Effigy of an ancestor Soninke culture, Mali, 13th-14th century (CIRAM C14 test no. 0309-OA-70R-1) Hardwood with dark patina and wear Height: 50 cm Provenance : Emile Storrer, Zurich, 1955 Swiss private collection, 1979 Dwight Strong Collection, Los Angeles Former Baudouin de Grunne Collection Publications : de Grunne, (Bernard), Djenné-Jeno. 1000 years of terracotta statuary in Mali, Brussels: Mercatorfonds, 2014: fig.263 Bassani (Ezio), "Antiche opere del Mali", in Expo cat.: "Africa. La Terra degli Spiriti", ed. by Claudia Zevi & Gigi Pezzoli, Milano: 24 ORE Cultura, 2015:206 (right) Expo cat: "Mande. Trésors millénaires / Ancient treasures", by Bernard de Grunne and Kristina Van Dyke, Brussels: Bernard de Grunne, 2016:86-87, #24 Expo cat: "Soninké", by Bernard de Grunne, Brussels, 2024:39, cat.9 Exhibitions : Milan, Italy: "Africa. La terra degli spiriti". Museo delle Culture (MUDEC), 27 March-30 August 2015 Brussels, Belgium, "Mande. Tresors millenaires", Ancienne Nonciature, Place du Grand Sablon, 8-12 June 2016 In the inland delta of the Niger, the town of Djenné "was founded by pagans in the middle of the second century of the Hegira of the Prophet (9th century)", according to Abderrahman ben Abdallah ben `Imran ben `Amir es-Sa`di, imam of the town in the second half of the 17th century, in his famous Ta'rîkh al-Sûdân. According to the ethnologist Germaine Dieterlen, successive migrations would have brought this population from the empire of Ghana to settle in the Mandé region, and then in Djenné-Djeno. It was only in the 13th century that one of their chiefs, Suleymane Konaté, refused to convert to Islam and submit to the conqueror Soundiata Keita, taking refuge in the Bandiagara cliffs, taking his cultural traditions with him. Among the latter, the wooden statues, by virtue of their sculptural style, the places where they were found and their scientific dating, corroborate the historians' analysis. These representations, of which the corpus is limited to 48 works, are known as Soninké or Djennenke because of their obvious proximity and the coexistence of the oldest of them with the terracotta figurines extracted from the clay of the "ancient cities of Djenné". It is here that these wooden effigies are thought to have originated around the 10th century, before prospering and dying out in the 15th century on the Bandiagara cliffs and on the Seno plain, where the vast majority of them have been preserved. Given its age (dated A.D 1265-1315) and a number of characteristic features, the work presented here is unambiguously a member of the Soninke sculptural family, starting with the slender, well-balanced figure, with the upper body projected forward, the hands resting on the upper thighs and the legs stretched out, the ankles adorned with bracelets identical to those on the wrists. Dominated by a prominent skull set in a bun and extended by the traditional broad, rectangular, protruding beard, the elongated oval face with its arrowhead nose and pouting lips is in keeping with Soninke canons, but in a softer, more sensitive version that sets it apart from the classical model with its harshly accentuated features. Breaking with the distinctive hieratic style, the artist skilfully confirms his desire to give his creation more humanity by suggesting an impression of movement thanks to the subtle positioning of the head slightly out of line with the rest of the body. Three rows of keloids running from the ears to the temples allow Bertrand de Grunne to attribute this statuary to the Kagoro fringe of the Soninké people. "According to Dominique Zahan, the name kagoro means "incised bumps", an allusion to the small spherical scarifications used by the Kagaro. The Kagaro migrated to the Bandiagara plateau from the north-west, before settling in the Kani-Goguna region. The presence of a female breast gives the sculpture a very explicitly hermaphrodite status, perhaps representing female kings, such as those from the Ségou region mentioned by anthropologist Jean Bazin. This particularity, its patina and its size bring it close to the statue that belonged to the mythical Myron Kunin collection, which is part of a stylistic corpus of works attributed to a Master of Ireli, named after a village located on the cliff overlooking the Séno plain, where one of them was found in 1954 by Pierre Langlois. It was around the same time that our statue was collected by the Swiss Emil Storrer, a great connoisseur of regional culture and a hunter who had criss-crossed the region from Korhogo in Senufo country, where he was welcomed by his friend Simon Escarré, another lover of game and sculpture. Bertrand Goy