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The Collector(s) / Donor(s) Raymond Silverman, curator of "African Connections," is an associate professor of art history at Michigan State University. He also serves as adjunct curator for the African collections housed in the University's two museums. From 1979 to 1989 his research was focused in the West African countries of Ghana and Côte d'Ivoire, and from 1990 to the present, in Ethiopia. This object is one of several hundred artifacts that Silverman and Sobania commissioned and collected in the course of conducting research for the 1994 Michigan State University Museum exhibition, Ethiopia: Traditions of Creativity. Collector(s) / Donor(s) Statement: Silverman Neal Sobania is Professor of History and Director of International Education at Hope College in Holland, Michigan. After spending three years as a Peace Corps Volunteer in Ethiopia, he returned to graduate school, completing a Ph.D. at the University of London dealing with the history of the Dassanetch peoples of northern Kenya. Since his Peace Corps experience in Ethiopia in the late 1960s, he has been a avid collector of African material culture and possesses a significant collection of Ethiopian and Kenyan artifacts. For the last eight years, he and Silverman have been collaborating on a number of projects dealing with the visual cultures of Ethiopia. Collector(s) / Donor(s) Statement: Sobania The Object(s) Small two-sided icons formerly were made for monks who would wear them suspended from the neck. These icons could easily be set on a table, in effect, serving as a portable altarpiece, a focal point for prayer. It is also likely that they served as a mode of spiritual protection for the wearer. These double diptychs continue to made in places like Aksum in northern Ethiopian, but for the "art market," primarily for tourists. They are usually produced by two specialists, a carver who makes the case and a painter who draws upon a specific repertoire of themes. Formerly, the painter would have been a specialist trained within the context of the Ethiopian Orthodox Church, but today, many icon painters are self-taught and have little if any affiliation with the Church. This particular example follows the most common pairing of religious themes: one one side (visible in the image above) depicts the Resurrection of Adam and Eve, and the Crucifixion; and on the other side, St. George Slaying the Dragon, and the Madonna and Child (St. Mary and the infant Jesus). Further Information Books and Articles Stanislaw Chojnacki. "Short Introduction to Ethiopian Painting." Journal of Ethiopian Studies 2 (2) 1964: 1-11. Stanislaw Chojnacki. Major Themes in Ethiopian Painting: Indigenous Developments, the Influence of Foreign Models and their Adaptation from the 13th to the 19th Century. Wiesbaden: Franz Steiner Verlag, 1983. Marilyn Heldman with Stuart C. Munro-Hay. African Zion: The Sacred Art of Ethiopia. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1993. Jules Leroy. Ethiopian Painting in the Late Middle Ages and During the Gondar Dynasty. New York: Praeger, 1967. Religious Art of Ethiopia. Stuttgart: Institut für Auslandsbeziehungen, 1973. Raymond Silverman. "Qes Adamu Tesfaw--A Priest Who Paints." Ethiopia: Traditions of Creativity, edited by R. Silverman, pp. 132-55, 261-66. Seattle: University of Washington Press, 1999. Internet ResourcesArtist Profile for Adamu Tesfaw from Ethiopia: Traditions of Creativity
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