Christian Art

A priest lifts a filigreed hand cross, and the congregation bows. Antique Christian art comes from Ethiopia, Russia, Mexico, Peru, Vietnam, the Congo and Europe. Ethiopian Orthodox crosses lead: cast and filigreed hand crosses carried by priests, processional cross tops, silver neck crosses, prayer scrolls and bibles written in Ge’ez on vellum. Russian travelling icons fold in three leaves to show the Mother of God, Christ the Teacher and John the Evangelist. Mexican retablos, devotional paintings on tin such as the Mater Dolorosa, carry the folk Catholicism of the nineteenth century, and from the Kongo come figures of Saint Anthony, Toni Malau, from a devotion that took hold there in the eighteenth century.

Worn silver, painted tin, crackled tempera and hand-rubbed wood bring warmth to a library or a bedroom. Ethiopian crosses grouped against a deep green wall read as a single quiet composition. Faith, in small and hard-wearing formats.