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November 14, 2018

The Book of Kells: Humans, Gods at Serious Play.

The Book of Kells: Is there anything more beautiful? Below is Folio 292r (circa 800) of The Book of Kells, an illuminated manuscript of the four Gospels of the New Testament. It's housed at Trinity College Library, in Dublin, Ireland. This page opens the Gospel of John. Illustrations in the Book of Kells are bursting with pre-Christian, pagan and Celtic symbols and motifs that had evolving, mixing and merging in Ireland for nearly 8000 years before Christianity. The result is a religious document and montage of mixed media that is at once playful, quirky, sexual, mystical and a deeply devout mainstream Christian tract. 680 pages of the work survives.

KellsFol292rIncipJohn (1).jpg

Posted by JD Hull at 11:59 PM | Comments (0)