Editing Book of Durrow (section)

==Illumination==
[[File:Book of Durrow folio 192v.png|thumb|left|upright=1.0|Carpet page with interlaced animals]]
The illumination of the book shows especially well the varied origins of the Insular style, and has been a focus for the intense art-historical discussion of the issue.  One thing that is clear is that the artist was unused to representing the human figure; his main attempt, the Man symbol for Matthew, has been described as a "walking buckle".<ref>Wilson, 34, quoting another writer (unnamed).</ref>  Apart from Anglo-Saxon metalwork, and Coptic and Syriac manuscript illustrations, the figure has been compared to a bronze figure with a panel of geometric [[vitreous enamel|enamel]] on his trunk, from a bucket found in Norway.<ref>Meehan (1996), p. 53 & illustration p. 35</ref> Christopher de Hamel writes that, "Like the [[Book of Kells]], [the Book of Durrow] carries the legend that it was copied by [[Columba|Saint Columba]]... It too has a set of Canon tables, six elaborate carpet pages, five full-page images of the symbols of the Evangelists (one on folio 2r showing all four, the others at the start of each Gospel), five very large initials up to full page in size, and very numerous smaller initials. The Book of Durrow is not as elaborate as the Book of Kells or as large, but it shows all those incipient features of swirling Celtic interlace and infill."<ref>{{Cite book |last=de Hamel |first=Christopher |title=Meetings with Medieval Manuscripts |publisher=Penguin |year=2017 |pages=124}}</ref>

The animal iconography derives from Germanic [[zoomorphic]] designs. The geometric borders and the carpet pages cause more disagreement.  The interlace, like that of the Durham fragment, is mostly large compared to the [[Book of Lindisfarne]], but the extreme level of detail found in later Insular books begins here in the Celtic spirals and other curvilinear decoration used in initials and in sections of carpet pages.  The page illustrated at left has animal interlace around the sides that is drawn from Germanic [[Migration Period]] [[Animal Style]] II, as found for example in the Anglo-Saxon jewellery at [[Sutton Hoo]], and on the [[Benty Grange hanging bowl]].  But the circular panel in the centre seems, although not as precisely as other parts of the book, to draw on Celtic sources, although the three white circles at the edge recall Germanic metalwork studs in enamel or other techniques.

The Book of Durrow is unusual in that it does not use the traditional scheme, usual since [[Saint Jerome]], for assigning the symbols to the Evangelists. Each [[Gospel]] begins with an [[Four Evangelists|Evangelist]]'s symbol – a man for [[Matthew the Evangelist|Matthew]], an [[eagle]] for [[Mark the Evangelist|Mark]] (not the lion traditionally used), a [[calf (animal)|calf]] for [[Luke the Evangelist|Luke]] and a [[lion]] for [[John the Evangelist|John]] (not the eagle traditionally used). This is also known as the pre-[[Vulgate]] arrangement. Each evangelist symbol, except the Man of Matthew is followed by a [[carpet page]], followed by the initial page. This missing carpet page is assumed to have existed. A first possibility is that it was lost, and a second that it is in fact folio 3, which features swirling abstract decoration.  Where the four symbols appear together on folio 2r they appear in the normal order if read clockwise, and in the pre-Vulgate order if read anti-clockwise, which may be deliberate.<ref>Meehan (1996), pp. 43-44</ref>

The first letter of the text is enlarged and decorated, with the following letters surrounded by dots. Parallels with metalwork can be noted in the rectangular body of [[St Matthew]], which looks like a [[millefiori]] decoration, and in details of the carpet pages.

There is a sense of space in the design of all the pages of the Book of Durrow. Open [[vellum]] balances intensely decorated areas. Animal interlace of very high quality appears on folio 192v. Other motifs include spirals, [[triskeles]], ribbon plaits and circular knots in the carpet pages and borders around the [[Four Evangelists]].