Cleveland Museum of Art

Single Leaf from a Gospel Book with a Portrait of Saint Luke

Date: c. 1440–80
Medium: ink and tempera on vellum
Culture: Empire of Ethiopia, Tigray region (Ethiopia)
Department: Medieval Art
Institution: Cleveland Museum of Art
Object ID: 160940

From the Cleveland Museum of Art record

Christianity arrived in Ethiopia during the 300s CE, well before reaching northern Europe. Typical of panel and manuscript painting in Ethiopia, this leaf is decorated with bright colors and a joyous interplay of geometric pattern. The full-page miniature depicts the evangelist Luke, with his symbol, the ox, within the arch above. The short text is in the Ge‘ez (the centuries-old church language of Ethiopian Orthodoxy) and consists of the opening lines of the gospel of Luke: “Make this image of St. Luke with this bull––his prayer (offering)––and with his blessings, they were with us. Amen.” The majority of Ethiopian manuscripts are written in Ge’ez, the ancient liturgical language of Ethiopia.

View at Cleveland Museum of Art ↗

The authoritative record is held by Cleveland Museum of Art. LinkedCulture surfaces this object and its connections; it does not alter institutional metadata.

Get printable QR codes

Open QR codes for this object page and the museum record. They stay collapsed until needed.

Open this page

See at Cleveland Museum of Art

Provenance & credit

As published by the source institution. Coverage varies — not every institution's open-data feed includes ownership history.

Credit line: Purchase from the J. H. Wade Fund
Provenance: -1999: (Bruce Ferrini Rare Books, Akron, Oh), sold to the Cleveland Museum of Art | 1999-: The Cleveland Museum of Art, Cleveland, Oh