The Art of the Picts: Sculpture and Metalwork in Early Medieval Scotland

The bigger Picture

The Picts have been ill served by history and traditional repute. Nicknamed Picti, the Painted Ones, by the Roman soldiers who served time in the army on Hadrian's Wall in the third century ad, the Picts suffered the same propaganda fate as many another "barbarian" tribe on the frontiers of the Roman empire. Late classical authors wrote of the tattooed bodies of the Picts, and when their works were rediscovered by Renaissance scholars the notion of woad-painted ancestors became an essential part of the British concept of its past. Scottish tradition added pygmy stature to the Pictish myth, and picht or pecht became a term of contempt for any unfortunate of small stature.

In reality, the Picts were cultured people of quite normal size. Their Roman name may have been as much a garbled version of a real Celtic name as a reflection of tattooing, for their ancestors who harassed the Roman garrisons were Celtic tribesmen. They emerge into contemporary history in the mid-sixth century with a high king, Bridei son of Maelcon, whom St Columba encountered somewhere near Inverness, and their lands stretched from the Firth of Forth north to Shetland and north-west to the Western Isles. Despite besting the king's senior wizard, Columba failed to convert the king to Christianity, but the efforts of later missionaries from Iona and other western monasteries ensured that the Picts were at least officially Christian by the early eighth century. The kingdom of the Picts flourished until about ad 900, when it lost its political identity to Gaelic-speaking overlords from Argyll, and thus Pictland became Alba and eventually Scotland.

Myth thrives on ignorance, and until the 1970s little was known about the Picts other than their history (mostly as written by outsiders) and a phenomenal legacy of sculpture. Distinctively Pictish symbols carved on many stones added to the mystery, because their meaning was, and is still, unknown. Archaeologists had failed to identify any settlements or burials, and although written sources mention several forts none had been properly excavated. Excavations since 1970 have changed this picture entirely, uncovering the remains of settlements, burials and forts. Though most of the evidence comes from the far north and west, there is still a gap in our knowledge of the heartland of Pictland south of the Moray Firth. One reason for this gap is that, in this area, timber rather than stone was the major building material, and traces of wooden buildings are more difficult to locate; another, the lack of funding for research excavations. The Picts had a hierarchical society and this is reflected in what survives of their homes. Warlords entertained their warriors on fortified hilltops and coastal promontories, sustained by an underlay of farms and small villages producing barley, cattle, sheep and pigs. Few Picts were given formal burial and most simply vanished from the archaeological record, presumably because they were cremated and even the ashes were not considered worthy of burial. Although we shall never be certain of what Pictish symbols meant, the rest of Pictish life is becoming clearer by the year.

Considerable wealth was possible for some Picts, and converted into stunning silver brooches, dress pins and tableware, beautifully made and intricately decorated. A number of heavy chains made of pairs of solid silver links are perhaps best seen as regalia for the many regional sub-kings who owed allegiance to the high king. A few of these personal ornaments are decorated by symbols cast into the silver and infilled with red enamel, providing a direct link with the carved stones that are numerically and artistically the Picts' finest gift to posterity.

It is a gift that continues to grow, for new stones or fragments of stones are found every year, turned up by the plough or discovered in garden walls. More rarely but far more usefully, they are found during excavations, such as that at Portmahomack in Ross and Cromarty where the remains of a Pictish monastery are being uncovered, and where they have a secure and datable context. A huge and elaborately carved cross-slab stands in the Museum of Scotland in Edinburgh, and only a couple of years ago its broken base was discovered at the spot where the slab was originally set up in the eighth century at Hilton of Cadboll. The range of carved stones is surprisingly wide, from simple boulders carved with symbols to plain cross-slabs, symbol-bearing cross-slabs, shrines, church furniture and architectural fragments, and they are a wonderful source of information about the Picts. The symbols, which embrace realistic animals and objects, fantasy animals and abstract designs, evolved in a pagan context but continued in use after the conversion of the Picts to Christianity. They were sufficiently acceptable to the Church to appear on cross-slabs, though never on the cross itself.

Until now, there has been no modern overall study of Pictish art, and The Art of the Picts: Sculpture and metalwork in early medieval Scotland by George Henderson and Isabel Henderson will be welcomed and read end to end by everyone interested in the Picts. It is certainly the most important publication on its subject, and is moreover a huge pleasure to read: erudite, engaging, a beautifully written celebration of Pictish art. It is exactly what Pictish studies need as a stimulus to move forward, and just the book to bring the subject to a wider audience. The authors are uniquely suited to the task of exploring Pictish art in an objective yet sympathetic manner. George Henderson is Emeritus Professor of Medieval Art at the University of Cambridge, and Isabel Henderson has led the field in Pictish art-historical studies for almost forty years. This has involved extensive fieldwork and considerable local involvement, particularly in two outstanding Pictish centres in Ross and Cromarty: Groam House Museum in Rosemarkie and the Tarbat Discovery Centre at Portmahomack.

