Footnotes

Frère Jean-Aurélien Cornet, a world specialist in Kuba and Ndengese art, wrote an unpublished study about this figure which we quote here at length –

The appearance of a new Ndengese statue is an event for historians of African art, as authentic statues of this style are rare: we know of only about ten of them. The most frequently published works belong to three categories.

The largest group is made up of male torsos; their proportions are more or less normal; the figure's two hands are spread out widely on the lower abdomen, above a particularly pronounced sex. The abundantly scarified group is of very high quality. Four pieces are worth mentioning: at the University of Zurich, at the Metropolitan Museum in New York, and two at the Tervuren Museum.

A second group is largely similar to the previous one, but the decision to lengthen the trunk considerably gives them a monumental appearance. This is most clearly evident in the figures in the Tervuren Museum, the Louvain-la-Neuve Museum and the Rautenstauch-Joest Museum in Cologne.

The third group is intriguing because of certain distinctive features; elongated body, absence of arms, elements for attachment at the shoulders: cavities or rings. Another element which makes the group even more enigmatic is the lower part terminating in three appendages (legs and sex?) attached to a block, which suggests that the objects did not normally rest on the ground. In addition to the figure in the Rockefeller collection in New York, there are two other examples, one which belonged to the Merton Simpson gallery in New York and the other in a Belgian collection.

The figure we are discussing here [the present lot] clearly belongs to the group of large statues, with the difference that it is a female. The only other published female figure belongs to the Tervuren Museum, but is in a style very different from that of the large statuary. Our figure can be described overall as a red-coloured female body, surmounted by a largely black head.

This head is particularly characteristic of the Ndengese style: triangular nose in clear relief, engraved eyes with indication of the eyelids, circular scarifications on the temples, lateral projection, at an acute angle, of the coiffure at the temples (an element imported from the Kuba), protruding mouth. The top has a cylindrical addition, like all the other statues in the same style, (sometimes, it curves back). This element represents the typical hairstyle of the notables of the tribe. We must emphasise the great aesthetic quality of this head, including the very clever play of scarifications on the nape and neck, part of which is highlighted by a red coating. The contrast between the two parts, head and trunk, is striking. If the details of the head are treated with the greatest care, the chest, arms, hands and back were carved with an adze whose marks remain visible, the arms and hands are more rudimentary. The numerous scarifications are however comparable to those of the head. Such a duality can be explained either by the collaboration of two different artists, or by the decision, frequent in African art, to concentrate all attention on the essential part which is the head, the rest of the body receiving less attention. The significance of the large Ndengese figures still remains in the realm of hypotheses. They are certainly reserved for the great men of the tribe, great chief or high-level notables. Perhaps they were used to sanctify tombs? It has also been proposed that they were used in ceremonies of transmission of power of the great chief [...]. The theory of the enthronement ritual undoubtedly comes from the comparison with their great Kuba neighbours, whose royal statues were long considered to have served this purpose, which is today contested. In addition, it would be necessary to explain the presence of the female statues. A third meaning could be sought, by analogy, among the Yaelima, other neighbours of the Ndengese, who still today keep objects of power, but which have nothing of a human form.

Another unresolved problem is that of the exact meaning of the scarifications. In the case of the Ndengese figures, they have sometimes been linked to the designs of the Kuba, but the plastic system is not the same and, in particular, the names are different.

The figure which is the subject of this study is not unknown. In the Soir Illustré of August 14, 1949, it appears among many objects of African art from the collection of the Viscount d'Ouvrier in Brussels. It appears in the famous Antwerp exhibition of 1937-1938, Tentoonstelling van Kongo-Kunst, as number 257; at the time it belonged to the G. De Hondt collection. A unique example in the prestigious family of large Ndengese statues, it deserves to enter fully into the history of Central African art.