ABSTRACT
For anyone accustomed to the traditions of Classical and Hellenistic art, the dissolution of natural forms must imply a retreat from reality. The Celtic artist thrived on those very ambiguities evoked by Mark Antony in his final despair. We have only to look at the bird heads incorporated in the fleshy leaf forms derived from Greek acanthus ornament upon the circular shield-boss from Wandsworth, or the reinterpretation of the head of Apollo and the biga respectively on the obverse and the reverse of Gaulish and British copies of the gold staters of Philip II of Macedon to see what was involved.1
