Lot 63 Dα

This rare mask, which has only recently come to light, can be added to a very small corpus discussed by Constantine Petridis in Luluwa: Central African Art between Heaven and Earth, (Brussels, 2018, pp.191-197). The corpus is distinguished by its slender form, concave eye sockets, saw-toothed superstructure and minimal painted surface ornament. Only one of these masks has its precise origin recorded. It is today in the Museum am Rothenbaum/Kulturen und Künste der Welt in Hamburg and was collected by Leo Frobenius in 1905 in the village of Matama from the Baqua Kadiobo (in the southern Luluwa region). Frobenius recorded that the mask was called Muschiani (museum accession number 5472:06, illustrated in von Sydow, E., Afrikanische Plastik, Berlin, 1954, pl.85A). Petridis illustrates two other masks from this corpus in private collections; the first, now in the collection of Udo and Wally Horstmann, was formerly in the collection of the Musée des Pères de Scheut in Brussels, and the second now in a private collection had passed through the hands of a number of well-known western collectors and dealers, the first of whom was Denise and Jacques Schwob in Belgium (op.cit. pp.196-7, figs.170 and 171).

A further group of related masks, similar in style to the three discussed above, was collected by Albert Maesen for the RMCA in the village of Tshibombi, and according to Maesen, were carved by Ntumba Tshasuma of the Bakwa Kasaanzu subgroup, who died in 1978. They are wider in style than the earlier slender group. Other masks apparently also by Ntumba Tshasuma were collected by Paul Timmermans (op. cit. pp.198-99, figs.173-175).

The style of the present lot clearly indicates its closer affinities with the earlier corpus to which this newly-discovered mask can now be added.