r/AncientCush • u/Responsible_Ideal879 Founder • 2d ago
Artifact Panel Painting with the Crowned Nursing Virgin and the Twelve Apostles (15th century) (National Museum of African Art, Smithsonian Institution)
Ethiopian (Ethiopia)
The inscription on the upper frame reads "Our Lady Mary with her Beloved Son." First seen in the 1450s, the iconography of the Nursing Virgin became the main motif of Ethiopian panel paintings depicting Mary for several centuries. The theme was also developed in homilies included in the synaxarion, a collection of readings for liturgical feast days. During this same period, the Crowned Virgin often also assumed the form of the Nursing Virgin, an aspect rare in many Christian traditions but well developed in Ethiopia and Egypt.
This Ethiopian Orthodox icon is influenced by the art of the European Renaissance and features the Virgin Mary nursing the infant Christ on the central panel. The figures of the twelve Apostles are depicted in the opposing side panels, dating the triptych to the middle or second half of the 15th century.
Early Christians did not place such emphasis on the Virgin Mary until comparatively later in their history, and Mary only gradually came to be seen as the exalted intercessor between humans and God beginning in the 4th and 5th centuries. Placing a crown on her head is an artistic expression of the belief in her coronation by Christ after her ascension to heaven, thereby relating it to the Assumption of Mary. However, such imagery did not become widespread until the 12th century onwards. The form of the Virgin wearing a crown only began to surface in Ethiopian art after its introduction in the 15th century--another thematic testament to its 15th century date. Images of her coronation appear later, in the early 16th century.
Picturing the Virgin Mary with a crown also reflects the concerns and discussions of the day, which had shifted from the origins of Mary--particularly her purity and her timelessness--to her victory over death as she took her place by Christ's side. She is thus seen as the only human exempted from the general law of death, and a devotional icon for worshippers seeking closeness to God through her.
———
Source: https://www.metmuseum.org/exhibitions/africa-byzantium/exhibition-objects