The paintings, oil on canvas, is actually most likely a scene that overlaps several typical subjects and much played within the traditional art of '900 Ethiopian. A recurring theme is that the hunt for slaves. A painting like our disposal for the scenes and narration is at the Bremen museum and resumes the story of Iyassu, Prince of Amhara population, fighting after the death of Menelik II Gimirra of the people, who occupied the southern part of Ethiopia. The painting contrasts the Amhara, clothes, and commanders with a sort of fringed hat, the 'barbarians' Gimirra, half-naked, who are killed and emasculated. The expedition ended with the acquisition of approximately 20,000 new slaves. In fact, in this painting also appear citations that refer to the action of Ras Tafari, in 1928, after the coronation to Negus, repress the revolt of the Oromo, in Provincia of Wollo. Another quote is the presence of numerous rifles, reminiscent of the battle of 1930 with the defeat of Gugsa Olie and the subsequent appointment of Ras Tafari as Emperor. So the painting, made around 1935 for an Italian customer, the sum in our opinion these issues.
It is part of a group of seven works, arrived in Italy in the late '30s; They were purchased on the spot, as we have reconstructed from letters and from your family pictures, Advocate xxx, grandfather of the owners, who was sent as a legal representative of a company of Italian production in 1935 in Ethiopia, and from there was driven out in 1938 general Graziani, because it considered anti-fascist. The paintings remained in the family collection, in the family palace, and are now being revived in all their expressive force.
Ethiopia has a very particular history: located between Africa and Asia, and between the Mediterranean and Indian Ocean, was a crossroads and a meeting point of different cultures, stimulated by constant and intense trade flows.
Five centuries before Christ steadied the Aksum dynasty; in this kingdom, in the fourth century AD, Christianity was established state religion, in its version of the Coptic Orthodox. The medieval sacred texts speak but also a direct relationship with one of the ten Hebrew tribes took refuge in Ethiopia, from which derived the royal line through the Queen of Sheba.
And in fact in Ethiopia still he lives the race of Falashas, blacks Jews whose first historical records date back to 600 AD.
Ethiopia was therefore a Jewish-Christian stronghold, with African influences, but considered almost southern part of the Mediterranean culture.
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