(Ethiopian saints and scenes from the Hebrew scriptures and the Christian Bible)

Ethiopia

late 17th century

Pigments on vellum, disbound album

Minneapolis Institute of Art

Christian art has a long history in Ethiopia, where it developed its own characteristics after the new faith became the state religion in the 350s. These two seventeenth-century paintings on parchment are part of a larger ensemble of forty-four lavishly illuminated leaves featuring Ethiopian saints and scenes from the Hebrew scriptures and the Christian Bible. The illustrations are painted in the style known as the First Gondarene style, after the city of Gondar that served for several centuries as the country’s capital. The style places the figures, finely drawn and brightly colored (predominantly in red, orange, yellow, and some g