The curvilinear, plant-inspired character of La Tène ornament distinctive features of the Hallstatt and La Tène art styles, and one of the things that most clearly distinguishes them from the older Hallstatt tradition and from most of the contemporary Mediterranean ornamental idioms. La Tène designers showed a marked preference for sweeping curves, scrolling tendrils, and curling palmettes over the straight lines, regular geometries, and right-angled fret patterns that dominated earlier European and contemporary Mediterranean design. The question of why the Celtic designers of the early Iron Age developed this strikingly curvilinear vocabulary is a complex one, and it has been studied as a long debate among Celtic scholars. The answer involves the older European late Bronze Age tradition, the influence of Mediterranean plant ornament, the technical properties of the materials on which the designs were worked, and the distinctive aesthetic sensibility of the Celtic elite who commissioned the objects. The resulting tradition of Celtic metalwork and jewelry, Celtic stone carving and high crosses, and Celtic knotwork and symbolism is part of the broader Celtic art and craftsmanship tradition.
The Older European Background
The curvilinear character of La Tène ornament is not without precedent in the older European tradition. The late Bronze Age of central and western Europe, including the Urnfield culture and the succeeding Atlantic Bronze Age, had developed a range of curvilinear motifs, including running spirals, looping curves, and S-shapes, that were used in metalwork, in ceramic decoration, and in stone carving. The late Bronze Age metalwork of the Atlantic coast, in particular, includes a number of objects with strikingly curvilinear ornament that anticipates the La Tène vocabulary.
The older European curvilinear tradition was, however, much more limited in scope than the La Tène tradition that succeeded it. The late Bronze Age curvilinear motifs were typically used as fillers or as accent elements within a primarily geometric design, and the fully developed plant-scroll of the La Tène tradition is not found in the older European repertoire. The development of the La Tène curvilinear vocabulary was thus a genuine innovation, even if it built on older elements.
The Mediterranean Influence
The most important single source of the La Tène curvilinear vocabulary was the Mediterranean plant ornament of the Greek, Etruscan, and Italian worlds. The palmette, the lotus, the acanthus, and the running vine scroll were all developed in the Mediterranean tradition, and they were transmitted to the Celtic world through trade, through the movement of craftsmen, and through the importation of Mediterranean objects into the Celtic elite.
The Celtic craftsmen of the early La Tène period did not, however, simply copy the Mediterranean prototypes. The palmette of the La Tène tradition is a thoroughly Celtic transformation of the Greek and Etruscan original, with the symmetrical petals of the Mediterranean palmette replaced by asymmetrical, curling, and tendril-like forms. The vine scroll of the La Tène tradition is similarly transformed, with the regular, repeating Mediterranean vine replaced by a more fluid, more dynamic, and more organic plant form.
The transformation of the Mediterranean prototypes into the La Tène vocabulary striking examples of cultural assimilation in the ancient world, and it shows the degree to which the Celtic craftsmen were capable of taking foreign motifs and turning them into something genuinely new. The result was a visual language that was both indebted to the Mediterranean and unmistakably Celtic, a hybrid idiom that has been one of the most studied in the history of European art.
The Technical Dimension
The technical properties of the materials on which the Celtic craftsmen worked also favoured the development of a curvilinear vocabulary. The Celtic smith working in sheet metal could produce curves more easily than straight lines, since a thin sheet of bronze or gold can be shaped into a curve by hammering, while a straight line requires the careful use of a straight edge and a more controlled technique. The use of the compass and dividers, which were common tools in the Celtic workshop, also favoured the production of regular curves over the production of straight lines.
The Celtic stone carver faced similar technical considerations. The carving of a straight line in stone requires the use of a chisel and a straight edge, while the carving of a curve can be done freehand with a point or a chisel held at an angle. The use of a compass to mark out the curves was a common technique in Celtic stone carving, and the resulting curves are typically free, fluid, and somewhat irregular, in contrast to the strictly regular curves of the Mediterranean tradition.
The technique of engraving, which was the principal method of decorating Celtic metalwork, also favoured curves. A graver can be drawn along a curved line with relative ease, while a straight line requires careful support and a steady hand. The Celtic engraver developed great skill in the production of curves, and the long, sweeping, often looping curves of the mature La Tène vocabulary are the result of years of practice with the graver.
The Aesthetic Sensibility
Beyond the technical and the historical, the development of the curvilinear La Tène vocabulary also reflects a distinctive aesthetic sensibility on the part of the Celtic designers. The Celtic elite of the early Iron Age clearly preferred organic, dynamic, and asymmetrically balanced designs to the strictly geometric, symmetrical, and statically balanced designs of the older Hallstatt tradition and of much of the contemporary Mediterranean world.
The German art historian Reinhard Förtsch captured this sensibility in his description of La Tène as the Schwung style, after the German word for swing or curving sweep, a quality that animates even the most abstract of La Tène designs. The Schwung quality of La Tène ornament is the visual expression of a particular Celtic taste, a taste for movement, for growth, for the organic, and for the dynamic that distinctive features of the Celtic visual tradition.
The aesthetic sensibility that produced the curvilinear La Tène vocabulary is closely related to the broader Celtic interest in the natural world, in growth and renewal, in the cycle of the seasons, and in the relationship between the human and the divine. The plant-scroll of the La Tène tradition is not merely an abstract ornament but a representation, however stylised, of the organic world, and the use of plant forms in metalwork, in stone carving, and in manuscript illumination distinctive features of the Celtic artistic tradition.
The Survival of the Curvilinear Tradition
The curvilinear vocabulary developed by the La Tène craftsmen of the fourth and third centuries BCE did not die out with the Roman conquest of Gaul but survived, in modified form, in the Roman provincial art of the western Empire, in the late Celtic art of the British Isles, and in the great insular art of the early medieval period. The plant-scroll of the La Tène tradition became the vine scroll of the Christian insular tradition, the inhabited vine scroll of the high crosses, and the elaborate interlace of the Book of Kells and the Lindisfarne Gospels.
The survival of the curvilinear tradition striking continuities in the history of European art, and the sweeping curves of the La Tène metalwork, the curling interlace of the insular manuscripts, and the modern Celtic revival designs of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries all belong to a single continuous tradition. The curvilinear vocabulary that the Celtic craftsmen of the early Iron Age developed more than two thousand years ago remains one of the most distinctive and most recognisable in the world, and it continues to inspire artists and designers in the present day.
Related Topics
- The Hallstatt and La Tène art styles of which the curvilinear vocabulary is the most distinctive feature.
- The Celtic metalwork and jewelry on which the curvilinear vocabulary was first developed.
- The Celtic knotwork and symbolism of the later period, which inherits the curvilinear tradition.
- The Celtic stone carving and high crosses of the early medieval period, in which the curvilinear tradition is adapted to Christian subjects.
- The broader Celtic art and craftsmanship tradition of which the curvilinear La Tène vocabulary is a major foundation.