art: Europe sides remains The horse is recognizable as a horse, but it is a flow of curves not found in real horses Its surface was carved with lines representing a mane and harness The sculpture was broken, probably deliberately, before it was buried; it was customary at the time to break objects before offering them as sacrifices An even more spectacular model wagon comes from southern Austria from 650 b.c.e It may be the pinnacle of European art of the era On the cart stands a tall, slim woman holding on her head a shallow bowl, perhaps where incense was burned Less than half her size are men standing and on horseback, and among them are deer with large, tall antlers All are depicted in a fluid style that seems to be the logical descendant of the earlier carts The depiction of carts by European sculptors would continue into the era of the Roman conquest, with the images becoming more realistic IRON AGE: 500–50 B.C.E THE R OMAN C ONQUEST AND Historians often record 500 b.c.e as the peak of Celtic European culture The Celts dominated almost all of Europe Their society was dominated by warriors, who believed that killing, looting, and enslaving others were honorable pursuits They were constantly at war either against non-Celts, such as the Slavs or the Etruscans, or among themselves Their art from this era is often bloody, reflecting a warrior’s code of kill or die The Celts loved art and were ostentatious in their displays of jewelry The number was a magical number to them, and their jewelry often features three-pointed swirls, as well as very intricate interlaced patterns of lines It would be a mistake to say they were not influenced by art from other cultures, but their artists absorbed the techniques of others and then worked them into their own Celtic traditions Thus, even when their sculptures began to shift from the abstract forms found in their model carts to the realism of classical art, they continued to incorporate their own ideas of what made for natural forms To the Celts almost everything they saw had a living vitality, and this vitality was seen in the graceful curves of plants and animals The apparent geometric designs on pottery, full of sweeping curves and sharp angles with nothing in particular represented, were to the Celtic artist a depiction of the complexity and vitality of the natural world What may look like three-pronged swirls to an outsider looked like the sun coursing across the sky to the Celt Their twining together of lines that never seem to end was an expression of the eternal movement of life The Celts of central Europe also made representational art, either carving in the realistic manner of the Greeks and Romans or making ceramic images for use in temples and public buildings It was customary for Celtic warriors in central Europe to cut off the heads of their enemies and display them In Roquepertuse in southern France one such display still exists, now decayed It is a sanctuary with tall stone pillars which have skull-shaped niches in them, in which were placed skulls, a few of which remain In about 200 b.c.e real heads began to be replaced by sculptures of heads These stone 109 and ceramic pieces were not portraits in the sense of detailed accuracy The sculptors emphasized the outstanding features of their subjects such as thick lips, a bushy moustache, curly hair, or a long nose When the Romans invaded Gaul in 58 b.c.e., under the leadership of Julius Caesar, they would see these sculptures side-by-side with real severed heads in monuments built to celebrate warriors and warfare IRON AGE TO THE END 50 B.C.E.–476 C.E OF THE ROMAN EMPIRE: Although Celtic and Germanic artists learned to create works in the classical manner of the Greeks and Romans, they never lost their love of ornamentation and of the intricate, flowing lines of Celtic art Long after they had absorbed the Roman way of life—speaking Latin and thinking of themselves as Roman people—traits of their ancestral culture lingered For instance, they continued to wear thickbarred armlets These became the rings that early medieval German poets described—the rings of power that would inspire the idea of magical rings in J R R Tolkien’s classics The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings in the 20th century To the Celts and Germans the giving and receiving of armlets symbolized the bond between lord and follower In Scandinavia the elaborate swirls and intertwining of lines endured into the era of the Vikings In 312 c.e Rome’s Emperor Constantine I (r 306–337 c.e.) converted to Christianity, ending centuries of persecution of Christians In much of Europe, Christianity already had been taking hold, but Christianity did not sweep through Europe when it became the official religion of the Roman Empire Yet it became a profound influence on European art One form in which Christian art excelled was the illustrated manuscript Copies dating from the Roman era are very rare, but others from the 500s and 600s c.e survive and have been widely reprinted in the 20th and 21st centuries They look like ancient Celtic art The three-pointed swirls, intricate interlacing of lines, and interweaving of vines are notable in European Christian manuscripts, whether they are copies of the Bible or biographies of saints The Celtic cross remains a popular image It typically consists of a Christian-style cross with a circle around the spot where the vertical and horizontal bars meet The circle is the ancient Celtic symbol of the sun, adapted to decorate sculpture for the new religion and perhaps adding a touch of the traditionally supernatural, which would be recognized by Celtic viewers Sculpted stone versions survive in much of Europe On these would be carved traditional Celtic designs or figures representing a biblical passage or Christian story The images and subjects found in ancient European art continued to be explored by artists in later eras From the graceful bison of cave art to abstractions of human and animal shapes, to the stylish and dynamic geometrical designs of the Celts and Germans, artists have continually reused, reinterpreted, and further developed the art forms and styles begun by ancient artists