Some Famous Illuminated Manuscripts

It is usual to regard English painting as beginning with the Tudor period and for this are several reasons. Yet the fact remains that painting was practised in England for many hundred years before the first Tudors came to the throne.
The development of the linear design in which English artists have always excelled can be traced back to the earliest illuminations brilliantly evolved in irish monastic centres and brought to Northumbria in the seventh century. Its principal feature is that wonderful elaboration of interlaced ornament derived from the patterns of metal-work in the Celtic Iron Age, which is to be found in the Book of Kells and Lindesfarne Gospel, its Northumbrian equivalent.