Sacred Ethiopian Crosses Offer Rare Glimpse Of Early African Christian Art

PURCHASE, N.Y.

:A display of rare medieval sacred crosses from Ethiopia will be on view at the Neuberger Museum of Art at Purchase College through January 28. On loan from the collection of Denyse and Marc Ginzberg, the six Ethiopian crosses offer a glimpse into Ethiopia's ancient Christian tradition.

Christianity became the state religion in Ethiopia as early as 324 AD with the conversion of Ezana, king of Axum.

Reflecting Byzantine and Islamic crosscurrents as well as early Judeo-Christian art, these almost ethereal processional crosses once inspired intense devotion from the priests and monks who carried them and the people who beheld them. The six crosses made of bronze, iron, silver and wood, and mostly openwork are mounted on long staffs. They were brought out and displayed under large canopies or parasols of brightly colored silk during major feast days. According to Marie-Thérèse Brincard, the museum's African art consultant, "crosses display a freedom of design quite unlike European crosses of the same era. The play of light on the copper web that forms the cross produces a dynamic experience of shimmering space and movement."

The rarest in the group is the wooden cross from the Fifteenth-Sixteenth Century, as very few such wooden objects have survived; the most exceptional is a Twelfth-Thirteenth Century bronze cross that is imposing in size and striking by the thickness of the metal in relation to the ornate loops in the arms of the cross. A Fifteenth Century iron cross illustrates figures and text on both front and back written in Ge'ez, the old language of state and church in Ethiopia since the Seventh Century.

A Twelfth-Thirteenth Century bronze cross dates back to the reign of the Emperor Lalibela, who built the well-known monolithic rock-hewn churches in Roha, the town of his birth. Two Fifteenth-Sixteenth Century crosses end with a square base that symbolically allude to the "tabot" or consecrated slab that is identified with the Ark of the Covenant. It is believed that Menelek I, son of the Queen of Sheba and King Solomon brought the Ark from the Temple in Jerusalem.

The Neuberger Museum of Art, Purchase College, SUNY, is at 735 Anderson Hill Road. For information, 914-251-6100 or www.neuberger.org.