Diptych with Twelve Apostles & St. Paul
Workshop or Circle of Wäldä Maryam
1700
unspecified
From the collection of Cleveland Museum of Art
Workshop or Circle of Wäldä Maryam
1700
unspecified
From the collection of Cleveland Museum of Art
Diptych with Twelve Apostles & St. Paul is a 1700 unspecified by Workshop or Circle of Wäldä Maryam, a Baroque work, depicting Ethiopia, held at Cleveland Museum of Art.
You see two wooden panels side by side, filled with thirteen men in bright robes and turbans. Each holds a book or a staff, and their faces look almost the same—calm, serious, holy. What’s interesting is the mix of cultures. These saints wear clothes that came from India, showing how far trade reached in the 1700s. The artist painted them like a royal Ethiopian court portrait, not the way Europeans did at the time. To see more like this, look up *Ethiopia, East Africa*.
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…
Captions written in the language Gəˁəz identify each holy man by name. This African language is nearly 2,500 years old!
Read the full account in the museum source.
Workshop or Circle of Wäldä Maryam (1600–1700) was a workshop or firm.
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