Pictophiles are often guilty of assuming that Pictish art consisted essentially of a unique repertoire of symbols. They will be glad to find a new symbol identified here, the animal-headed axe-wielding man; but their concept of Pictish art will be gently but inexorably redefined on a wider scale. That there is a special Pictishness to Pictish art is acknowledged, but it is only one aspect of an artistic achievement that is part of a common mainstream Insular art in Britain and Ireland. Early medieval Insular art of the seventh to ninth centuries ad was an abstract and highly decorative style, embracing spirals, zigzag patterns and elongated entwined animals. It was used in illustrated gospel-books, fine metalwork and sculpture, and doubtless in woodcarving and textiles as well, though the latter rarely survive. This book defines the character of Pictish participation in Insular art, both in stone-carving and fine metalwork, the latter including some outstanding reliquaries.

George Henderson's earlier book From Durrow to Kells: The Insular gospel-books 650-800 clarified the close relationship between Pictish animal art and that of the illustrated manuscripts of early Northumbria. This new work, with the authority of decades of research by both Hendersons, finally resolves the long-standing controversy over which images came first, those in Pictish stone-carving or those in painted manuscripts. Anatomical reality and artistic skill make the sculptor's work the ultimate model for that of the manuscript illuminator. Stone sculpture is always difficult to date unless it bears an inscription, and the artistic links with illustrated manuscripts are vital to the dating of Pictish stones. The Dupplin Cross, which stood on the hillside overlooking the site of a royal palace at Forteviot in Perthshire, is unique in its inscription of the name of a known Pictish king, Constantin, son of Fergus, who died in 820. This is also the only example of a free-standing cross, for the Picts preferred to carve the cross on a rectangular slab that allowed an inventively decorated background -even if sometimes the cross is in such high relief and its arms protruding from the slab in such a way that it appears almost to be escaping from its frame.

It is clear that sculptors must have played a significant role in Pictish society. Analysis of their styles and carving techniques has not led to the recognition of regional schools, and the authors suggest that local patronage would have led to temporary centres of sculptural exper-tise, whose teams would then have moved on elsewhere to undertake new commissions. The intellectual content of Pictish art is formidable. There are classical motifs, such as centaurs, hippocamps and griffins, and images from the Bible, especially royal images of David that helped to bolster Pictish royal authority. Hunting scenes with horseborne aristocrats, hounds and deer were particularly popular and undoubtedly reflect a favourite occupation of wealthy Pictish patrons. Any notion that the Picts were ignorant barbarians is instantly dispelled by the weight of learning displayed by their cross-slabs and shrine panels, as well as by the superb technical quality of much of their sculpture and metalwork.

An endearing aspect of the book is the wonderfully apposite range of descriptive terms used to evoke the images carved: the "tranquil" beast-head from Stittenham, the "languorous silhouette" of the Pictish beast from Golspie, an "oddly compressed and stodgy" eagle from Tillytarmont; the Mail figure appears "bolstered" like "a stuffed straw man fit for burning". The accompanying illustrations demonstrate just how apt these descriptions are, and their very high quality of reproduction is a great asset. Many of the photographs are the work of T. E. Gray, who has built up an archive of extraordinarily good black-and white photographs of Pictish stones, and Ian G. Scott has contributed a number of his skilful interpretative drawings. It can be hard without such drawings for the untutored eye to follow the entwined limbs of elongated animals, whose tails turn inexplicably into serpents.

George and Isabel Henderson see their art-historical analysis as evidence of political maturity and a secure economic infrastructure in Pictish society, and they challenge historians and archaeologists to account for the creation of these social conditions. The uniformity of the symbols throughout Pictland implies a political unity before the eighth century ad that may seem precocious to historians but nonetheless needs explanation. For archaeologists, a major priority is to find and excavate domestic settlements in mainland Pictland, which will demonstrate the economic basis of Pictish life. The Hendersons also make a plea for appropriate museum display of Pictish sculpture, contrasting the dispersed approach of the Museum of Scotland in Edinburgh with the concentrated impact of Historic Scotland's museum at Meigle in Perthshire, which gives the visitor "a sense of discovery, awe and wonder". Sculptured stones are not easy to display. They need space around them, good lighting to enhance the intricacies of their carving, and sufficient interpretation to allow their images and Christian iconography to be understood. Modern society is generally less conversant with the stories told in the Bible than were the Picts and their contemporaries.

We must bow to George and Isabel Hendersons' judgement of the great cross-slab at Nigg in Ross and Cromarty as "the supreme masterpiece of Pictish art", but anyone familiar with Pictish sculpture will have their own favourite pieces. Mine is the elegantly disdainful bird on a grave-slab at St Vigeans in Angus, but there are many other exquisite images, from striding warriors to enthroned clerics and from angry bulls to sleepy geese. Pictish art has a rich diversity and an often superb quality that come as an exciting surprise to those viewing it for the first time; and The Art of the Picts will ensure for all of us a greater understanding of its place in the art history of early medieval Britain and Ireland.

Anna Ritchie is a freelance archaeologist and author, whose excavations began in Orkney with the first Pictish farmstead to be discovered. She is currently a Trustee of the British Museum.

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