Topic summary
La Tène style
Extracted from the Wikipedia article Celtic art.
La Tène style
About 500 BC the La Tène style, named after a site in Switzerland, appeared rather suddenly, coinciding with some kind of societal upheaval that involved a shift of the major centres in a north-westerly direction. The central area where rich sites are especially found is in northern France and western Germany, but over the next three centuries the style spread very widely, as far as Ireland, Italy and modern Hungary. In some places the Celts were aggressive raiders and invaders, but elsewhere the spread of Celtic material culture may have involved only small movements of people, or none at all. Early La Tène style adapted ornamental motifs from foreign cultures into something distinctly new; the complicated brew of influences including Scythian art and that of the Greeks and Etruscans among others. The occupation by the Persian Achaemenid Empire of Thrace and Macedonia around 500 BC is a factor of uncertain importance. La Tène style is "a highly stylised curvilinear art based mainly on classical vegetable and foliage motifs such as leafy palmette forms, vines, tendrils and lotus flowers together with spirals, S-scrolls, lyre and trumpet shapes".