Gathering Fruit at Ingleby. An Early Medieval Sculptural Fragment from Ingleby, Derbyshire

Abstract

The carved stone fragment from Ingleby in Derbyshire has attracted little attention in the scholarly literature on medieval sculpture, largely because the question of its date has been considered particularly unclear. It thus raises interesting questions about dating, about the nature of the models lying behind the carving, and about its iconographic significances, the relevance of which extend far beyond Derbyshire. Here the piece is examined in the light of Anglo-Saxon art, and situated within the context of the later 9th and 10th century, but produced under the influence of artistic conventions dating back to the preceding century in the Insular world and Carolingian Gaul, which in turn look back to the art of late antiquity. The article argues for the influence of visual traditions in its illustration of agricultural tools rather than that of objects perhaps familiar in Anglo-Saxon England, and suggests that the unusual depiction of harvesting, which is perhaps only paralleled elsewhere in art from the South-West, is best considered in the light of the trees set in a rocky and watered landscape, also featured on the stone, and overall presents a set of eschatological iconographic references.