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ART 487
brian manuscripts rapidly became known on the Continent.
The famous copy of the Vulgate, the Codex Amiatinus, was
taken by Abbot Ceolfrid of Jarrow (d. 716) to Rome as a
present for Pope Gregory II, and as befitted a work for such a
recipient its illustrations, based on a sixth/century original,
probably the Codex Grandior of Cassiodorus, are the most fully
classical of all the Northumbrian paintings. It was a return
traffic, for, earlier, Benedict Biscop had brought paintings from
Rome to Jarrow and Wearmouth, which no doubt were among
the models on which this northern renaissance drew. At Ech/
ternach in Luxembourg, a house founded c. 700 by St. Willi/
brord, the Northumbrian/born missionary archbishop of
Friesland, there was a scriptorium which carried on the North/
umbrian tradition; the Echternach Gospels (Paris, Bibl. Nat.
MS. lat. 9389), where a new decorative effect is achieved by
setting the evangelist symbols against a background patterned
only by black/line rectangular divisions, may be taken as an
example of this artistic dispersion. This greater is simplicity a
mark of the more restrained
style of the middle years of the
eighth century. In Mercia, however, in the second half of the
century, under the prosperous rule ofOffa, there is a full use of
exuberant ornament, thinner and prettier than any as yet men/
tioned, which can be seen in the pages ofthe Vatican Gospels
(MS. Barb. lat. 570), the English contemporary of the great
Irish Book of Kells, and in the carvings preserved at Breedon
and Fletton. This is a period where the arts are all too little
known, and extant all examples too few. Offa's coins show
a high ability in craftsmanship and compare favourably with
His contacts
any contemporary designs in north/west Europe.
with the court of Charlemagne introduced new continental
influences and motifs such as the scraggy, prowling lion that
cross in Northumberland and is to
appears on the Rothbury
be found amongst the foliage ofthe Ormside bowl, one ofthe
most admirable ofour Anglo/Saxon pieces ofmetal work. The
increased skill in figure representation,
as shown in the evan/
gelists of the^Vatican Gospels and in some of the Breedon
carvings, probably owes something to these foreign influences.