the finest known works of Insular art, indeed of Celtic art in general, and is thought to have been made in the 8th century AD. Elaborate brooches, essentially the same as those worn by important laypeople, appear to have been worn by monastic clergy to fasten vestments of the period. Find The hoard was found in late September 1868 by two boys, Jim Quin and Paddy Flanagan, digging in a potato field on the s ...
[...More Info...]      
[...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]  


Royal Hibernian Academy
The Royal Hibernian Academy (RHA) is an artist-based and artist-oriented institution in Ireland, founded in Dublin in 1823. Like many other Irish institutions, such as the RIA, the academy retained the word "Royal" after most of Ireland became independent as the Irish Free State in December 1922. History The RHA was founded as the result of 30 Irish artists petitioning the government for a charter of incorporation. According to the letters patent of 5 August 1823, The Royal Hibernian Academy of Painting, Sculpture, and Architecture was established, which included a National School of Art. The first elected president was the landscape painter, William Ashford. In 1824 architect Francis Johnston was made president. He had provided headquarters for the RHA at Academy House in Lower Abbey Street at his own expense. The first exhibitions took place in May 1825 and were held annually from then on. To encourage interest in the arts works displayed at the RHA were distributed by lot ...
[...More Info...]      
[...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]  


Hugh Lane Gallery
The Hugh Lane Gallery, officially Dublin City Gallery The Hugh Lane and originally the Municipal Gallery of Modern Art, is an art museum operated by Dublin City Council and its subsidiary, the Hugh Lane Gallery Trust. It is in Charlemont House (built 1763) on Parnell Square, Dublin, Ireland. Admission is free. History The gallery was founded by noted art collector Sir Hugh Lane on Harcourt Street on 20 January 1908, and is the first known public gallery of modern art in the world. Lane met the running costs, while seeking a more permanent home. New buildings were proposed in St. Stephens Green, and as a dramatic bridge-gallery over the River Liffey, both proposed designs by Sir Edwin Lutyens, both unrealised. Lane did not live to see his gallery permanently located as he died in 1915 during the sinking of the RMS ''Lusitania''. Since 1933 it has been housed in Charlemont House. Lane's will bequeathed his collection to London, but an unwitnessed codicil, written in the ...
[...More Info...]      
[...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]  


picture info

Hugh Lane
Sir Hugh Percy Lane (9 November 1875 – 7 May 1915) was an Irish art dealer, collector and gallery director. He is best known for establishing Dublin's Municipal Gallery of Modern Art (the first known public gallery of modern art in the world) and for his contribution to the visual arts in Ireland, including the Lane Bequest. Hugh Lane died on board the RMS ''Lusitania''. Family Hugh Percy Lane was born in County Cork, Ireland, on 9 November 1875. He was the son of a rector father, and his mother Adelaide was a daughter of Dudley Persse, of Roxburgh, Co Galway and her sister was the dramatist Augusta, Lady Gregory, of Coole, Co Galway. He was brought up in Cornwall, England, and began his career as an apprentice painting restorer with Martin Henry Colnaghi in London, then worked as an art dealer at the Colnaghi's Marlborough Gallery for some years, before becoming a dealer in his own right and opening a gallery in Dublin in 1908. Through regular visits to Coole (ne ...
[...More Info...]      
[...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]  


picture info

Celtic Revival
The Celtic Revival (also referred to as the Celtic Twilight) is a variety of movements and trends in the 19th, 20th and 21st centuries that see a renewed interest in aspects of Celtic culture. Artists and writers drew on the traditions of Gaelic literature, Welsh-language literature, and so-called 'Celtic art'—what historians call Insular art (the Early Medieval style of Ireland and Britain). Although the revival was complex and multifaceted, occurring across many fields and in various countries in Northwest Europe, its best known incarnation is probably the Irish Literary Revival. Irish writers including William Butler Yeats, Lady Gregory, "AE" Russell, Edward Martyn, Alice Milligan and Edward Plunkett (Lord Dunsany) stimulated a new appreciation of traditional Irish literature and Irish poetry in the late 19th and early 20th century. In aspects the revival came to represent a reaction to modernisation. This is particularly true in Ireland, where the relationship betwee ...
[...More Info...]      
[...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]  


picture info

Royal Irish Academy
The Royal Irish Academy (RIA; ga, Acadamh Ríoga na hÉireann), based in Dublin, is an academic body that promotes study in the sciences, humanities and social sciences. It is Ireland's premier learned society and one its leading cultural institutions. The Academy was established in 1785 and granted a royal charter in 1786. the RIA has around 600 members, regular members being Irish residents elected in recognition of their academic achievements, and Honorary Members similarly qualified but based abroad; a small number of members are elected in recognition of non-academic contributions to society. Until the late 19th century the Royal Irish Academy was the owner of the main national collection of Irish antiquities. It presented its collection of archaeological artefacts and similar items, which included such famous pieces as the Tara Brooch, the Cross of Cong and the Ardagh Chalice to what is now the National Museum of Ireland, but retains its very significant collec ...
[...More Info...]      
[...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]