The 4 X 3 Crosses in the Lindisfarne and Lichfield Gospels.

Three fine pages of pure ornament depicting single-arm crosses proportioned as 4 x 3 form a set of greatest value to our efforts to understand concepts of form in early Insular (Hiberno-Saxon) art. Two are by the same artist, Eadfrith: the initial carpet page, folio 2v, and the page preceding St. Matthew's Gospel, folio 26v, in the Lindisfarne Gospels. The third is the page closely resembling the other two and probably influenced by them: the only surviving cross page of the Lichfield Gospels (or St. Chad Gospels), p. 220. Together they afford us an opportunity to see how one artist - who happened to be one of the best as well--solved the same kind of aesthetic problem in two different ways while using the same techniques and employing the same style. And then we can see how another artist, attempting to follow that same style, tried to solve the same problem in quite another way. In all three the problem is one of form--how to create a harmonious relationship between the cross and the frame. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]