Lightened tints are preferred to full colours, as pale
yellow, pink, lavender, and light green. A very ludicrous device is made
use of to denote the folds of the drapery; they are not darkened, there
is no light and shade in Celtic work, but are simply lines of a strongly
contrasting colour. The blue and red appear to be opaque, and therefore
mineral colours; the rest are thin and transparent. Nothing can be more
wayward than the colouring of the symbolic beasts of the Gospels. In the
Evangeliary of St. Columbanus (not Columba, but the founder of Luxeuil
and Bobbio, who died in 614) the Lion of St. Mark is an admirable beast
in a suit of green-and-red chain armour in the form of mascles or
lozenges. (See the illustration in Westwood's _Pal?ographia Sacra
Pictoria_ of a figure page from the Gospels of Mael Brith Mac Durnan for
a typical example.)[12]
[12] See also an article by Westwood in _Journal Arch?ol. Inst._, vii.
17, on "Irish Miniatures."
The only point that might argue the freedom in Celtic work from
Byzantine influence is the absence of gold, but perhaps this was only
because the earlier Irish illuminators could not obtain it; we find it
later on. In the Book of Kells and the Lambeth Gospels there is no gold.
The former dates somewhere in the seventh century, not the sixth, as
sometimes stated; the latter, shortly before 927.
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