A sublime fragmentary monumental representation of St. George slaying the dragon to save the princess, and of the Virgin in maternity, Jesus blessing, surmounted by cherubs holding a veil over them, St. George is followed by an army, all are painted from the front. The Christian kingdom of Ethiopia is the heir of the ancient kingdom of Aksum, which had developed on the African coast of the Red Sea in the first century AD, and whose elites converted to Christianity in the fourth century. The great Christian texts were then translated from Arabic or Greek into Gueze (the ancient Ethiopian language), and the Ethiopian church depended from that time on the patriarchate of the Coptic Church of Alexandria, and not on that of Rome. The mural paintings of the cathedral of Aksum are already described as splendid as early as the seventh century by Arab exiles, but the oldest Ethiopian Christian paintings that have survived, especially after the important destruction and looting (between 1530 and 1543) during the jihad launched by the Muslim emirates of the southeast, date back to the twelfth century. The golden century of Ethiopian Christian art began at the time of King Dawit and his descendants (also called David I, who reigned from 1378 to 1413), one of whose embassies landed in Venice on July 16, 1402 to bring back religious material, notably icons, and also to bring Italian craftsmen to Ethiopia. But the commercial exchanges and contacts with the Western world that developed in the 16th century did not fail to enrich and renew the artistic creation of what is known as Ethiopian sacred painting, which is distinguished by many singularities, both in its forms with its multiple and successive influences from outside but also from within the kingdom, and in its specifically African uses such as its magical or therapeutic characteristics.This extraordinary monumental painting is undoubtedly a true masterpiece of Ethiopian sacred painting, and in an obvious way we could just say painting in history. It is in any case the masterpiece and the central work of the Ethiopian paintings in the Christiane and Antonin Besse collection, which originally consisted of six paintings from the walls of various sanctuaries (or monasteries), all of which were re-mounted on canvas and restored in the most remarkable way from the late 1950s onwards; in particular if one compares them to the famous set of paintings de-marouflaged from the walls of the church of Abba Antonios by Marcel Griaule, that the clergy of Gondär authorized to collect for the Museum of Man during the Dakar-Djibouti mission in 1932, and which were exhibited as soon as they arrived in Paris in 1933; today still visible in the permanent collections at the Musée du Quai Branly - Jacques Chirac; partly fortunately restored and re-mounted on canvas at the time, but unfortunately also coated with glue. This painting was probably originally intended to cover the outer western wall of the sanctuary called Mäqdäs (cubic in shape) of an Ethiopian church (often circular), the access to the interior of which is exclusively reserved for priests, thus creating a mystery. The secrecy and the notion of the "hidden-shown" having, as is often the case in Africa, a magical character reinforcing the strength of the myth, the Mäqdäs housing the tabot, the consecrated altar plate symbolizing the Tables of the Law. Framing the west door of the sanctuary on the left and right, St. George slaying the dragon was on the side where the men stood and the Virgin Mary on the side occupied by the women, in the position most visible to the faithful, as has been the case on all wall ensembles since the seventeenth century. Saint George is the patron saint of the Ethiopian Church, and the association of Saint George and the Virgin and Child has been recurrent in Ethiopian sacred art since the 15th century, because the masculine image of Saint George conveying warrior and protective values and the feminine one of the Virgin complement each other in the social ideal of the Ethiopian aristocracy, and this association will always be fashionable in the court society until the 18th century. See: for another of the six Ethiopian paintings from the Besse collection offered to their friend Jean Sauvagnargues: Artcurial sale of April 29, 2021 lot 142. See : L'Art de l'Éthiopie des origines au Siècle d'or (330-1527), Éd. Place des Victoires, 2021, and Peintures sacrées d'Éthiopie - Collections de la Mission Dakar-Djibouti, Éd. Sépia, 2005. Ethiopia, 17th century (or earlier) Canvas, re-mounted on a stretcher, old pigments, restoration, visible losses, in a superb state of preservation. 262 x 244 cm Provenance : Christiane and Antonin Besse collection since the 1950s, and passed down through descent. Publication: