Single Leaf from a Gospel Book with a Portrait of Saint Luke (c. 1440–80): Art, History and Details

Single Leaf from a Gospel Book with a Portrait of Saint Luke (c. 1440–80) is in the Cleveland Museum of Art collection.

The work and its context

The museum's open-access catalogue describes the work:

Christianity arrived in Ethiopia during the 300s CE, well before reaching northern Europe. Typical of panel and manuscript painting in Ethiopia, this leaf is decorated with bright colors and a joyous interplay of geometric pattern. The full-page miniature depicts the evangelist Luke, with his symbol, the ox, within the arch above. The short text is in the Ge‘ez (the centuries-old church language of Ethiopian Orthodoxy) and consists of the opening lines of the gospel of Luke: “Make this image of St. Luke with this bull––his prayer (offering)––and with his blessings, they were with us. Amen.”

Object facts

• Title: Single Leaf from a Gospel Book with a Portrait of Saint Luke
• Date: c. 1440–80
• Culture: Empire of Ethiopia, Tigray region (Ethiopia)
• Type: Manuscript
• Technique: ink and tempera on vellum
• Dimensions: Sheet: 37 x 25 cm (14 9/16 x 9 13/16 in.)
• Collection: MED - Manuscript Illuminations
• Department: Medieval Art
• Accession number: 1999.212

A detail from the museum

The majority of Ethiopian manuscripts are written in Ge’ez, the ancient liturgical language of Ethiopia.

Collection credit

Purchase from the J. H. Wade Fund

Further reading listed by the museum

• Fliegel, Stephen "St. Luke in Ethiopia" The Cleveland Museum of Art Member's Magazine (April 2000)
• Petridis, Constantijn. South of the Sahara: Selected Works of African Art. [Cleveland]: Cleveland Museum of Art, 2003.
• Heldman, Marilyn E. “Legends of Lālibalā: The Development of an Ethiopian Pilgrimage Site.” Anthropology and Aestetics 27 (Spring 1995)

View the collection record

See the museum's photographs and full catalogue entry. Catalogue text is reproduced from the Cleveland Museum of Art's open-access data, with HTML formatting removed. This object and its supplied image are designated CC0.