The International Conference on Insular Art (IIAC) is the leading forum for scholars of the visual and material culture of early medieval Ireland and Britain, including manuscript illumination, sculpture, metalwork, and textiles, and encompassing the work of Anglo-Saxon-, Celtic- and Norse-speaking artists. The present volume contains a selection of papers presented at the eighth IIAC, which took place in Glasgow 11-14 July 2017. The theme of IIAC8 - Peopling Insular Art: Practice, Performance, Perception - was intended to focus attention on those who commissioned, created, and engaged with Insular art objects, and how they conceptualised, fashioned, and experienced them (with ‘engagement’ covering not only contemporary audiences, but later medieval and modern ones too). The twenty-one articles gathered here reflect the diverse ways in which this theme has been interpreted. They demonstrate the intellectual vibrancy of Insular art studies, its international outlook, its interdiscplinarity, and its openness to innovative technologies and approaches, while at the same time demonstrating the strength and enduring value of established methodologies and research practices. The studies collected here focus not only on made objects, but on the creative processes and intellectual decisions which informed their making. This volume brings Insular makers – the illuminators, pattern-makers, rubricators, carvers, and casters – to the fore.

This volume offers unparalleled coverage of all aspects of art and architecture from medieval Western Europe, from the 6th century to the early 16th century. Drawing upon the expansive scholarship in the celebrated 'Grove Dictionary of Art' and adding hundreds of new entries, it offers students, researchers and the general public a reliable, up-to-date, and convenient resource covering this field of major importance in the development of Western history and international art and architecture.

Lying at Europe's remote western edge, Ireland long has been seen as having an artistic heritage that owes little to influences beyond its borders. This publication, the first to focus on Irish art from the eighth century AD to the end of the sixteenth century, challenges the idea that the best-known Irish monuments of that period-the high crosses, the Book of Kells, the Tara Brooch, the round towers-reflect isolated, insular traditions. Seventeen essays examine the iconography, history, and structure of these familiar works, as well as a number of previously unpublished pieces, and demonstrate that they do have a place in the main currents of European art. While this book reveals unexpected links between Ireland, Late-Antique Italy, the Byzantine Empire, and the Anglo-Saxons, its center is always the artistic culture of Ireland itself. It includes new research on the Sheela-na-gigs, often thought to be merely erotic sculptures; on the larger cultural meanings of the Tuam Market Cross and its nineteenth-century re-erection; and on late-medieval Irish stone crosses and metalwork. The emphasis on later monuments makes this one of the first volumes to deal with Irish art after the Norman invasion. The contributors are Cormac Bourke, Mildred Budny, Tessa Garton, Peter Harbison, Jane Hawkes, Colum Hourihane, Catherine E. Karkov, Heather King, Susanne McNab, Raghnall Floinn, Emmanuelle Pirotte, Roger Stalley, Kees Veelenturf, Dorothy Hoogland Verkerk, Niamh Whitfield, Maggie McEnchroe Williams, and Susan Youngs.

Engagingly written and packed with illustrations, Early Ireland offers an authoritative introduction to the riches of Irish prehistory.