Collection Highlights

The capital of the Benin Kingdom of southern Nigeria, Benin City witnessed a remarkable flowering of the arts from about 1400 to 1900. Artisans achieved a high level of technical and artistic sophistication in lost-wax casting of bronze, a material whose use was restricted to royalty. This early 17th-century Benin bronze head depicts a deceased divine king ( oba ) wearing a ritual headdress of coral beads. Commissioned by royal descendants, effigy heads like this one were placed on raised earthen ancestral altars. Carved ivory tusks, wooden rattle staffs, bronze bells, and other objects displayed on the altars commemorate the power and the presence of past rulers.

The Cleveland Museum of Art, Dudley P. Allen Fund, 38.6K