A bronze sculpture - Tada - Nigeria

Seated Male Figure with Snake, Tada type, Nigeria / Middle Niger

Copper alloy, hollow cast by the lost-wax process
TL Analysis will follow.

Informant: Wolfgang Jaenicke

The present copper-alloy sculpture depicts a male figure seated in an unusually complex and asymmetrical posture. One leg is sharply bent and raised almost vertically, while the other is folded across the front of the body. This interlocking arrangement of the limbs creates a pronounced spatial tension that contrasts with the largely upright and composed bearing of the torso. Both arms are brought forward and engage with the principal attribute of the composition: a long, ornamented snake held in both hands, its head raised immediately before the sitter’s face.

The snake is represented neither as a defeated nor as a killed animal. Its body winds between the hands and forearms and is at once firmly controlled and deliberately displayed. The proximity of its head to the mouth and nose creates, particularly in frontal view, a striking compositional convergence between human and animal. Finely incised, regularly geometric markings distinguish the surface of the snake from the predominantly smooth surfaces of the human body, making the reptile the formal as well as the iconographic focus of the sculpture.

The modelling of the human body reveals a pronounced concern with anatomical plausibility. Shoulders and upper arms, knees and calves, hands and feet are carefully articulated, with individual fingers and toes clearly indicated. The gently protruding abdomen and soft transitions between thorax and belly contrast with the more powerfully modelled extremities. This combination of idealisation and close observation lends the figure a remarkable sense of physical presence.

In the face, this naturalistic tendency is combined with a more abstract formal vocabulary. Large almond-shaped eyes with distinctly modelled lids are set beneath a high, rounded forehead. The long nose, with pronounced nostrils, leads to a relatively small mouth with full and clearly separated lips. The ears are carefully formed, while several parallel lines encircling the neck may indicate folds of skin or neck rings. A narrow contour separates the forehead and temples from the smooth surface of the skull. An opening visible at the crown provides access to the hollow interior and bears direct witness to the sculpture’s production by the lost-wax casting process.

The lower body is partly covered by a richly patterned garment, its surface organised into a regular grid of square or lozenge-shaped motifs. At the side of the hip is a small anthropomorphic face that may be described as a hip mask. Comparable elements occur on other figures belonging to the same type. Their recurrence makes a purely decorative function unlikely, although whether the motif should be understood in ancestral or ritual terms, or as an emblem of status, cannot at present be determined. The sculpture’s present appearance is further characterised by a deep dark-brown to almost black patina with areas of green copper corrosion and by the alternation between smoother surfaces and more heavily corroded passages.

Art historically, the sculpture relates to an important yet still incompletely understood group of metal works associated with the Middle Niger region. In this context, “Tada” should primarily be understood as a place of preservation and historical association rather than as the name of an established workshop or securely defined artistic centre. A number of anthropomorphic and zoomorphic metal sculptures preserved at Tada, Jebba Island and Giragi have traditionally been grouped in the literature under the designation “Tsoede Bronzes.” The term derives from Nupe traditions concerning Tsoede, the legendary founder of the Nupe kingdom, who is said to have brought the sculptures from Idah into the later Nupe territories. While this tradition is of considerable importance for understanding the historical reception and ritual biographies of the objects, it cannot in itself establish their original place of manufacture. Accordingly, scholarship has considered connections with Ife, Owo, Benin and Idah/Igala.

At the centre of this complex stands the celebrated fragmentary seated male copper figure from Tada, now in the National Commission for Museums and Monuments, Nigeria. Measuring 54 centimetres in height and generally dated to the late thirteenth or fourteenth century, it has been associated with Ile-Ife on the basis of its exceptional naturalism and remarkably thin-walled casting. Its history illustrates a fundamental methodological problem: the preservation and ritual use of an object at Tada do not necessarily imply that it was produced there. “Tada” therefore designates not so much a securely defined stylistic or ethnic category as a historical context of movement, appropriation and transformation.

The biography of the historical Tada figure demonstrates this particularly clearly. In the early twentieth century it remained integrated into the ritual life of Tada and was periodically taken to the Niger for ritual washing. A work probably produced centuries earlier, and possibly within a different political and cultural environment, had thus acquired a new local identity. Such an object biography cautions against static cultural attribution. Metal sculptures could travel considerable distances through trade, gift exchange or political transfer and subsequently become incorporated into new religious and social contexts.

For the present sculpture, another aspect of the historical Tada figure is of particular significance. Both arms and parts of the legs of the medieval figure are missing, and its original action can therefore no longer be reconstructed with certainty. The surviving left elbow, directed upwards, indicates only that the arms once performed an action in front of the body. What the figure originally held, displayed or manipulated consequently remains one of the unresolved questions surrounding its iconography.

It is in this context that a comparative group assembled and studied over an extended period by Wolfgang Jaenicke becomes relevant. Several more completely preserved sculptures belonging to the same or a closely related seated type repeat not only the distinctive posture but also an unusual iconographic motif: the seated figure holds a snake in his hands. The reptile’s head is raised towards the face, while its elongated body is grasped by the second hand or passes around the hand and forearm. In some variants an additional horn-shaped attribute appears. The ornamented garment and small anthropomorphic hip mask likewise recur within the group.

