relief, platta, Ama

Bronze plaque representing a musician

When the Portuguese first made contact with the power of Benin in 1472, and first visited the great city itself in about 1485, they found flourishing there an art of bronzecasting, derived from an older tradition at Ife in Yorubaland, wich was of great beaty and sensitivity. Bronze was in short supply and treated as precious metal, but the portugese were soon able to remedy that, importing enough bronze in the sixteenth century to enable the Oba to clothe the pillars of his most impressive courtyard in bronze reliefs- the rectangular form of which seems to have been the only major portuguese contribution to the art. Enough plaques survice-about 1000-to have fitted out about 45 pillars. At this point we may regard the Early Period as giving place to the Middle or Classical Period, wich lasted for a century or more until about 1650. The art had reched a plateau of "acceptance"-the criterion of classicism-which is our chief guide in identifying the other works of the period.
This fine example of a single-figure plaque shows a chief (as we know from his beaded collar) playing on a small calabash rattle covered in beaded net, his right middle finger tucked into the central hole. Action, in one of the royal ceremonies, is here representented in a rather static manner. Yet the essential dignity of all works of the middle Period is the dominant effect wich the bronze projects from the sixteenth century into our own day.

By William Fagg. The Georg von Békésy Collection. Page 170-171.