Celtic Art and the World of Religious Performances

The geometrical style of the early Iron Age was replaced on the slope of the Hallstatt time by a more lively animal and plant ornamentation, which was enriched and the motives of the human head, which is particularly loved in the aristocratic environment. From the south and south-east, expensive imported goods, new samples and new fashion arrived at the Celtic manors. However, soon, at the latest from the second half of the 5th century, local art workshops started to appear in the Celtic manors. The craftsmen-artists who worked in them combined their own creativity and skills with knowledge of other people’s samples and motifs; processing them in their own way, they created those original ornaments in which elements of the nascent Latvian style were increasingly seen. The Early Latenian style was born at the estates, mainly between Moselle, Sarah and the Rhine. This oldest purely Celtic art had several roots and a number of basic elements. The southern and south-eastern elements were of Italian and Greek origin, and it is possible that over time craftsmen artists come directly from there to offer their services to the Celtic nobility. Early Celtic jewellery workshops often worked with almost pure gold, up to 99% pure. Archaeology has provided evidence of the existence of such workshops. In Langenheim (Taunus) and Sefferväich (Eifel) we find raw material and workpieces; in the Neuwied Basin near Koblenz (Koblenz) we find almost similar pieces in different places, probably from the same workshop; these are not only jewellery, but also wagon shackles (Waldhallscheid, Besserinogen, Kerlich). It was not monumental sculpture and architecture, but an artistic craft that became the main branch of Celtic art, which made a major contribution to Central and Northern Europe. From the very beginning, the virtuoso technique of processing was combined with a special gravitation towards ornamentation and created products of timeless value. The Early Latenian style, which has been developing for almost one hundred years, since about the middle of the 5th century, bears numerous features of primitive art, in which only gradually all the characteristic elements and motifs find their place.

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