Rachel Moss is an Irish art historian and professor specialising in medieval art, with a particular interest in Insular art, medieval Irish Gospel books and monastic history.[1][2] She is the current head of the Department of the History of Art at Trinity College Dublin, where she became a fellow in 2022.[3]
Moss has written extensively on the sources and iconography of medieval Irish art, its materials, methods and political and cultural settings. Her work includes detailed examinations of Irish round towers, high crosses, psalters, Celtic broochs, chalicees and house-shaped and other reliquary shrines, with a close focus on illuminated manuscripts such as the Stowe Missal, Book of Durrow and Book of Mulling.
Moss has said that her interest in the medieval came from her grandfather, an archaeologist living in County Sligo, who took her on digs when she was a child. She remembered "vividly when I was six and he took me to see a dig. One of the archaeologists put a human jawbone in my hand and told me about how you could tell she was a young woman.[1] As a post-graduate, she worked on literacy projects in the then deprived Fatima Mansions area of Dublin.[1]
She became a fellow of the Society of Antiquaries of London in 2011, and was elected president of the Royal Society of Antiquaries of Ireland in 2013.[4] She is the current Head of the Department of the History of Art at Trinity College Dublin.[4][5]
Her 2014 survey "Medieval c. 400—c. 1600" was published by Yale University Press as part of their five-volume Art and architecture of Ireland series.[6] Her book was described by the Royal Irish Academy as "an unrivalled account of all aspects of the rich and varied visual culture of Ireland in the Middle Ages. Based on decades of original research, the book contains over three hundred lively and informative essays."[7] Writing for History Ireland, Peter Harbison said that Moss' book "covers a much greater span of time than all the others, and also deals with a much wider range of material. The major attractions are the famous manuscripts and metalwork from the earlier period, but there is a lot more besides—including the recently discovered Faddan More Psalter of c. 800. Stonework is covered extensively from the earlier medieval period: high crosses, round towers and all the church buildings from [the] Gallarus Oratory to Cormac's Chapel."[6]
Moss lives in Dublin and Sligo with her husband Jason Ellis, a sculptor.[1][8]