The Lindisfarne Gospels review – was Eadfrith the monk Britain’s first great artist?

Laing Gallery, Newcastle
This mind-bending illuminated manuscript was created in AD700 by Eadfrith, a monk who was as entranced by pattern and abstraction as Jackson Pollock

Eadfrith, according to a 10th-century inscription, was a monk and Bishop of Lindisfarne on Northumbria’s Holy Island, who wrote out and illuminated the entire gospels singlehandedly, to create the exquisite book at the heart of this exhibition. He worked for 10 years around AD700, “for God and St Cuthbert [Lindisfarne’s founder] and generally for all the holy folk who are on the island.”

What an artist Eadfrith was. Being a book, its vellum pages still bound together after 1,300 years, the Lindisfarne Gospels can only be displayed a double-page spread at a time. They’ve selected a banger. To the left is a “carpet” page, so named because it resembles an eastern rug – but you could equally well call it a Jackson Pollock page, with its abstract coils and knots; a many-layered pattern in delicate yet acid-sharp green, pink and gold.

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