Anglo-Saxon Art - Metalwork

Metalwork

Pagan Anglo-Saxon metalwork initially uses the Germanic Animal Style I and II decoration that would be expected from recent immigrants, but gradually develops a distinctive Anglo-Saxon character. Round disk brooches were preferred for the grandest pieces, over continental styles of fibulae and Romano-British penannular brooches, a consistent Anglo-Saxon taste throughout the period. Decoration included cloisonné ("cellwork"), in gold and garnet for high-status pieces. Despite a considerable number of other finds, the discovery of the ship-burial at Sutton Hoo, probably interred in the 620s, transformed the history of Anglo-Saxon art, showing a level of sophistication and quality that was wholly unexpected at this date. The most famous finds are the helmet and matching suite of purse lid, belt and other fittings of the king buried there, which made clear the source in Anglo-Saxon art, previously much disputed, of many elements of the style of Insular manuscripts.

By the 10th century Anglo-Saxon metalwork had a famous reputation as far afield as Italy, where English goldsmiths worked on plate for the altar of St Peter's itself, but hardly any pieces have survived the depredations of the Norman Conquest in 1066, and the English Reformation, and none of the large-scale ones, shrines, doors and statues, that we know existed, and of which a few contemporary continental examples have survived. The references to specific works by the 11th century monastic artist Spearhafoc, none of which have identifiably survived, are about works in precious metal, and he is one of a small number of metalwork artists from the period whose name we know and whose work is described in any way. According to several sources, including the Norman chronicler Goscelin, who knew him personally, Spearhafoc "was outstanding in painting, gold-engraving and goldsmithery", the painting very likely mainly in illuminated manuscripts. It was probably his artistic work which brought into contact with the royal family, and launched his rapid promotion in the church. Even the imprecise details given, mostly by Goscelin, are therefore valuable evidence of what Anglo-Saxon metalwork was like. Anglo-Saxon skill in gold-engraving, designs and figures engraved on gold objects, is mentioned by many foreign sources, and the few remaining engraved figures closely parallel the far more numerous pen-drawn figures in manuscripts, also an Anglo-Saxon speciality. Wall-paintings, which seem to have sometimes contained gold, were also apparently often made by manuscript illuminators, and Goscelin's description of his talents therefore suggests an artist skilled in all the main Anglo-Saxon media for figurative art - of which being a goldsmith was then regarded as the most prestigious branch. One 11th century lay goldsmith was even a thegn.

Many monastic artists reached senior positions; Spearhafoc's career in metalwork was paralleled in less sensational fashion by his contemporary Mannig, Abbot of Evesham (Abbot 1044-58, d. 1066), and at the end of the previous century Saint Dunstan had been a very successful Archbishop of Canterbury. Like Spearhafoc, Mannig's biography, with some precise details, is given in the chronicle maintained by his abbey. His work also had a miracle associated with it - the lay goldsmith Godric stabbed his hand with an awl during the work on the large shrine at Evesham, which was miraculously healed overnight. Spearhafoc and Mannig are the "only two goldsmiths of whom we have extended accounts", and the additional information given about Godric, the leader of a team brought in by Mannig for the shrine, is also unique among the surviving evidence. Some twenty years after the miracle, he joined the Abbey of Evesham, presumably in retirement, and his son later became Prior there.

In the final century of the period a number of large figures in precious metal are recorded; presumably these were made of thin sheets over a wooden core like the Golden Madonna of Essen, the largest example of this type of Early Medieval figure to survive from anywhere in Europe. These appear to have been life-size, or nearly so, and were mostly crucifixes, sometimes with figures of Mary and John the Evangelist on either side. Patronage by the great figures of the land, and the largest monasteries, became extravagant in this period, and the greatest late Anglo-Saxon churches must have presented a dazzling spectacle, somewhat in the style of Eastern Orthodox churches. Anglo-Saxon taste revelled in expensive materials and the effects of light on precious metals, which were also embroidered into fabrics and used on wall-paintings. Sections of decorated elements from some large looted works such as reliquaries were sawn up by Viking raiders and taken home to their wives to wear as jewellery, and a number of these survive in Scandinavian museums.

While larger works are all lost, several small objects and fragments have survived, nearly all having been buried; in recent decades professional archaeology as well as metal-detecting and deep ploughing have greatly increased the number of objects known. Among the few unburied exceptions are the secular Fuller Brooch, and two works made in Anglo-Saxon style carried to Austria by the Anglo-Saxon mission, the Tassilo Chalice (late 8th century) and the Rupertus Cross. Especially in the 9th century, Anglo-Saxon styles, sometimes derived from manuscripts rather than metal examples, are found in a great number of smaller pieces of jewellery and other small fittings from across northern Europe. From England itself, the Alfred Jewel, with an enamel face, is the best known of a group of finely worked liturgical jewels, and there are a number of high quality disk brooches. The most ornate of earlier ones are colourful and complicated with inlays and filigrees, but the 9th century Pentney Hoard, discovered in 1978, contained six splendid brooches in flat silver openwork in the "Trewhiddle style". In these small but fully formed animals, of no recognisable species, contort themselves in foliage and tendrils that interlace, but without the emphatic geometry of the earlier "ribbon" style.

In 2009 the Staffordshire hoard, a major hoard of over 1,500 fragments of 7th and ?8th century metalwork pieces, mostly gold and military in nature, many with gold and garnet cloisonné inlays of high quality, was found by a metal-detectorist in Staffordshire, then in Mercia. Jewellery is far more often found from burials of the early pagan period, as Christianity discouraged grave-goods, even including the personal possessions of the deceased. Early Anglo-Saxon jewellery includes various types of fibulae that are close to their Continental Germanic equivalents, but until Sutton Hoo rarely of outstanding quality, which is why that find transformed thinking about early Anglo-Saxon art.

The earliest Anglo-Saxon coin type, the silver sceat, forced craftsmen, no doubt asked to copy Roman and contemporary continental styles, to work outside their traditional forms and conventions in respect of the heads on the obverse, with results that are varied and often compelling. Later silver pennies, with largely linear relief heads of kings in profile on the obverse, are more uniform, as representatives of what was a stable and respected currency by contemporary European standards. A number of complete seax knives have survived with inscriptions and some decoration, and sword fittings and other military pieces are an important form of jewellery. A treatise on social status needed to say that mere ownership of a gilded sword did not make a man a ceorle, the lowest rank of free men.

• Replica helmet from Sutton Hoo

• Bird from the Sutton Hoo shield (part replica)

• The Alfred Jewel, perhaps a pointer for reading, with shaft inserted

• Ring, 775-850, in Trewhiddle style