Cleveland Museum of Art

Diptych with Twelve Apostles & St. Paul

Workshop or Circle of Wäldä Maryam

Date

c. 1700

Medium

Tempera, wood, textile

Culture

Africa, East Africa, Ethiopia, presumably Gondär

Department

African Art

Institution

Cleveland Museum of Art

Depicting 13 holy men, this diptych (two-panel painting) is sized for an Ethiopian Orthodox Christian church or elite home. It is painted in the bold, colorful style associated with royal court workshops from the early 1600s to the mid-1700s. Painter Wäldä Maryam (or someone he trained) set this scene of Christ’s apostles in the context of his homeland. Each saint wears fashionable clothing imported from India. While they are posed and dressed similarly to emphasize their group identity, the artist portrayed their faces and hairstyles individually. Captions in Ge’ez––an eastern African language dating to the 400s BCE––identify each by name. Captions written in the language Gəˁəz identify each holy man by name. This African language is nearly 2,500 years old!

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