FEATURE VIOLENCE AGAINST PEOPLE Representations sculpted on Loango ivories are not just neutral reflections commentary on his environment can be detected. The tone may be humorous but it may be one of protest as well. The latter appears most clearly when the imagery involves the abuses of slavery. There are many scenes of Africans taken prisoner and slaves who are linked together are often seen as part of depictions of commercial caravans transporting Africans supervising them. Scenes that depict slavery may depict one or more slaves being subjected traders (main scene in fig. 4). The National Museum of Ethnology in Leiden has an example of a tusk on which a variety of atrocities being perpetrated on slaves is depicted, at the conclusion of which is a shocking scenes probably intended to deplore the practice of slavery and its disastrous in Europe above all as luxury objects, appreciated for the labor involved displayed as precious ornaments prominent in the interior décor. Some researchers hold that the scenes of violence and trouble fulfilled a desire their continued influence and control over it and its people. This could explain why the subject of slavery is one of the main iconographic themes on Loango ivories. There is also the consideration that, within the limits of the creative possibilities and allowable parameters, an oppressed the oppressor by expressing itself through concealed humor and satire (see Lips, 1983). As has already been discussed, it is unlikely that the meaning of the scenes in terms of content was the same for the craftsman and the buyer. The latter often lacked the knowledge to understand much of the humor and criticism, much less to be able to read the pieces correctly. meet the demand of the buyer through a kind of the silent protest in which the artist reflected the consequences of the presence of that selfsame 126 of daily life. When the scenes are analyzed in detail, the artist’s with chains, ropes, or steel neckbands (figs. 16 and 17). These merchandise by means of porters, with Europeans or other to acts of physical violence by merchants, seamen, or slave scene of the hanging of one of them. The artists who sculpted these consequences. Whether or not the buyers of these tusks understood this condemnation remains to be seen. Tusks were regarded in making them and the value of the material, and they were on the part of buyers to confirm their presence in the area and group often seizes the opportunity to escape the strength of It seems that the sculptors of Loango ivories have managed to buyer and his consequence on both society and local relations. FIG. 17 (right): Detail of the tusk in fig. 2: A slave is led, yoked at the neck, by a merchant. FIG. 16 (top right): Detail of the tusk in fig. 1: A caravan of slaves chained together by the neck.
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