February Art: Serpent
Names stick, when it comes to art – even if they are meant as rude, from the Impressionists to El Greco. Still-mysterious and possibly quite heterogenous groups of people in ancient Scotland, the Picts we know were artists: the name is Roman abuse for their propensity to paint, allegedly on their own bodies, just as the Greeks derided those whose language sounded to them like babble (Barbarians).
Consummate tattooists maybe, they were certainly technically-skilled stonemasons whose powerful carvings of boars and battles survive alongside strange symbolic and geometric designs. This stone, like others at Aberlemno, Angus (near Dundee), spends the winter in a wooden box to protect it from frost. Its name, Serpent Stone, is a good one, though much too recent to explain the enigma. The stone comes from 1500 years ago; the name comes from a self-reinforcing Wikipedia entry, in an example of internet-age citogenesis.
thebicyclops 