Lindisfarne Gospels

Lindisfarne Gospels, around 700, British Library, London. Written and decorated at the monastery of Lindisfarne, on Holy Island off the Northumbrian coast, by Eadfrith, the first artist in British history known by name. Each Gospel opens with three fully decorated pages: an author portrait, a carpet page like this one, and a great initial. Here a stepped cross stands on a field of red and gold checkerboard, and every square, if you lean in, is packed with interlace. Around 970 a scribe named Aldred squeezed a word-for-word Old English translation between the Latin lines.