Early Irish art and iconogaphy

Conor Newman

(Heavy wear from prolonged use of the Bobbio Reliquary (c. AD600): reproduced with kind permission of Museo dell’Abbazia di Bobbio)

There is a long tradition of interest and expertise in early Irish art at NUI Galway. Today the focus is on investigating religious and cultural symbolism, which is set against a wider European and Near Eastern backdrop. We are interested in how art and iconography track the transition from pagan to Christian beliefs and thus speak to both intellectual exchange and cultural mix in the period AD 300-700. We are also interested in the agency of art
In 2014 we were honoured to host the seventh international conference on Insular art at NUI Galway, which is itself recognition of the research emanating from here, including ground-breaking work by Dr Fiona Gavin on early Insular silver, and Dr Mags Mannion on glass beads.
Conor Newman’s recent essay on the Bobbio reliquary (see E. Destefanis (ed.) L’Eredita de San Colombano. Memoria e Culto Attreverso il Medioevo (Rennes: 2017)) describes the earliest horizon of Christian art in Ireland, an object of European design that is decorated with motifs and symbols almost exclusively from the abstract palette of late-Celtic art. The persistence of almost undiluted Celtic art into the 6^th century AD is something of a conundrum and demands a fresh look at the evolution of Insular art, a project that is already in train with Fiona Gavin’s assessment of the corpus of silver pins and brooches from the 4^th and 5^th centuries AD.

Recent publications from this research area include:

Conor Newman ‘Notes on the Bobbio Reliquary’, in Eleonora Destefanis (ed.) L’Eredita de San Colombano. Memoria e Culto Attreverso il Medioevo (Rennes: 2017), 269-82.

Conor Newman, Mags Mannion and Fiona Gavin (eds) Islands in a Global Context. Proceedings of the 7^th International Conference on Insular Art, held at the National University of Ireland, Galway, 16-20 July 2014. (Dublin: 2017)

Mags Mannion Glass Beads from Early Medieval Ireland: Classification, Dating, Social Performance (Oxford: 2015)

Fiona Gavin ‘Insular Military-Style pins in late iron Age Ireland’, in Fraser Hunter & Kenneth Painter (eds) Late Roman Silver. The Traprain Treasure in Context (Edinburgh: 2013), 427-40.

Conor Newman and Sandra Burke ‘The symbolism of zoomorphic penannular brooches’, in Jane Hawkes (ed.) Making Histories. Proceedings of the Sixth International Conference on Insular Art, York 2011 (Donington, 2013), pp 201–204.