At circa 950 years, this is the oldest figure in the exhibition, considered a dwarf because of the deformation of its head and spine and the shortening of its forearms. It may also be a woman, which Luschan believes to be true of a comparable object in Vienna. (The only comparable object we know of can be found in that city's Museum of Ethnology, though at 35cm tall, our dwarf is much smaller than that one.)
Stylistically, this object poses many questions. The ears - which usually enable easy stylistic classification - and other facial characteristics refer, if anything, to Ife, perhaps even to Nok, while the body is more closely related to Benin. The other dwarf in this exhibition is almost contemporaneous to this one, created only a little bit later. That figure, however, can be clearly attributed to Benin, a fact which only further confuses the question of where the cast-bronze tradition originated. The theory that it was grounded in Ife and only later adopted in Benin in the 14 th century is no longer tenable. Instead, it seems more and more likely that the two styles evolved simultaneously -perhaps both in Benin.
This belief is supported by the Ine of the bronze caster guild, Chief K. Osarhenhen Inneh: in a lecture he gave on 10 May 2008 as part of the Benin - Kings and Rituals symposium in the Museum of Ethnology in Vienna, he discussed his organisation's by now 1,000-year-old tradition.
Cp.:
Felix von LUSCHAN: Die Altertümer von Benin, Band 1, Berlin 1919, S. 299/ 300.
Philip J. C. DARK: An introduction to Benin art and technology, Oxford 1973, S. 97.
Paula Girshick BEN-AMOS: The art of Benin, London 1995, S. 43.
Barbara PLANKENSTEINER (Hg.): Benin. Könige und Rituale. Höfische Kunst aus Nigeria, Wien 2007, S. 308 - 311.
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