Mask - Congo (No reserve price)

polychrome showing a distorted face in an epileptic
following a peripheral facial paralysis
Wood sculpture of the Pendé people - Kwilu Region
DR Congo
Wood sculpture
Peripheral facial paralysis is known by several names: (2) facial paralysis in frigore; (2) Bell’s palsy (Charles Bell, the Scottish anatomist and surgeon, was the first to describe this pathology); (3) Bell’s palsy; (4) Bell’s disease; (5) idiopathic facial paralysis.

Complete peripheral paralysis of the left facial nerve leads, as you can see on this mask, to retraction and deviation of the anatomical elements of the contralateral half-face toward the healthy side, that is, the right side, very clearly visible at the mouth.

The Pende people:

The Pende, about three hundred thousand individuals, originally from western Angola, settled in the Congo, toward the end of the 18th century, particularly in the Kwilu and Kasai regions of the Congo.