Page 183 - Art In The Age Of Exploration (Great Section on Chinese Art Ming Dynasty)

in the British Museum, on loan from Her Majesty
Queen Elizabeth n. These are probably works
from the nineteenth century, but they may have
been carved as substitutes for two older pieces
that were damaged and subsequently destroyed;
the superb head in the Museum fur Volkerkunde
in Vienna could be the only fragment remaining
of these earlier pieces.
The two leopards in the Lagos museum, which
Eyo and Willett (1980, 81-82) have assigned to
the middle of the sixteenth century, are con-
sidered by William Fagg to be among the most
technically perfect works of Benin metalcraft
(Elisofon and Fagg 1958, 171-172).
The imposing bodies in a watchful, proud pose,
summarized with extraordinary success, are made
up of muscular masses that vibrate and ripple
under the smooth skin, evoking the beasts' capac-
ity for sudden leaps. The rendering of the spotted
pelt with concentric circles on a finely stippled
ground does not interfere with the steady, precise
modeling of the curves; on the contrary, the
refined surface decoration seems to complement
the superb structural balance.
The sculptures' plastic animation is concen-
trated in their proudly lifted heads. The strong
canine teeth convey aggression. Their volumes
are harmoniously integrated with the expressive
head despite the fact that the different elements of
the work are faithful to the canons of Benin sculp-
ture. Note also the humanlike eyes with incised
pupils, the beautifully molded ears decorated like
precious leaves, the stiff whiskers in relief, similar
in shape to the half-open mouth but pointing in
the opposite direction: these are all signs of a
deliberate search for a compositional balance that
seems to have been the aim of the maker of these
superb monumental representations of the power
oftheOba.of the Oba E.B.

66

MASK

i6th century
ivory, copper, and iron
24 9y 2)
(
references: Fagg 1957; Forman and Dark 1960, 25;
Fagg 1963; Fagg 1968; Willett 1971, 108, 109; Dark
1973, 97; McLeod 1980, 133; Koloss 1982; Blackmun
1991, 59-60
The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, the
Michael C. Rockefeller Memorial Collection, Gift of face. The two finest masks were taken by Sir Linden Museum in Stuttgart (Koloss 1982, A8).
Nelson A. Rockefeller, 1972 Ralph Moor, civil head of the expedition, and sub- The four masks, according to Fagg, "should be
sequently entered the Seligman Collection: one is regarded as contemporary and of the first half of
Among the spoils of the conquered city of Benin now in the Metropolitan Museum of Art (exhi- the sixteenth century"; thus they belong to the
in 1897, the members of the British punitive bited here), the other in the Museum of Mankind early period of Benin art. Philip Dark (1973, 97)
expedition found in the Oba's bedchamber a in London (McLeod 1980,133). Two others were also believes that the four ivories are "relatively
group of ivory masks that are iconographically taken by other officers and are now in the Seattle contemporary"; he suggests that it is reasonable
similar to one another and represent a human Museum of Art (Fagg 1968, no. 141) and the to assign the London and New York pieces to the

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