page_title: Bronze Head from Ife
section_title: Ife
hierarchical_section_title: Bronze Head from Ife / Ife
caption_attribution_description: Yoruba mask for King Obalufon II; circa 1300 CE; copper; height: 29.2 cm; discovered at Ife; Ife Museum of Antiquities (Ife, Nigeria)
context_page_description: The Bronze Head from Ife, or Ife Head, is one of eighteen copper alloy sculptures that were unearthed in 1938 at Ife in Nigeria, the religious and former royal centre of the Yoruba people. It is believed to represent a king. It was probably made in the thirteenth-fourteenth century AD, before any European contact had taken place with the local population. The realism and sophisticated craftsmanship of the objects challenged Western conceptions of African art at the time. A year after its finding, the Ife Head was taken to the British Museum.
context_section_description: The Ife head is thought to be a portrait of a ruler known as an Ooni or Oni. It was likely made under the patronage of King Obalufon II whose famous naturalistic life size face mask in copper shares stylistic features with this work. Today among the Yoruba, Obalufon is identified as the patron deity of brass casters. The period in which the work was made was an age of prosperity for the Yoruba civilisation, which was built on trade via the River Niger to the peoples of West Africa. Ife is regarded by the Yoruba people as the place where their deities created humans.
  These bronze heads are evidence of additional trade since Ife-made glass beads have been found widely in West Africa. The copper is thought to be from local Nigerian ores, although earlier scholars believed it to have come from Central Europe, North West Mauritania, the Byzantine Empire, or Southern Morocco.
  The bronze casts could have been modelled on contemporary terracotta sculptures. A long tradition of terracotta sculpture with similar characteristics existed in the culture prior to the date of the creation of these metal sculptures. Ivory was another material used frequently in African art.
caption: Yoruba copper mask for King Obalufon II; circa 1300 AD; copper; height: 29.2 cm; discovered at Ife; Ife Museum of Antiquities (Ife, Nigeria)
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