ETHIOPIAN PAINTING – A LESSON IN ICONOGRAPHY!!
icon [gr] = image graphein [gr] = write or describe ⇒ iconography = description of images
the purpose of iconography is not just to describe what you see in the image, but to disclose what the relation between persons and objects may be. in ethiopian art eyes play an important role, eyes are powerful, they can harm you. the good guys and the bad ones are easy to discern by the position of the heads. frontal or in 3/4 means good, in profile is bad. by depicting someone in profile, ‘one-eyed’, he is less powerful. moreover the bad guys are often ugly in their whole appearance.
so here we see four ugly men on the left and one on the right and a nice couple in between, of which the lady holds a cup in her right hand. as this painting is situated in a church it is obvious that we have to do with a biblical story. in this case we find it in numeri 5:25. a treachurous jew has told the elders of the synagogue, that the old man joseph has impregnated his housemaid mary. she is condemned to drink the bitter waters that will make her belly swell and destroy her womb. but after drinking mary’s face starts shining and even her apparel becomes luminous. shamefaced the jews beat a hasty retreat.
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this axonometric view of the narga selassi church that will be described later, shows what round churches, built after the 16th century, may look like. two round walls, in wood, reed, or stone enclose a cube of about 6 meters with a tambour on top. its inner part is called the makdas in which the tabot is hidden. this tabot is a kind of altar stone, but made of wood and representing the arc of the covenant. the makdas is only accessible for the clergy. its outer walls are completely covered by biblical [sometimes historical] images. these images may be painted directly on the wall [murals] or painted on cloth and then glued to the wall. some writers call these paintings frescoes, but painting in fresco means painting on wet stucco and that is out of the question in ethiopia.
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DEBRE SINA MARYAM
on the northern shore of lake tana, in the village of gorgora, is situated this fascinating church of the sinaï monastery dedicated to saint mary. the building as well as the paintings date from the 17th century. the outer wall is made of reed. the monumental thatched roof, corbeling out all around, has not [yet] been replaced by a more sought after one executed in corrugated iron.
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a detail of the makdas inside the church. the tambour on top of the cube supports the thatched conical roof. every inch of the makdas is covered with mural paintings, a habit that is called horror vacui, fear of emptyness. the naked figures on the tambour represent forty martyrs who were drowned in lake tana during the regime of grañ. below two old testament kings.
the new testament starts with the birth of the son of mary, jesus. mary and child are seated on the right and three wise kings are kneeling before them, their crowns on the floor at their knees. saint joseph has taken place behind the kings. so far the story is familiar to us, be it that we associate the kings more with camels to travel on than on the three little ponies at the bottom of the painting [matthew 2:1]. the painting technique is not complicated. a drawing in black lines is filled in with paint. the dark masks on the faces represent the shadows. parallel lines in the apparel are used for modelling the bodies and suggesting folds.
there are also some intreaging details to be noticed. the kings, mary and jesus are raising their cups to drink to the health of the new born baby-king. judging from the cup in jesus’ hand he is fully participating in the toast by drinking the same ’tedj’ as the guest do. this honey wine is a rather strong alcoholic drink. quite stunning for a baby of that age. or is it the painter’s sense of humour?
there is more to say about the cups if we look at those in the hands of the kings. the first and the second king both raise two cups. the third king shows an empty hand and his right arm is missing, so he has no drink at all. which arm belongs to whome can be determined by the colour of their sleeves. and look at their hands! there are five right hands only, independant of the right or left arm. and then a closer look at mary and jesus reveales two left hands on two right arms. instead of humor i think we have to do with an inadequately worked-out drawing here. and yet there is a humourous detail in this painting…
ethiopian painters often depict different scenes within the same pictorial environment without any separating element. here all eyes are turned towards mother and child. only the haloed man in the top row looks into te oppposite direction to another haloed man in a different scene. both of them are saint joseph. the one on the right is looking at himself on the left in the birth scene where jesus rests his head on joseph’s knee. this is intended to be humorous and makes us smile indeed.
