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Nigeria, Court of Benin. Finely cast, the head representing a youthful Benin official wearing a Portuguese-style helmet. The rounded face is sensitively modeled with wide almond-shaped eyes beneath raised rims, a short broad nose, and full lips slightly parted, the rounded chin marked by a shallow dimple. Three incised whisker-like scarification marks extend from either side of the mouth across the cheeks, evoking the leopard, an important emblem of royal power in Benin art. The closely cropped, tightly curled hair emerges beneath the helmet, which is encircled by bands of cross-hatched geometric ornament and surmounted by a small knop.
Provenance: Collection of Volker Schneider, Germany, by circa 1996-1998. Collection of Dr. Andreas Lindner, Munich, Germany, acquired from the above. In the Dr. Andreas Lindner Collection for around thirty years. Volker Schneider is a German collector and dealer specializing in African art, active in the field for over three decades. Alongside his work as a documentary filmmaker for German television, he established close contacts with officials and prominent figures in several African countries, including Nigeria and Ghana. Works he acquired are today held in major German museum collections, among them Nok figures in the Dresden Museum of Ethnology. Dr. Andreas Lindner is a distinguished private collector of African, Oceanic, and Native American art. From the 1990s onwards, he and his wife Kathrin assembled an important collection, part of which was presented in a single-owner sale at Sotheby’s Paris on 8 June 2007, achieving a total of over EUR 6,000,000. Works from their collection have also been exhibited at the Museum der V?lker in Schwaz, Tyrol. Dr. Lindner further established the Stiftung für Au?ereurop?ische Kunst, a foundation dedicated to fostering respect and understanding for cultures beyond Europe.
Condition: Good condition with expected wear and casting irregularities. Few small losses, fatigue cracks, warping, light dings, minor fissures, and encrustations. The bronze with a rich, naturally grown, dark patina with areas of malachite encrustations.
Weight: 2,521 g
Dimensions: Height 26.2 cm
Three different identities have been proposed for this figure. The official may be a messenger from a ruler referred to as the "Ogane," who today is identified as the leader, or "oni," of Ife. The present Benin dynasty claims descent from the Yoruba kingdom of Ife. According to a sixteenth-century Portuguese text, each new "oba," or king of Benin had to be confirmed by the "Ogane," whose messenger presented the "oba" with a brass hat, staff, and cross necklace. Another interpretation suggests that he may represent a priest of Osanobua, the Benin creator god. Finally, the figure may depict a member of "Ewua," a group of palace officials who wake the "oba" each morning and perform a ceremony recalling the origin of the Benin dynasty.
At its origins, the centralized city-state of Benin was founded by Edo-speaking peoples. The accounts by official court historians and descriptions provided by visitors evoke a vibrant cultural center continually redefined by its leadership through shifting internal and external power dynamics. According to oral tradition, circa 1300, Edo chiefs are reputed to have reached out to the leader of neighboring Ife, Oranmiyan, to establish a new divinely sanctioned royal dynasty. Since then, the investiture of Benin’s rulers to the title of obas has conferred upon them at once a role of chief priest officiating in important religious ceremonies and presiding over an elaborate structure of palace officials. During the fifteenth century reign of Oba Ewuare, Benin’s armies were formed and the fortification of its capital with a massive wall undertaken. In parallel, delegations of Portuguese traders assiduously sought to secure exclusive commercial treaties with this leader of the region’s most powerful polity. At its height in 1500, Benin’s authority extended to the Niger delta in the east and to the coastal lagoon of Lagos in the west. Its major exports of pepper, textiles, and ivory were exchanged for copious quantities of imported metals. This access to an influx of brass led to an explosion of creativity by court artists who transformed it into works for the palace ranging from ancestral portraits, positioned on royal altars, to decorative plaques depicting the oba, his courtiers, and foreign interlocutors. From the earliest such exchanges, those Europeans commissioned exquisite ivory artifacts from Edo carvers for princely collections back home.
For nearly five hundred years, Benin’s independent leaders firmly established the terms of engagement with Portuguese, Dutch, and French agents and effectively represented their own interests. Despite the demands of the Atlantic Slave trade, for centuries they limited their participation to selling prisoners of war to the Portuguese. Historians have suggested that this only changed during the eighteenth century when escalation of contests among regional polities created a demand for access to European firearms. During that later period instability engendered by disputes over succession and civil war was further fueled through the exchange of captives for firearms. A number of internal and external developments that followed in the nineteenth century impacted the standing and vulnerability of Benin’s monarchs. Under Oba Adolo, the balance of power appears to have favored the more powerful chiefs and by the early years of his successor Ovonramwen’s reign, bitter feuds and seditious conspiracies divided their ranks. This shift was manifest in the increased emphasis on the oba’s ceremonial and ritual activities and the aggrandizement of chiefly residences that outstripped the palace. Concurrently significant changes were unfolding around Benin: Islam was in the ascendant in the rival state of Oyo; Christianity was embraced by the southern Yoruba; abolition of the slave trade was leading to the demise of the Itsekiri monarchy; and local British officials were increasingly determined to undermine the oba’s authority.
Literature comparison:
Compare related bronze figures of court officials, Court of Benin, dated to the 16th-17th century and 18th-19th century, in the Metropolitan Museum of Art, object numbers 1991.17.32 and 1991.17.30, and illustrated by Kate Ezra in Royal Art of Benin: The Perls Collection, Metropolitan Museum of Art, 1992, p. 67 and 72-73, figs. 15-16.
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