The Book of Kells is an Irish manuscript created around the year 800 A.D containing the Four Gospels and numerous exquisite paintings. It is truly a great masterpiece of the Medieval manuscripts, in fact of Irish art, containing all aspects of Irish art that is revered and beautiful.
The Book of Kells: reproductions from the manuscript in Trinity College, Dublin; with a study of the manuscript by Francoise Henry is a breathtakingly beautiful book of reproductions of the artwork from the actual Book of Kells that I was extremely pleased (and surprised) to find at my local library. It includes all the full page illustrations in the manuscript and quite a bit of the ornamentation found on the text pages. I really got a feel for the incredible complex detail of the work, some of which is difficult to see even with a magnifying glass, and evidently is without flaw. I highly recommend perusing this book if you have the chance. Unfortunately I am unable to reproduce any of its images here, but have provided this link to several reproductions at "Esoteric Art." Author Joseph Dunn states in The Catholic Encyclopedia, "The only thing to which [the illustrations] can be compared is a bed of many coloured crocuses and tulips or the very finest stained glass window, which they equal in beauty of colouring and rival in delicacy of ornament and drawing." This detail interestingly contrasts with the flat, almost primitive depiction of people without shading, modeling, or perspective as is typical of Celtic art of the time.
According to The Book of Kells, the paintings are mainly produced in the colors sienna, purple, lilac, red, pink, green, and yellow. There is a complete absence of the use of gold in the Book of Kells, and the Kells artist seems especially sensitive to this, using the bright yellow of orpiment as a substitute. The paintings positively glow. Where the Lindisfarne artists used simple washes of one pigment, the Kells uses a complicated system of washes of one color over another. Also in the Book of Kells white is thickly applied as a separate pigment, where the Lindisfarne reserves the bare vellum as "white." The artist possesses an impressive knowledge of the potential of color.
Decorated initials are an integral part of illuminated manuscripts. Often they are added to the text but somehow remain foreign to it. The Book of Kells is an unparalleled masterpiece because nowhere else do decorated initials form such a constant and important accompaniment to the text, as though they belong to it, grow out of it, mix freely with it.
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