290 General Discussion of the Crosses 



is clear that the carving belongs to a period which, if not that of 

 Wilfrid, is not far removed from it ; and it is equally clear that it 

 comes from a French hand. ^ I say this because the carvers of Rome 

 and Ravenna, at that date the best in Italy, did not produce such 

 complicated interlacings ; and those of Lombardy, though very 

 fond of employing them, were unable to treat them with the grace 

 shown by the cross from Hexham.' ^ 



^ Elsewhere Rivoira is undecided between ' some artist of the school of 

 Ravenna' and a 'French sculptor' {Burl. Mag., April 15, 1912, p. 25). 



2 Cf. Lomb. Arch. 2. 143. Neither Greenwell nor Rivoira will allow any 

 connection between the Acca cross and those at Bewcastle and Ruthwell. 

 On this point Canon Greenwell remarks (pp. 45-6) : ' Though they [the 

 Bewcastle and Ruthwell crosses] possess some features in common with the 

 vine pattern on the cross of Acca and on others apparently developed from 

 it, there is distinctly another motive introduced, and another school than 

 that of Hexham appears to have produced the artists who conceived and 

 executed them. They belong to a school of the highest excellence, the 

 centre of which it is not at present possible to locahze, and are, both in design 

 and workmanship, far in advance of those of ordinary Anglian manufacture. 

 It is true that great skill has been exercised and refined taste is manifested 

 on the cross of Acca, yet the relief on these two crosses is higher and bolder, 

 and they exhibit a greater and more inventive power in the representation 

 of natural objects, translated into stone, than is shown in that beautiful 

 work. The way in which tree forms and foliage have been made to adapt 

 themselves to the requirements of the general scheme and to the material 

 used in its production, as well as the artistic sculpturing of branches and 

 leaves and fruits, quite apart from a slavish copy, gives evidence of an edu- 

 cated and well-practised craftsman. The manner also in which the human 

 figure is treated, and the knowledge displayed in the modelUng of Umbs and 

 drapery, is so different and so superior to the other work of the same time, 

 that it seems to point to an origin beyond the limits of England, and which 

 came from a country where art had for long flourished, and where it had 

 not altogether died away.' He adds (p. 47) with respect to Acca's cross 

 that it is ' a monument which, having regard to its greater simpUcity of 

 design and the absence of any interlacing ornament upon it, such as occurs 

 on the Bewcastle cross, might be thought to belong to an earlier time than 

 that of these two memorials.' On the supposition, however, that the Bew- 

 castle Cross is to be assigned to the 7th century, Canon Greenwell is fain 

 to assume that two artists, or two companies of artists, worked contempo- 

 raneously at Hexham and at Bewcastle and Ruthwell. Rivoira asserts 

 (2. 143): 'AH this carving in relief [of Acca's cross, etc.] is quite different, 

 both in composition, design, and technique, from that of the well-known 

 tall cross at Ruthwell, Dumfriesshire, . . . which cannot be dated earUer 

 than the first half of the Xllth century.' Raine (2. xxviii-xxxi) had been 



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