ART on view 13048 FIG. 37 (above): Mask. Kongo peoples; Yombe group, Democratic Republic of the Congo; Republic of the Congo; or Cabinda, Angola. 19th–early 20th century (inventoried 1937). Collected by Léo Bittremieux, before 1937. Wood, pigment. H: 30 cm. Steven Kossak, The Kronos Collections, New York. Museum (29.5.00.21); Manchester Museum, University of Manchester (0.9321/1); Linden-Museum Stuttgart (29623); Ethnografi sche Studiensammlung, Institut fur Ethnologie und Afrikastudien, Johannes Gutenberg Universität, Mainz (2594); Ethnologisches Museum, Staatliche Museen zu Berlin (III.C.17114); Museum für Völkerkunde, Leipzig (MAf16828); Detroit Institute of Arts (76.79); MiBACT—Polo Museale Museo del Lazio, Preistorico Etnografi co Luigi Pigorini, Rome (75909); Royal Museum for Central Africa, Tervuren (EO.0.0.7777); Wereldmuseum, Rotterdam (10633); Field Museum of Natural History, Chicago (A109979-Ac91300); Afrika Museum der St. Petrus-Claver Sodalitat, Zug, Switzerland; Musee du Quai Branly, Paris (73.1963.0.175); Dallas Museum of Art (1996.184.FA); Horstmann Collection, Zug; The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York (2008.30); Royal Geographical Society, London; Fondation Beyeler, Basel; Sociedade de Geografi a, Lisbon; private collection (for which, see Alisa LaGamma, Art and Oracle: African Art and Rituals of Divination, exh. cat., The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, 2000 (New York: The Metropolitan Museum of Art, 2000), pp. 31–32; Collection Nationaal Museum van Wereldculturen, Netherlands (1407–14). 32. The exhibition is made possible by the Gail and Parker Gilbert Fund and the Diane W. and James E. Burke Fund. The catalogue is made possible by The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation. Republic of the Congo, see Van Reybrouck, 2014. 4. For a history of the Kingdom of Loango, see Phyllis Martin “The Kingdom of Loango” in LaGamma, 2015: 47–85. 5. Ezio Bassani’s catalogue raisonné identifi es some 450 sub- Saharan African works that entered European collections between 1400 and 1800. Eighty of these, fourteen percent of his total, appear to be of Kongo origin; see Bassani, 2000. 6. For an idea of these documents—travel accounts, geographical treatises, letters, and reports of many kinds— generated by the complex military, commercial, and religious dimensions of contact, see Brásio, 1952–1988. 7. See, for example, Letter from Afonso I of the Kongo to Manuel I of Portugal requesting religious paraphernalia. Kongo Kingdom, June 8, 1517. Ink on paper, 21 × 28.7 cm. Arquivo Nacional da Torre do Tombo, Lisbon (PT/TT/ CC/1/22/5). 8. Josiah Blackmore with contributions by James Green, “European Images of the Kongolese in Books” in LaGamma, 2015: 119–129. 9. For an expanded version of this discussion, see Alisa LaGamma with contributions by Christine Giuntini, “Out of the Kongo and into the Kunstkammer,”in LaGamma, 2015: 131–159. 10. Kandert, 2008: 13. 11. Rui de Pina recounts how King Nzinga a Nkuwu called for “all local idols, altars, and temples to be destroyed” following his baptism. Brásio, 1952–1988: 124–25. 12. Pereira, 1892: 84. 13. Jadin and Dicorato, 1975: 16. 14. See Martin, 1986: 1–12. 15. Bassani, 2000: 278. 16. Compare, for instance, to those added subsequently through embroidery or appliqué, as in the case of the betterknown nineteenth-century textiles produced at the Kuba court in the Kasai region of the Democratic Republic of the Congo, which are freer and more improvisational in nature. 17. For further discussion of concepts of wealth and an equatorial African political economy based on control of people, see Guyer, 1995: 83–90, and Guyer and Belinga, 1995: 120. 18. MacGaffey, 1986: 207–10, and Thornton, 1998. 19. For more on cultural institutions devoted to promoting fertility, see Janzen, 1982. 20. The corpus of works by these artists was originally defi ned by Ezio Bassani (Bassani, 1981: 66–83). The artists are now known by the locations where the works were collected rather than by the names of the European collectors. 21. MacGaffey, 1986: 43–45. 22. Ibid., p. 138. 23. A rare account of a Kongo “idol” being sent to Portugal can be found in the account of c. 1631 of Pero Tavares, S. J. (Jadin, 1956: 14–41). 24. Hilton, 1987: 304. 25. For more information on nkisi n’kondi fi gures, see MacGaffey, 2000: 98. See also Laman, 1953–68: 524; MacGaffey et al., 1993: 44, 99, 105, 208; and Thompson, 1978: 207. 26. Lynn, 1997: 12. 27. MacGaffey, 2012. 28. de Campos, 1960: 35–36, and Tubi, 1997: 109. 29. Its defi nition as the n’kondi used to “combat the vomiting of blood” is consistent with Léo Bittremieux’s identifi cation of Mangaaka with chest ailments and spitting blood. See Laman, 1936: 494, and Bittremieux, 1922: 357. Robert Visser similarly describes the fi gure he acquired in 1903 and now in the Linden-Museum Stuttgart as being “used for the healing of bloody vomiting.” 30. MacGaffey, 2010: 52. 31. Bassani, 1977: 36–40, 88. The complete corpus of extant Mangaaka power fi gures includes works in the following collections (inventory numbers are provided for those that are known): National Museums Liverpool, World
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