Magnificent large Oba head - Yoruba - Nigeria (No reserve price)

The Kingdom of Benin City, in the south of Nigeria, was one of the most powerful empires in Africa. The royal city is said to have been founded by a prince from the neighboring city of Ifé around the 13th century, before contact with Portuguese colonizers from the 15th century, followed by trade exchanges and attempts at Christianization. Benin City would be sacked by the English in 1897. The king of Benin was the Oba, who was glorified by a highly developed court art, of which these leopards carved with the lost-wax casting technique and cast in bronze (an alloy of copper and lead) are among the most representative elements. The leopard symbolically held among animals the same place as the Oba among his subjects. The Kingdom of Benin is also famous for its bronze heads of the Oba, its sculptures of court dwarfs, of European soldiers, its carved ivory tusks, and above all the bronze plaques that adorned the Oba’s palace.