Relief plaque showing a dignitary with drum and two attendants striking gongs

Royal Bronze-casting Guild (Igun Eronmwon)

Artist Unidentified

c. 1530-1570

Medium/TechniqueCopper alloy

DimensionsLength x width: 43.2 x 27.9 cm (17 x 11 in.)

Credit LineRobert Owen Lehman Collection

Accession numberL-G 7.32.2012

On View

On view

ClassificationsPlaques

Collections

Africa and Oceania

Description

This bronze plaque is part of a set of more than 800 that once decorated the pillars in the audience hall of the Oba, or king, of Benin. Three men play musical instruments in a procession through Benin City, the capital of the kingdom. In the center, a man wearing a leopard-tooth necklace and a warrior's bell at his chest plays a drum. His leather jerkin, worn over the torso to protect from arrows and sword thrusts, further underscores his role as a warrior. On either side, two men wearing helmets play gongs. On all three figures, the bells hanging from their waists would provide additional sound as they moved. Benin artists sometimes used hierarchical scale, where the most important person is largest. Here, the central figure is largest, indicating that he is the highest-ranking person in the composition.

Provenance16th century, commissioned by Oba Esigie (r. 1517-1550s) or his son Oba Orhogbua (r. 1550s-1570s), Royal Palace, Benin City; by descent to Oba Ovonramwen (Ovonramwen Nogbaisi, b. about 1857 – d. about 1914; r. 1888 - 1897); 1897, looted from the Royal Palace during the British military occupation of Benin, probably by Ernest Percy Stuart Roupell (b. 1870 - d. 1938), London; September 23, 1898, sold by Roupell to William Downing Webster (dealer; b. 1863 – d. 1913), London and Bicester, Oxfordshire, England [see note 1]; October 15, 1898, sold by W. D. Webster for £ 19 to Lt.-General Augustus Henry Pitt-Rivers (b. 1827 - d. 1900), Farnham, England; until the 1960s, kept at the Pitt-Rivers Museum, Farnham, and passed by descent within the family [see note]; 1970s, sold upon the dispersal of the collection [see note 2]. By 2011, Robert Owen Lehman, Rochester, NY; 2012, promised gift of Robert Owen Lehman to the MFA.

NOTES:
[1] According to Webster's stock book, held by the Museum of New Zealand, entry no. 5848. Roupell was the commanding officer of the Niger Coast Protectorate Force in Benin. Many thanks to MacKenzie Mallon for supplying this information. [2]The collection of the privately-owned Pitt-Rivers museum passed by descent through Augustus Henry Pitt-Rivers’s son Alexander Lane Fox Pitt-Rivers to his grandson, Captain George Pitt-Rivers (1890-1966) and his common law wife, Stella Howson-Clive (Pitt-Rivers). The museum closed in the 1960s and the collection was sold.