Krinjabo statuette, Ivory Coast Terracotta H.... - Lot 8 - De Baecque et Associés

Lot 8
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Result : 1 300EUR
Krinjabo statuette, Ivory Coast Terracotta H.... - Lot 8 - De Baecque et Associés
Krinjabo statuette, Ivory Coast Terracotta H. 31,5 cm Provenance : Renaud Vanuxem Gallery, Paris Acquired from the latter by the current owner, Belgian private collection It was Guillaume Bosman, after a visit to Ashanti-Angi country, who in his account "Voyage de Guinée" (French translation Utrecht, 1705), gave us the first information on the use of krinjabo statuettes: "In Axim and elsewhere, several statues made of earth are placed on the graves, which are washed one year later...". Louis Tauxier, in his 1932 book, indicates these works as "another category of deities... The Ma, dead ancestors, and at the same time small clay statuettes representing them. The agnis of the Sanwi, of course, believe in the immortality of the spiritual principle. An individual never actually dies. Adding "they were occasionally carried dishes of food that the deceased was supposed to come and eat during the night." If the statuettes dedicated to the ancestors, honoring the deceased, overhung the tombs, they were however fashioned and reserved for a restricted number of members of society, including: the royal family of Auokofouè, the seventeen free families, who died at an advanced age or had distinguished themselves by some merit within society. Belonging in all its aspects to the funerary inventory, dedicated to the cult of the ancestors, it appeared in the Sanwi as the only material support of the "vital breath" receptacle of the disembodied soul, as witnessed by this example by its significant gesture projecting its lips to the edge of an instrument, to blow. The first material used to make them was a whitish clay, which was then dried and dyed black after being shaped and fired.
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