The Iconography of the oculi mentis on the Fuller Brooch as a Visual Kenning

Abstract

Recent scholarship has argued that the Fuller Brooch should be considered as one of the objects stemming directly from King Alfred’s cultural milieu, showing tight connections with King Charles the Bald’s court and cultural circle, and with the iconography of the inluminatio. The essay demonstrates how this inluminatio iconography, of ultimately continental origin, was used, on the brooch, to create a visual kenning, that is a material counterpart, on an art object, of the poetic compounds so typical of Germanic verse.