A SUPERB MADAGASCAR MATERNITY FIGURE, standing with the legs slightly flexed and the slender arms carved free of the body, holding an object in the right hand, the coiffure dressed as a cluster of nodules with central truncated projection, the child at her back with pointed face, the arms holding the mother's breasts, the legs about her waist, minor deficiences and weathered surface, in the Sakalava style

Details
A SUPERB MADAGASCAR MATERNITY FIGURE, standing with the legs slightly flexed and the slender arms carved free of the body, holding an object in the right hand, the coiffure dressed as a cluster of nodules with central truncated projection, the child at her back with pointed face, the arms holding the mother's breasts, the legs about her waist, minor deficiences and weathered surface, in the Sakalava style
93cm. high
Exhibited
New York, 1980, ill. no. 7

Lot Essay

John Mack (1986, pp. 86-92), illustrates an almost identical figure in the Musée d'Art et d'Archéologie, Antananarivo, Madagascar, from a Vezo tomb. He writes that these sculptures isolate and honour individuals, relatives as opposed to the community of ancestors, and observes that the classic form associated with the older tombs is a single naked figure.

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