Panchronia

Ife and Benin bronzes

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c. 1100 – 1897 · Africa · sculpture · origin: Ile-Ife, Nigeria

Brass heads and plaques: Ife naturalism and Benin's court chronicle in metal

Ife and Benin bronzes
Unknown author · CC BY 3.0 · Wikimedia Commons

How to recognise it

Why it emerged

The sacred kings of Ife (Oni) and Benin (Oba) kept casters at court: heads and plaques served ancestor cults and dynastic glory, while copper arrived across the Sahara and later from the Portuguese.

Examples

Ife Headc. 1300A brass royal head whose naturalism overturned European myths about African artBenin Bronzesc. 1500–1897Thousands of plaques and heads looted by the British from the Oba's palace in 1897; a restitution symbolBenin ivory mask (Queen Mother Idia)c. 1520An ivory portrait of Queen Mother Idia; it became the emblem of FESTAC '77

More in this style

Meanwhile elsewhere

Wikipedia (English)

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