High cross

Common card · No. 483397

A high cross, or standing cross (Irish: cros ard / ardchros, Scottish Gaelic: crois àrd / àrd-chrois, Welsh: croes uchel / croes eglwysig), is a free-standing Christian cross made of stone, often richly decorated. There was a unique early medieval tradition in Ireland and Great Britain of raising large sculpted stone crosses, usually outdoors. These probably developed from earlier traditions using wood, perhaps with metalwork attachments, and earlier pagan Celtic memorial stones; the Pictish stones of Scotland may also have influenced the form. The earliest surviving examples seem to come from the territory of the Anglo-Saxon kingdom of Northumbria, which had been converted to Christianity by Irish missionaries; it remains unclear whether the form first developed in Ireland or Britain. Their relief decoration is a mixture of religious figures and sections of decoration, such as knotwork, interlace and, in Britain, vine-scrolls, all in the styles also found in insular art in other media...

Read on Wikipedia · Image Matteo Corti, CC BY-SA 3.0