Maternity

Maternity
wooden sculpture representing a female figure holding a child
Congolese - Yombe
19th/20th C.
minor defects
Dimensões (altura x comprimento x largura) - 27 cm
Notes: Provenance: Collection of Engineer Elísio Romariz dos Santos Silva

Fig. 5 in the notes printed "A Escultura Tribal dos Povos Banto" updated version, from 1995, of the work with the title "A Escultura Negro-Africana Vista à Luz da Filosofia Banta", which the author presented in 1971, for the XXII Floral Games of Huambo Town Hall (former Nova Lisboa) - Angola, p. 12. Original work available at http://memoriaafrica.ua.pt/Library/ShowImage.aspx?q=/bchuambo/bchuambo-026&p=10, consulted on March 16, 2023 at 11:16.
Item number 1, mentioned in the notebook of the collector «Angola - Arte Negra, Relação e descrição das peças», identified in it as «Maternidade»: "Protective image (Ntadi), with supernatural strength (Nkissi); dedicated to the spirit Mumaza, to prevent the sterility of its owner and his family, called «ngudi ye muana masa". It is kept in the «Ngudi a nzo» (mother place), that is, the conjugal room of the head of the family, a secret and inviolable place of intimate life, where only the head of the family and the woman who accompanied him could enter, or whoever he authorized. The woman has colloidal tattoos, generically called «Nsamba» [...]. She has a pointed cap on her head, known as "N'sumba" and, over her breasts, a double cord with a large cylindrical bead, which only consecrated chiefs could have. The use of this bead is in disagreement with the type of cap, which is different from the «Mpu», exclusive to the families of consecrated chiefs. The tattoo, the cap and the bead are the 2nd degree formal elements that place the image in the ontological order of the living, but do not individualize it. [...] Purchased in 1966, in exchange for a Muana Pwó mask, of very good quality, purchased in 1965 in the Lovua region, Luanda, from [...] Rodrigo Dinis, an employee of the C.F.B, in Lobito. He who had painted the statuette in Repe black ink (water ink) and informed that it had been taken to Portugal at the end of the 19th century by his uncle José Caetano Correia Henrique, who was in service in Angola as an army officer" - Cf. Bibliography referred to by collector: (possibly) VERLY, Robert - "Les mintadi: la statuaire de pierre du Bas-Congo (Bamboma-Mussurungo)". Louvain: Revue Zaïre, 1955; JAHN, Janheinz - "Muntu: African Culture and the Western World". Paris: editions du Seuil, 1961; and his article SILVA, Elísio Romariz dos Santos - "A Escultura Negro Africana Vista à Luz da Filosofia Banta" published in "Boletim Cultural do Huambo", nº 26. Nova Lisboa [Huambo]: Serviços Culturais do Município de Nova Lisboa [Huambo], 1971, pp. 11-20, available in http://memoria-africa.ua.pt/Library/ShowImage.aspx?q=/BCHuambo/BCHuambo-026&p=10, consulted the 11 de Março de 2023 às 14:30. Vd. «Maternity sculptures in LAGAMMA, Alisa - "Kongo - Power and Majesty". New Haven: Yale University Press, 2015, pp. 40-41, 70-71 and 180-181, figs. 15, 38 and 122; and in LEHUARD, Raoul - "Les Phemba du mayombe - Collection Arts D'Afrique Noire". Arnouville: Arts d'Afrique Noire, 1977, pp. 47, 77 and 119, nºs 10 and 26. "[...] these maternities - in search of the idealized representation of female beauty - sometimes of excellent craftsmanship, were carved in large numbers on the coast of Loango and Cabinda, in the second half of the 19th century, on the occasion of a new popular cult of «nkisi» - known as «mpemba» - favorable for the treatment of gynecological problems" - cf. and vd. the catalog "Escultura Angolana - Memorial de Culturas". Lisboa: Museu Nacional de Etnologia, 1994, p. 66, nº 12.
A similar example is part of the collection of the Museu Nacional de de Etnologia, with the number AO.907 - vd. http://www.matriznet.dgpc.pt/MatrizNet/Objectos/ObjectosConsultar.aspx?IdReg=1125006, consultado a 18.08.2023 às 12:03.