Figurative Bronze, Fon-related Benin/Togo Bronze, incl stand This expressive bronze depicts a highly stylized human figure seated on an elaborate chair. The small head, turned slightly to one side, rises from an elongated neck. The face is strongly abstracted, with prominent eyes, a projecting nose and mouth, and incised linear details. A high coiffure or headdress crowns the head. The slender arms extend outward from the body. In one hand the figure holds a small cup or vessel, an attribute that may suggest an act of offering, libation, or ceremonial participation. The opposite arm is extended forward. The body is enveloped by a broad, almost trapezoidal garment or apron, its surface richly articulated with incised and relief decoration. Large oval and circular fields are combined with curving outlines and finely punched patterns, giving the otherwise planar surface a particularly dense ornamental character. The figure is seated on a tall, highly stylized chair whose elongated supports descend behind the body and terminate in pronounced scroll-like forms at ground level. Seating and stools could carry associations of status and authority in the visual culture of Dahomey; in known asen imagery, particular types of seats may also contribute to the identification or characterization of the person commemorated. Here, the unusually prominent chair lends the composition a distinctly representative and ceremonial quality. The bronze has a dark reddish-brown patina with areas of oxidation and wear. Its modelling combines fully three-dimensional elements with broad, almost two-dimensional surfaces. Exaggerated proportions, the contrast between the slender limbs and expansive decorated garment, and the sweeping contours of the chair give the work a highly individual and expressive sculptural presence. The object may be considered in the broader context of Fon metalwork and, more cautiously, in relation to the asen tradition of the former Kingdom of Dahomey, in present-day Benin and adjacent areas. Asen functioned as commemorative altars through which relationships between the living and the deceased were maintained; their figurative tableaux could refer to the identity, status and biography of the person commemorated. (The Metropolitan Museum of Art) The present work, however, differs considerably from the canonical asen format, typically organized around an iron staff supporting a figurative platform. Its concentration on a single, prominently seated figure and its execution in cast bronze therefore argue against an unqualified identification as an asen. It is more appropriately described as Fon-related, while acknowledging formal and iconographic connections with the wider commemorative and courtly arts of Dahomey. Asen production itself was not entirely restricted to iron: workshops associated with Abomey are documented as also having worked in brass. Selected literature Edna G. Bay, Asen: Iron Altars of the Fon People of Benin, exh. cat., Emory University Museum of Art and Archaeology, Atlanta, 1985. Edna G. Bay, “On Ouidah Asen,” African Arts, vol. 40, no. 1, Spring 2007, pp. 6–8. Edna G. Bay, Asen, Ancestors, and Vodun: Tracing Change in African Art, University of Illinois Press, Urbana and Chicago, 2008. Suzanne Preston Blier, Asen: mémoires de fer forgé. Art vodun du Danhomè dans les collections du Musée Barbier-Mueller, Musée Barbier-Mueller / Ides et Calendes, Geneva/Lausanne, 2018. Suzanne Preston Blier, “Forging Memory in Iron: Asen Arts of Dahomey,” Tribal Art, 2018, pp. 106–113. Informant Wassiou 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. MAZ272209