Portraits of African Leadership

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In Africa, sculptural depictions of rulers and ancestral heroes have served a variety of political and spiritual functions. Passed down along dynastic lines or commissioned by current rulers, such images were often displayed as evidence of pedigree to justify and consolidate power, and sometimes served as conduits for communication between the ancestors and their living successors. Rulers often utilized the medium of portraiture to present themselves to their subjects, frequently in idealized terms that conveyed their physical, intellectual, and spiritual superiority. Often the very act of commissioning a portrait was an indication of the ruler's power and dynastic legitimacy that demonstrated the individual's control over important economic and artistic resources. In some political traditions, it also showed that a ruler had undergone ritual processes of investiture that revealed his or her underlying character and ultimate destiny—features that could then be realized in visual form. Some types of portraiture were not figural at all but evoked the subject metaphorically by portraying a set of personal attributes in visual form.

Citation for this page

Bortolot, Alexander Ives. "Portraits of African Leadership". In Timeline of Art History. New York: The Metropolitan Museum of Art, 2000–. http://www.metmuseum.org/toah/hd/aprt/hd_aprt.htm (October 2003)

Suggested Further Reading(s) Find these books in a library

Bastin, Marie-Louise. La sculpture tshokwe. Paris: Chaffin, 1982.
Ben-Amos, Paula Girshick. Art, Innovation, and Politics in Eighteenth-Century Benin. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1999.
Blier, Suzanne. "King Glele of Danhomé" (Parts I & II). African Arts 23, no. 4 (1991), pp. 42–53; 24, no. 1 (1991), pp. 44–55.
Borgatti, Jean M., and Richard Brilliant. Likeness and Beyond: Portraits from Africa and the World. Exhibition catalogue. New York: Center for African Art, 1990.
Maurer, Evan M., and Allen F. Roberts. Tabwa: The Rising of a New Moon, a Century of Tabwa Art. Exhibition catalogue. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Museum of Art, 1985.
Thompson, Robert Farris, and Joseph Cornet. The Four Moments of the Sun: Kongo Art in Two Worlds. Exhibition catalogue. Washington, D.C.: National Gallery of Art, 1981.

Suggested Web Link(s)

Four Museums in Cameroon

Learn more on www.metmuseum.org

Arts of Africa: Features & Exhibitions; Permanent Collection; Online Resources (links); Books in the Met Store