Calm down. Nobody could possibly claim Benin took precedence in lost wax casting, and I have seen other Ife art that actually was radiocarbon dated, so that's not even the point. There's a Benin thread and I'm not interested in diluting this thread with material or information that I've already seen. I was just pointing out that that particular piece hadn't been dated to a specific time, so seeing something as specific as "12th century" as it's label doesn't make sense and is almost arbitrary. I only even mentioned Benin to admit that the same was true of many of the Benin pieces, which are also undated, other wise I wouldn't have mentioned Benin. The basis of the assigned dates for most of them both was basically Frank Willett and William Fagg's ideas about the artistic progression of certain styles over centuries; there were few radiocarbon dates.

what talented peoplec the Yoruba were in the past

An unusual tradition within African sculpture is the cast-metal work done from about the 12th century in what is now southern Nigeria.

It reaches a peak of perfection among the Yoruba people of Ife. Between the 12th and the 15th century life-size heads and masks, and smaller full-length figures - all of astonishing realism - are cast in brass and sometimes in pure copper (technically much more difficult). These figures have an extraordinary quiet intensity.

Read more: http://www.historyworld.net/wrldhis/PlainTextHistories.asp?historyid=aa39#ixzz1ZfScDVHA

tpia@:


the earliest ife bronzes are dated to around the 6th century.

any comments on that?

"We wanted to make the point that nobody, when they learn European art history, studying Italy and Renaissance in the fourteenth, fifteenth centuries, is taught that at exactly the same time in West Africa, artistic production of the same level and the same quality is going on," he said during a talk on Nigeria at the museum.

The sculptures depict human figures from a cross-section of Ife society and provide a fascinating insight into local customs and beliefs of the time.

However, not much is known about the origins of the Ife casts or who they were made for or for what purpose.

lakal:

The first one was collected in the mid 20th Century, no notes on when it was made.


The second dates from the 19th Century.

In 1911 a German ethnographer, Leo Frobenius visited Ile-Ife and discovered some sculptures that the local people dug up to use in religious rituals and then returned to the earth. The statues in bronze and terra cotta were so naturalistic that he did not believe that they were made by Africans. He insisted that he had discovered the remains of the lost Greek city of Atlantis. Study by other archeologists revealed that this art was the work of the Yoruba of Ile-Ife between 1000 to 1399

tpia@:

back to the ife sculptures, i think its quite strange so little information is available about them, even though they give a glimpse into yoruba life of centuries ago.


how did leo frobenius first hear about ife? How and why did he go there?



http://www.historywiz.com/galleries/artofbenin.htm




the sculptures do have a greek feel to them, shown by the attention to detail, the calm expressions and highly naturalized form.

seems to me like the yoruba artists who made them, had seen or been exposed to that type of art previously, and had developed it to astonishing detail.

mauretania maybe?

and how did they do all this without a coded writing system and no formal math symbols that we know of?