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DEMOCRATIC REPUBLIC OF THE CONGO RWANDA BURUNDI ZAMBIA Lake Tanganyika Atlantic Ocean Indian Ocean A F R I C A Area of detail 95 FIG. 5 (below): Oliphant. Kongo peoples; Kongo Kingdom, Democratic Republic of the Congo, Republic of the Congo, or Angola. 16th century (inventoried 1553). Ivory. L: 83.2 cm. Palazzo Pitti, Museo degli Argenti, Florence (Bg. 1879 avori, no. 2). FIG. 4 (above): Luxury cloth cushion cover. Kongo peoples; Kongo Kingdom, Democratic Republic of the Congo, Republic of the Congo, or Angola. 16th–17th century (inventoried 1670). Raffi a. 49 × 50.5 cm. Kungliga Samlingarna, Sweden (HGK, Tx I, 164). FIG. 3 (below): Prestige cap, mpu. Kongo peoples; Kongo Kingdom, Democratic Republic of the Congo, Republic of the Congo, or Angola. 16th–17th century (inventoried 1674). Raffi a or pineapple fi ber. H: 18 cm. Nationalmuseet, Copenhagen (EDc123). Kongo Primary Sources The exquisite original creations by Kongo weavers and sculptors preserved in the West attest to the impressive level of artistry in place when the fi rst Europeans arrived along the coast of Central Africa. However, given that information relating to the original collection of such artifacts is lacking and that they were never broadly accessible, understanding of Kongo society has been primarily informed by the surviving correspondence of Kongo leaders and written accounts by European visitors to the region.6 During his inaugural journey, Cão made contact with Nzinga a Nkuwu (r. c. 1470–1509), sovereign of the Kingdom of Kongo. In 1491 Nzinga a Nkuwu was baptized João I and adopted Catholicism as his state’s offi cial religion. He and his successors actively used this development to widen their engagement with the world at large beyond Portugal and to distinguish themselves from their immediate neighbors as members of a ern imagination in Joseph Conrad’s Heart of Darkness. During the earliest exchanges between Kongo leaders and the West, exceptionally refi ned Kongo creations entered the most discerning collections of the day (fi gs.3– 5).5 Prized from the Renaissance through the Enlightenment as demonstrations of human virtuosity, the Kongo works dispersed in such elite repositories have never before been assembled as a corpus. Kongo: Power and Majesty introduces them as an essential and yet unfamiliar dimension of one of the world’s great artistic traditions. In doing so it seeks to provide a more historically grounded appreciation of some of the region’s most outstanding achievements produced over the span of half a millennium through anchoring such artistic landmarks in specifi c developments. These are at once recognized in terms of the individual genius of particular masters and the responsiveness of different generations of Kongo artists to the most pressing concerns of their communities generated by events global in scope.


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