The Four Evangelist Symbols

Folio 27v — man, lion, calf, and eagle, prefacing Matthew.

Work: Gospel book
Artist / creator: Unknown Insular scribe-artists (traditionally associated with the community of Columba, Iona and Kells)
Origin & date: Iona/Kells, Ireland, c. 800 AD
Held by: Trinity College Dublin

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The full-resolution color-managed file — yours to print, study, and keep.

Sized to protect print quality — this scan's resolution supports sizes up to 8x10 cleanly.

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$24.00

The story

A single folio divided into quarters, each holding one of the four winged symbols the Church assigned to the Evangelists: the man of Matthew, the lion of Mark, the calf of Luke, the eagle of John. Pope Gregory the Great had linked the set to the life of Christ himself — man at his birth, calf in his sacrificial death, lion in his resurrection, eagle in his ascension — so that this single page, before a word of Gospel text has been read, already narrates the whole of the Christian story in symbol. The Book of Kells contains four such symbol pages, no two alike; this one, prefacing Matthew, is the most tightly organized of them, each beast held in its own carpet-like frame of interlace. It is a table of contents rendered as icon.

About this reproduction

Faithful reproduction of a public-domain work, sourced from Trinity College Dublin’s open-access release.
Printed to order on archival cotton-rag stock, pigment inks rated 100+ years.
Color-managed to the source scan.
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From Insular & Celtic

The Chi Rho Monogram
Folio 34r — the most celebrated page in Western calligraphy.

The Virgin and Child
Folio 7v — the earliest surviving Madonna in a Western manuscript.

The Eight-Circle Cross
Folio 33r — the only carpet page of its kind in the manuscript.

The Temptation of Christ
Folio 202v — Satan, the Temple, and a crowd of witnesses.