Male Reliquary Guardian Figure
Fang Artist, Cameroon
![Male Reliquary Guardian Figure](https://dlc.services/iiif-img/16/6/14083_1678455031241/full/825,1024/0/default.jpg)
Details
Title
Male Reliquary Guardian Figure
Artist/Maker
Fang Artist, Cameroon
Date
Late nineteenth–early twentieth century
Medium
Wood, ancestral relics, brass, and glass
Dimensions
18 1/2 x 5 1/4 x 5 1/2 inches
Credit
Fred and Rita Richman Collection
Accession #
2002.291.1
These two Fang sculptures from the dense equatorial forest region of central Africa once sat on cylindrical bark boxes. The boxes stored a family’s ancestral relics and the sculptures served as sentinels, protecting the contents. Such sculptures were often carved in pairs, but it is unusual to find two figures still united. Fang artists carved figurative sculptures with elongated torsos, compressed legs, and disproportionately large heads to resemble both the foreheads of newborns and ancestral skulls. The boldly geometric forms of Fang reliquary guardian figures inspired early-twentieth-century artists such as Henri Matisse, André Derain, and Constantin Brancusi.