SOUTHERN NIGERIA.
Artists of the Benin Kingdom were well known for working in many materials, particularly brass, wood, and ivory. They were famous for their bas-relief sculptures, particularly plaques, and life-size head sculptures. The plaques typically portrayed historical events, and the heads were often naturalistic and life size. This brass plaque is showing the Oba of Benin with attendants, 16th century.
Excavations at Benin City have revealed that it was already flourishing around 1200–1300 CE. When the Portuguese arrived in Benin, Nigeria, in the 15th century, they quickly started trading brass and copper for pepper, cloth, ivory, and slaves.
The rulers of Benin fought their neighbors for control to the supply of goods which could be traded to the Europeans on the coast. The king himself was in charge of trading slaves, ivory, and other important goods so that all the profit went to support his court and government. Other merchants could only trade with the king’s permission. To prevent unauthorized trading, Europeans were seldom allowed to travel inland or visit Benin city.
The sculpture is an image of a Portuguese soldier. He wears a typical 16th-century European costume, with steel helmet and sword, and he carries a flintlock gun. Guns were new to the people of West Africa when the Portuguese arrived. So, Africans traded them from Europeans and learned to make them for themselves, to help them in their wars against peoples who still only had hand weapons or bows and arrows. Sometimes the king of Benin even employed Portuguese soldiers, like this man, to fight as mercenaries in his wars. Figures of Europeans such as this Portuguese soldier were kept on royal altars or on the roof of the royal palace in Benin city.
In the picture: Aiguobasinwin Ovonramwen, Eweka II (died February 1933) was the Oba of Benin from 1914 to 1933.
https://www.metmuseum.org/.../2021/benin-court-art-legacy
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