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here we have another example of different scenes within the same framing. it is about the decapitation of saint john the baptist by a king called herod. the king had married his brother’s wife herodias. she hated john because he had lectured herod about this indecent marriage. though herod had put him in jail he considered him a too interesting interlocutor to change his imprisonment into martyrdom. until…
on the occasion of the king’s birthday, his daughter salome has just completed a dance manipulating her veil in such a way that her father became very excited over it. she may wish whatever she likes and it shall be fulfilled. salome consults her mother, who sees her opportunity. the head of john the baptist would make a gorgeous present. a promise is a promise is also the king’s adage.
on the right the executioner disconnects john’s head from his body. instead of falling down the head flies up crying out to herod and herodias one last time, defiantly and naggingly: “and yet it is indecent that you take your brother’s wife”. so within the same painting three scenes are put together: the beheading, the flying head and salome presenting john’s head in a huge chalice to her father. notice how the good differ from the the bad and ugly by the positions of their heads. [matthew14] [mark6:14]
NARGA SELASSI
the narga selassi church is situated on the island of narga in lake tana. it differs in many ways from the previous debre sina maryam church. the roof is covered with corrugated iron, wich is considered more durable and luxury than a thatched roof. the roof is supported by the beautiful arcade of the stone outer wall as well as by the inner wall that contains gorgeous wooden doors and windows.
the stunning feature about this door is that it is a monoxyl, i.e. one piece of wood. imagine the age and size of the tree that was needed to cut this door out of the stem… by hand!
the entire eastwall of the makdas with its window frame and four shutters. on the other three sides there is a door. not on this side, because behind this wall the most sacred object of the church is located, the tabot, representing the arc of the covenant. [the picture dates from before the restoration of the entire iconographical programme]
on the westside a triforate entrance, a passage for the clergy only. to the left and the right two archangels, gatekeepers of this holy of holiest. in this case both of them take also part in two different narrations. the central door tells us a third story, the passage through the red sea. on top moses strikes the water to make it possible for his sister miryam to cross with the women. in the middle the egypt pharao and his army are drowning in the red sea waters and at the bottom moses’ brother aäron is leading the men after the passage.
under the feet of the archangel michael is told the story of saint euphemia. she was married to a god-fearing man. on his deathbed he asked his wife never to fail in giving alms to the needy and feasts for saint michael. she asks her husband to have a picture of th angel painted in her house and he did this for her and passed away.
a jealous devil often came unto her in various disguises, but every time she drove him away with the picture of saint michael. he even came disguised as the archangel himself, pretending to be sent by god commanding her to re-marry and have a child to look after her in her old age and also because a woman without a man is like a ship without a rudder. “if thou art an angel of god, where is the symbol of the cross on thee”, she asked him. then the real saint michael appeared and drove satan away. in the picture she carries the painting of saint michael while talking to the devil in disguise.
when her time had come she called for the priests, gave them all her money to distribute among the poor. she took the picture of the glorious saint michael, laid it on her face and breast, died in peace and became a saint.
the angel to the right is saint raphael, his feet in the same impossible position as michael. depicting feet at right angles to the painted surface in a convincing manner is a difficult problem for painters. hence this solution showing the silk slippers with their noses lifted up elegantly. and didn’t the egyptians do it in almost the same way? the story is taking place in egypt!
when the church, dedicated to the archangel raphael and built on a small island outside the walls of alexandria, was consecrated, the island started to quake causing the church to break down in two pieces. it became clear that the
supposed island was the sand covered back of a sea monster. the devil had ordered the animal to shake the building off its back. all those present started praying passionately for a solution and lo and behold, raphael himself came down with a lance, fixed the monster to the bottom of the sea and restored the church in its upright position.
and so the church remained safe under the protection of saint raphael until the moment the caliphs usurped power over the land. when raphael noticed how these people were abusing his church, he furiously pulled loose his lance and ordered the monster to disappear with the barbarians to the bottom of the sea. and so it happened. these two stories are from a book named the ethiopian synaxarium, in which for each day of the year saints are registered, to be remembered during church festivities. these 18th century paintings show a stylistic contrast with those in the debre sina maryam. the angels’ faces are young and modelled with soft shadows [sfumato]. their elegant, colourful apparel is covered with flowers. the 18th century queen mentewab who ordered this church to be built, bought richly decorated silk fabrics from the east for her royal household. this had great influence on painting.
these two colourful figures recently painted on the
outer wall of a church in the gojam region, the muga debre iyasus, show even more clearly how painters to-day work. the colours are vivid and in harmony, but they do not fill in a blacklined pattern. their apparel is richly decorated but does not follow the folds. the floral decoration is painted flat on the fabric. the background of the figure to the right is rather traditional, just a green, yellow and red field. the figure to the left seems to be an angel with six pairs of multicoloured wings that fill in the whole background together with two threatening but elegant serpents encircling this marvellous composition.
yet it will be difficult to judge the age of a painting after the stylistic characteristics. there is no evident chronological evolution in the painting tradition. if the clergy wants a church to be painted in the style of a 16th century church, they will look for a painter who can do so.
