A MAHONGWE RELIQUARY FIGURE

Description:

Gabon, Africa
H. 33 cm (o.S.)
The reliquary figures of the Mahongwe and Kota are witnesses to an ancestor cult that the Catholic missions tried to suppress at an early stage. The reliquary figures were guardians of the coffins containing the bones of the ancestors. The upper part of the figure, which is still preserved, is covered with ornate lamellar decoration in sheet brass. The back is embossed with diamond-shaped ornamentation. The rare Mahongwe and Kota reliquaries found their way into European collections early on and aroused the interest of many artists of the early 20th century due to the strong abstraction of the depiction.
From an important Southern German private collection, according to the owner originally acquired in the 1950s
from the collection of Ernst Heinrich, Stuttgart - Small restoration/fixation in the narrow lower area of the head, where the wooden base was erroded and on the back, where the metal stripes are attached