Cleveland Museum of Art

Mother-and-Child Figure

Date

late 1800s–early 1900s

Medium

Wood, glass beads, upholstery studs, natural fiber, and pigment

Culture

Africa, Central Africa, Democratic Republic of Congo, Pende-style maker

Department

African Art

Institution

Cleveland Museum of Art

Wearing an elaborate lobed headdress and a beaded waistbelt, and having filed teeth and red-powdered skin, this maternity figure seems to have once carried an ax and a cup, wooden imitations of the two most important chiefly attributes. Perhaps together with a male counterpart, it was secretly kept inside the ritual house, serving as a guardian of the chief’s treasure. Its style places it in the westernmost corner of Pendeland, between the Lutshima and Kwilu rivers. Eastern Pende carvers also once made larger mother-and-child sculptures to adorn the tops of chiefs' ritual houses.

The authoritative record is held by Cleveland Museum of Art. LinkedCulture surfaces this object and its connections; it does not alter institutional metadata.