I was browsing the website of the British Museum and found this wonderful piece of art.
Take a closer look at the beautiful fellow in the lower right.
If you did not know any better, you would look at the religious theme, the mane at the waist, the bow and arrow, the lion paws, and put this image firmly in the realm of the sagittaries drawn in the margins of medieval books of hours, for example, here and here.
Here's what the British Museum has to say about this.
Museum number Af2005,05.42
Description: Painting in water based pigment on printed Italian military paper depicting Saint Claudius riding a horse with Ethiopian toe stirrup and tack. The saint wears a cape (lemd) and carries a spear and shield. To the right an angel passes him a sword. Before the saint is the figure of a man fleeing , below is a creature half man, half lion with a double headed serpant as a tail (Sabade'at).
Production date: 1940s (late); Production place: near Addis Ababa, Ethiopia; Materials: painted paper.
Curator's comments: Previously part of a book of images used as models for mural paintings. These were made by an Ethiopian priest who was producing paintings and murals in the 1940s.
Evidently the term "Sabade'at" is what the Ethiopian church calls a sagittary! But the thing that really gets me is that this lion-centaur, drawn in the medieval style, was created by an African priest in 1940! That's a survival from 500 years earlier! What's going on with the bifurcated snake tail, I don't know, but this is still clearly within the tradition of medieval grotesques and drolleries!
So I poked around a bit more on the museum's web site, and I found another by the same artist, this time in color. Take a look.
In this one, his back paws are cut off, but at least he hasn't taken a hoof to the skull. Yet.
