The Daily Art app this week featured this fascinating, beautiful illuminated manuscript. I felt like it was worth sharing.
The illumination is from northern Ethiopia, some time around the late 14th or early 15th century.
The style is somewhat reminiscent of Eastern / Orthodox / Byzantine style, but obviously quite different too.
The writing around the edge is apparently Ge'ez - old Ethiopian church language. But I believe the script (or a derivation thereof) is used in modern Amharic.
I'm unsure of Daily Art's subscription model now (I've an old lifetime subscription from before they changed it), but I think it still has some free tier. It's a great way to see art from around the world, in styles you might not otherwise encounter.
Editing this post to add a bit more context - so sorry for multiple edit notifications the server here is a bit overwhelmed today - big thanks to @alpine_thistle and @jlundell for providing some great additional information! It was all new to me but really interesting, and might interest others reading this too.
The four winged figures surrounding Jesus are the four Gospels - those of Matthew, Mark, Luke and John - represented as animal forms: a man, a lion, an ox and an eagle (respectively). These are traditional representations of the four Gospels; Ezekiel 1:10 includes references to a vision of these four figures. More information about this, and why those particular representations over on Aleteia: https://aleteia.org/2016/12/27/do-you-know-the-meanings-of-the-creatures-in-the-tetramorph
@picard@histodons idk your familiarity with classical Christian iconography, but the angels/creatures at the top represent the four Gospels! I can't remember which creature corresponds with which Gospel, but representing them as a lion/eagle/man/ox is really common in many styles of iconography across many cultures
@picard@histodons otherwise, this looks like an illustration of Pentecost, with Mary and the 12 apostles pointing up at Jesus in the sky (you can tell it's Jesus because he has a cross-shaped halo)
@alpine_thistle@histodons Thank you! That's all really interesting! I am not massively familiar with this stuff - I've seen a bit but definitely not aware if much nuance etc.
Thank you for filling in these details - I had wondered about the four. The description on Daily Art mentioned the four Gospels but didn't go further than that - I'd wondered about the fact there were four of them, but had no idea about the representation as man, lion (I guess what I saw as ape-figure), eagle, ox. Fascinating!
I'd guessed the lower middle figure possibly Mary - the lack of beard and hijab-style covering - but was unsure about that too, so thanks for that too!
Really enjoyed learning more about this work, really appreciate it 😊
You don't happen to have any more reading on why the Gospels are represented by animal forms, do you?
@jlundell@alpine_thistle@histodons Perfect - thanks for posting this! Will edit the original post to add some further context (so any who favourited can benefit too!)
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