The present sculpture illustrates this configuration with particular clarity. The position of the arms, only fragmentarily preserved on the historical Tada figure, here forms a coherent action: one arm raises the snake towards the face while the other hand controls its body. Face, hands and reptile form a compact iconographic unit. The comparative group thus raises the possibility of reconsidering the lost action of the medieval Tada figure.

Any such reconstruction must, however, remain hypothetical. The existence of formally related sculptures whose archaeological contexts and chronologies have not been sufficiently established does not prove that the medieval Tada figure originally held a snake. Suzanne Preston Blier has pointed out in discussion with Wolfgang Jaenicke that comparable examples might represent later repetitions or transformations of an already altered type. Their iconography cannot therefore simply be projected back onto the medieval sculpture.

It is precisely this uncertainty, however, that gives the group its art-historical relevance. If a number of individually differing examples combine the same unusual seated posture with related garments, comparable arm positions, an anthropomorphic hip mask and, above all, the recurring snake motif, the possibility must be considered that they preserve elements of an older and relatively stable iconographic prototype. At present, this can only be advanced as a working hypothesis. Its evaluation would require systematic comparison of the individual sculptures with regard to casting technique, alloy composition, corrosion, provenance, chronology and formal dependence. Only such an investigation could establish whether the group preserves elements of an earlier visual tradition or derives instead from more recent receptions of the famous Tada figure.

Terminological caution is therefore equally necessary. The traditional designation “Tsoede Bronzes” encompasses a heterogeneous body of human and animal representations which, according to current scholarship, cannot be assigned to a single homogeneous style and therefore should not automatically be attributed to a unified “Nupe school” or “Tada workshop.” For the present work, the designation “Seated Male Figure with Snake, Tada Type” is consequently preferable to a definitive cultural or regional attribution. The term “type” describes an observable formal and iconographic relationship without presupposing a place of manufacture that has yet to be demonstrated.

Within this type, the snake assumes particular significance. A precise religious interpretation of the motif is not presently possible. In different West African contexts, snakes may be associated with spiritual or political power, water, fertility, protection, or mediation between different spheres; without additional historical evidence, however, such broader symbolic associations cannot simply be transferred to the present sculpture. More revealing, at least initially, is the nature of the action itself. The seated man is not fighting the snake. There is no weapon, no visible struggle and no indication that the animal has been injured. Instead, the living reptile is held under control and its head brought immediately before the man’s face. The image therefore appears to concern not the defeat of an animal but rather the controlled engagement with a dangerous or symbolically charged force. Whether this action should be interpreted in ritual, political, initiatory or other religious terms must remain unresolved.

The significance of the present sculpture consequently extends beyond the quality of its modelling. Its asymmetrical seated posture, naturalistic conception of the body, ornamented hip garment, anthropomorphic hip mask and, above all, the snake held between the two hands connect it with a small and insufficiently studied group of works whose principal formal point of reference is the celebrated medieval seated figure from Tada. At the same time, the sculpture directs attention beyond the question of immediate stylistic attribution towards the possibility of longer-lived visual traditions and artistic connections across a broad region encompassing Ife, the Middle Niger, Idah, Owo and Benin.

The comparative group documented by Jaenicke thus offers an opportunity to consider the historical Tada figure not exclusively as an isolated masterpiece but in relation to the possible transmission of a figural type. Whether the snake already formed part of the iconography of the medieval prototype cannot presently be determined. The present sculpture nevertheless demonstrates the formal coherence of such a reconstruction. Its particular scholarly importance therefore lies less in providing a definitive solution to a lost iconography than in bringing into view a serial tradition whose systematic art-historical and scientific investigation may offer new insights into the transfer, transformation and continuity of visual forms within the Niger region.

Selected Literature

Blier, Suzanne Preston. Art and Risk in Ancient Yoruba: Ife History, Power, and Identity, c. 1300. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2015.

Blier, Suzanne Preston. The History of African Art. London: Thames & Hudson, 2023.

Drewal, Henry John, John Pemberton III, and Rowland Abiodun. Yoruba: Nine Centuries of African Art and Thought. New York: Center for African Art, 1989.

Eyo, Ekpo, and Frank Willett. Treasures of Ancient Nigeria. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1980.

Fraser, Douglas. “The Tsoede Bronzes and Owo Yoruba Art.” African Arts 8, no. 3 (1975): 30–35, 91.

Pogoson, Ohioma Ifounu. “Another Reconsideration of the Origin of the Tsoede Bronzes.” West African Journal of Archaeology 28, no. 2 (1998): 97–111.

Willett, Frank. Ife in the History of West African Sculpture. London: Thames & Hudson, 1967.

Willett, Frank. “Seated Figure: Yoruba, Tada, Nigeria, 13th–14th Century.” 1996.

Jaenicke, Wolfgang. “An Ife Style Bronze of the Seated Figure of Tada.” Galerie Wolfgang Jaenicke.

Jaenicke, Wolfgang. “Tada and Benin Hunter Figures.” Galerie Wolfgang Jaenicke, 31 May 2026.

Some of the information is generated by artificial intelligence and is based on published sources from the fields of ethnography, archaeology, and art history.

Inv. No MAZ26071

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