青銅の頭部 - Idia - ベナン - Nigeria

This remarkable pair of almost identical cast figures representing the Iyoba Idia constitutes an exceptional survival within the corpus of Benin court art. Both sculptures originate from the same private collection and display such close correspondences in conception, proportions, modelling and detail that they appear to have been conceived as a pair and were very possibly produced within the same workshop, perhaps even by the same highly accomplished caster.

The female figure belongs to the iconographic tradition of the Iyoba, or Queen Mother, one of the most important titleholders at the court of Benin. The institution of the Iyoba is traditionally associated with Idia, mother of Oba Esigie (r. c. 1504–1550), whose political, military and ritual support of her son established her as one of the most celebrated women in the history of the kingdom. Her image subsequently became a prototype for representations of royal motherhood and female authority in Benin court art.

The Iyoba occupied an exceptional position within the political and spiritual hierarchy of the kingdom. Her protection of the person and well-being of the Oba was understood more broadly as contributing to the security, continuity and prosperity of Benin itself. After her death, a commemorative altar was established within the palace, furnished with cast-brass and ivory sculptures through which her memory was perpetuated and ritual communication with the ancestral realm maintained.

The survival of the present figures as a pair is particularly significant. Pairing and symmetrical repetition are well documented within the artistic and ritual traditions of Benin. Philip J. C. Dark noted the pronounced tendency of Benin artists to produce objects in pairs, while the celebrated photograph taken by Cyril Punch in the royal palace in 1891, before the British invasion of 1897, records closely related cast heads and other ritual objects arranged symmetrically upon an ancestral altar.

Such repetition should not necessarily be understood as representing two separate individuals. Within the highly ordered visual language of Benin court art, duplication and symmetry may instead have reinforced the presence, status and ritual potency of the represented figure while establishing the visual equilibrium characteristic of royal altar ensembles.

A particularly important parallel is provided by the celebrated sixteenth-century ivory pendant masks associated with Queen Mother Idia. The example in the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, and its almost identical counterpart in the British Museum, London, demonstrate that closely corresponding representations of the Iyoba could indeed be conceived as related royal commissions.

Felicity Bodenstein has further emphasized that the five surviving masks associated with Idia should be understood not simply as independent representations, but as a “multiple”: a group originally conceived to function together and probably produced within the same workshop, perhaps even by the same hand. More broadly, she identifies repetition and the multiplication of closely related models as fundamental characteristics of the commemorative and religious practices of the Benin court.

Seen in this context, the present sculptures acquire an importance extending beyond the individual quality of either figure. Their common provenance and extraordinary formal correspondence preserve evidence of the original logic of repetition, symmetry and ritual amplification that governed the arrangement of sculpture upon Benin royal and ancestral altars.

At the end of the photographic sequence, a Hommage to Paul Delvaux brings the enigmatic pictorial world of the Belgian artist into dialogue with one of the present figures attributed to Iyoba Idia.

The composition draws upon some of the defining motifs of Delvaux’s work: the remote and enigmatic female figure, classical architecture, deserted squares, nocturnal light and the distant steam locomotive. Together, these elements create a suspended realm between dream, memory and reality.

Within this imagined setting, the monumental Benin figure becomes the counterpart to the young woman characteristic of Delvaux’s pictorial universe. Their juxtaposition establishes the central tension of the composition. The young woman is physically present yet psychologically distant and unattainable, an ambiguity fundamental to Delvaux’s representations of women. Opposite her, the Iyoba appears as a concentrated embodiment of dignity, authority and remembrance. Youth and ancestry, desire and authority, transience and permanence are brought into a silent dialogue.

Different historical and cultural temporalities are deliberately interwoven. Classical European architecture, the railway as an emblem of modernity, and the royal imagery of Benin coexist within a single imaginary space. The Hommage is therefore conceived less as a reconstruction of a particular work by Delvaux than as a free continuation of his surrealist method: objects, cultures and historical periods normally separated by geography and time encounter one another within a new poetic reality.

Literature:

Philip J. C. Dark, An Introduction to Benin Art and Technology, Oxford, Clarendon Press, 1973.

Kate Ezra, Royal Art of Benin: The Perls Collection in the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, 1992.

Felicity Bodenstein, “Cinq masques de l’Iyoba Idia du royaume de Bénin : vies sociales et trajectoires d’un objet multiple,” Perspective, 2, 2019, pp. 227–238.

The price is without the price for the TL analysis but can be done within four weeks for 350,- Euro.

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

Invt. No. MAZ22200

Height: 51 cm / 51 cm
Weight: 4.1 kg / 4,1 kg

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