Celtic Head (100–300 CE): Art, History and Details

Celtic Head (100–300 CE) is in the Cleveland Museum of Art collection.

The work and its context

The museum's open-access catalogue describes the work:

This stone head has never been attached to a torso. It is known from ancient literary sources that the Celts, who originally occupied most of northern Europe from Hungary to the British Isles, practiced ritualistic veneration of the human head. For the Celts, the human head represented the seat of mankind’s magical energy. Stone heads similar to this one have survived in large numbers, especially in the upland regions of northern England (the Pennines, the Peak District, and Cumbria) where this one was undoubtedly made by British Celts during the Roman occupation. Such stone heads were probably placed in religious shrines or grottos generally associated with springs, well heads, or natural landmarks for ritual veneration.

Object facts

• Title: Celtic Head
• Date: 100–300 CE
• Culture: Northern England (Romano-British), Migration period, 2nd-3rd centuries
• Type: Sculpture
• Technique: sandstone with traces of original red paint
• Dimensions: Overall: 30 x 31 x 24 cm (11 13/16 x 12 3/16 x 9 7/16 in.)
• Collection: MED - Migration Period
• Department: Medieval Art
• Accession number: 1955.555

Collection credit

Gift of Dr. and Mrs. Jacob Hirsch

Further reading listed by the museum

• The Cleveland Museum of Art. The Cleveland Museum of Art Handbook. Cleveland, OH: The Cleveland Museum of Art, 1958.
• Cleveland Museum of Art, Edward B. Henning. Paths of Abstract Art. Cleveland, OH: H.N. Abrams, 1960.
• Fliegel, Stephen. "A Little-Known Celtic Stone Head." The Bulletin of the Cleveland Museum of Art 77, no. 3 (1990): 82-103.

View the collection record

See the museum's photographs and full catalogue entry. Catalogue text is reproduced from the Cleveland Museum of Art's open-access data, with HTML formatting removed. This object and its supplied image are designated CC0.