Stockholm Codex Aureus

• Illustration — Evangelist portrait of Saint John • Illustration — First page The manuscript has 193 surviving folios which measure 395 by. It contains the text of the four Gospels in Latin written in an uncial script on vellum leaves that alternately are dyed purple and undyed. The purple-dyed leaves are written with gold, silver, and white pigment, the undyed ones with black ink and red pigment. On some folios, the differing colours of ink are arranged to form geometric patterns. Purple parchment was, in the Roman and Byzantine Empires, reserved for Imperial manuscripts, and in the West reserved for the grandest commissions, and often only seen on a few pages. The illustration programme includes two surviving evangelist portraits, six canon tables and seven large decorated initials. The manuscript is the oldest surviving example of initials decorated with gold leaf. The style is a blend of Insular art, as in the Chi-Rho initial shown, and Mediterranean traditions, possibly including some from early Carolingian art. In the opening shown at the start of Matthew the evangelist portrait to the left is in a consistent adaptation of Italian style, probably closely following some lost model, though adding interlace to the chair frame, while the text page to the right is mainly in Insular style, especially in the first line, with its vigorous Celtic spirals and interlace. The following lines revert to a quieter style more typical of Frankish manuscripts of the period. Yet the same artist almost certainly produced both pages, and is very confident in both styles. The other surviving evangelist portrait of John includes roundels with Celtic spiral decoration probably drawn from the enamelled escutcheons of hanging bowls. This is one of the so-called "Tiberius group" of manuscripts, which leant towards the Italian style, and appear to be associated with Kent, or perhaps the kingdom of Mercia in the heyday of the Mercian Supremacy. It is, in the usual chronology, the last English manuscript in which "developed trumpet spiral patterns" are found.