TERA Gallery - African Art and Antiquities

"Altering The Way You View The World Of Art"
Type of Object:     
    Kongo Crucifix

    This important, much used, museum quality piece is
    an exceptionally rare work of art.

    Although most Americans are comfortable with the
    idea of Muslim Africans in the slave trade period, they
    seem much less comfortable with Christian Africans.  
    A literate elite, drawing partially in European clothes,
    bearing Portuguese names, and professing
    Catholicism seem somehow out of place in the
    popular image of precolonial Africa.  (John K.
    Thornton.  The Kongolese Saint Anthony [UK:
    Cambridge University Press, 1998], 1).

    This early, exquisitely cast Christian relic exhibits the
    iconography, casting quality, tool signatures, minute
    surface imperfections (known as 'blow holes', created
    from bubbles in the molten metal during the casting
    process), refined metal content and distinct lack of
    'pot metal' alloys that testify to an early period of
    creation.

    Based on European prototypes, early Kongo
    renditions of this subject depict Christ with
    naturalistically modeled arms, legs, and torso that
    emphasize musculature whereas later examples of
    this style suggest a more profound assimilation of the
    cross with local idioms.

    In this work, Christ's facial features and hair are that of
    a Kongolese subject. His feet are flattened and are
    joined into a single five-toed limb, which, according to
    interpretations of Kongo gestures, affords heightened
    spiritual power. The large protruding oval eyes, a
    common motif in Kongo art, represent the
    supernatural vision of a human who is possessed by
    an ancestor or deity.

    Below Christ and above his shoulders are three small,
    highly stylized orant (praying figures) whose role and
    identities are thought to be mourners, ancestors,
    angels, saints or even apostles. Considered an
    emblem of spiritual authority and power, the Christian
    cross was integrated into Kongo ancestral cults and
    burial rituals, and was believed to contain magical
    protective properties that could intervene in matters
    ranging from illness and fertility to rainfall.


Ethnic Group:       
    Kongo Peoples & People of Angola



Country of Origin:          
    Democratic Republic of the Congo


Material:          
    Brass

Deminsions:
    10"

Reference:                  
    Please visit the TERA Gallery Reading Room.   This
    object is currently being studied.