Lot Essay
When William Fagg catalogued this fragment he wrote:
The research which has led to the firm identification of this beautiful head as the work of the presumed master of the first plaques at the beginning of the Middle Period is summarised below. (The Master's works-about 25 in number-are known by the background diaper pattern which is replaced on all other plaques by a quatrefoil pattern; the probability that he was the first plaque master rests in part on this fact).
The whole corpus of Benin bronzes has been carefully surveyed to eliminate the possibiilty that the head could have been cut from any other kind of object than the large rectangular plaques whose first appearance (probably between 1525 and 1550) marks the opening of the Middle Period.
The depth of the relief from the front surface to the tip of the nose is only one inch (2.5cm.). The plaque was clearly one of the lower-relief examples, a category which is found to comprise most of those which by common consent show high imaginative qualities (including those by the Masters of the Circled Cross, the Leopard Hunt, the Engraved Helmets, etc.), and which is set apart from the deeper-relief plaques which in general exhibit an advanced stage of stereotyping. While one should not apply such tendencies (rather than rules) too deterministically, it is at least highly probable that the plaque from which this fragment was taken dates from between 1525 and 1475, that is in the period when the more original masters are generally thought to have flourished.
The head appears, remarkably enough, to be the largest to be found on any of the plaques (7in. or 18cm. high). It would take up fully a third of the total height of even the largest of the plaques-and the figures never extend to the full height of the plaques. Now in Benin canons of proportion in the Middle Period, the head is to the body as 1:3. It follows that this head and its body could not possibly be accommodated on the largest plaques.
The solution is simple: the figure must have been made up of two more or less square plaques -- a practice only known to have been employed by one plaque master, the Master of the Circled Cross. There are two such pairs of plaques known, regrettably split between four museums: of one pair, representing a Portuguese dignitary, the upper portion is in the Museum of Mankind, the lower in the Vienna Museum für Völkerkunde (Fagg, 1963, pl.20). The potential height of two butted plaques of this kind is about 30in. (75cm.) and it is clear that this is ample space for our head and its lost body. This coincides with the identification arrived at more simply, if less conclusively, by intuition, viz. that the face is by the Master of the Circled Cross. It is certainly the largest known of all his faces.
The research which has led to the firm identification of this beautiful head as the work of the presumed master of the first plaques at the beginning of the Middle Period is summarised below. (The Master's works-about 25 in number-are known by the background diaper pattern which is replaced on all other plaques by a quatrefoil pattern; the probability that he was the first plaque master rests in part on this fact).
The whole corpus of Benin bronzes has been carefully surveyed to eliminate the possibiilty that the head could have been cut from any other kind of object than the large rectangular plaques whose first appearance (probably between 1525 and 1550) marks the opening of the Middle Period.
The depth of the relief from the front surface to the tip of the nose is only one inch (2.5cm.). The plaque was clearly one of the lower-relief examples, a category which is found to comprise most of those which by common consent show high imaginative qualities (including those by the Masters of the Circled Cross, the Leopard Hunt, the Engraved Helmets, etc.), and which is set apart from the deeper-relief plaques which in general exhibit an advanced stage of stereotyping. While one should not apply such tendencies (rather than rules) too deterministically, it is at least highly probable that the plaque from which this fragment was taken dates from between 1525 and 1475, that is in the period when the more original masters are generally thought to have flourished.
The head appears, remarkably enough, to be the largest to be found on any of the plaques (7in. or 18cm. high). It would take up fully a third of the total height of even the largest of the plaques-and the figures never extend to the full height of the plaques. Now in Benin canons of proportion in the Middle Period, the head is to the body as 1:3. It follows that this head and its body could not possibly be accommodated on the largest plaques.
The solution is simple: the figure must have been made up of two more or less square plaques -- a practice only known to have been employed by one plaque master, the Master of the Circled Cross. There are two such pairs of plaques known, regrettably split between four museums: of one pair, representing a Portuguese dignitary, the upper portion is in the Museum of Mankind, the lower in the Vienna Museum für Völkerkunde (Fagg, 1963, pl.20). The potential height of two butted plaques of this kind is about 30in. (75cm.) and it is clear that this is ample space for our head and its lost body. This coincides with the identification arrived at more simply, if less conclusively, by intuition, viz. that the face is by the Master of the Circled Cross. It is certainly the largest known of all his faces.