Byéri Fang Mvaï Sud Cameroun, nord Gabon (Suite du lot précédent) An important male ancestor statue for the Byeri religion, made to be attached to a reliquary box in bark by the vertical tripod sculpted on the back. Shown standing upright, the body is cylindrical, its short arms held slightly away from the torso ; the fingers on the hands are entwined at the height of the sternum, and the muscular legs and somewhat simplified thighs are flexed. On the head is a tall three-sided headdress ending in a flap covering the nape of the neck. The heart-shaped face under the rounded forehead expresses profound serenity : half-closed eyes, a broad triangular nose and large shark-like jaws armed with teeth whose curved shapes echo the arch of the chin. The powerful neck is set in the axis of the long torso with the merest hint of breasts, broad criss-crossing scarification emanates from the cone-shaped navel. The bottom of the carved, beveled trunk disappears into the folds of the hips and buttocks. The penis is pointed ; the feet barely suggested. On the back, under the flap at the nape of the neck, are carved two small scapula, on either side of the deep vertebral furrow descending into the crack of the buttocks. The sculpture in light-brown wood has a beautiful, well-worn honey-colored patina, darker in spots where iron was used to blacken it ; some traces of padouk red remain. The facetted carving is harmonious in a way which is characteristic of antique objects. The marks of knife blades or machetes which are visible are probably traces of the object's ritual use. Since it was the custom in these regions to chant incantations over important statues during ceremonies, keeping time with the words by tapping the statues or masks, this type of cut is frequent on Fang reliquary figurines and objects of Gabon in general. Mvaï-style byeri are among the rarest ; this one can be added to the corpus studied by Louis Perrois, closely related to the famous statue belonging to the Brooklyn Museum from what was formerly the Babott collection (Perrois, Marseille 1992, p.64) which originated from the valley of the Ntem, the river marking the northern frontier of Gabon with Cameroon before continuing its course the border of Equatorial Guinea. It shares with this object its elegant silhouette and wide headdress with a flap to cover the nape of the neck, as well as the remarkable way the body is set solidly on the hips. This byeri was brought back in 1915 by Charles Gossen, French Navy Medical Officer serving in Kribi in southern Cameroon during combat with the Germans. A photo from February 1915 shows the object in his room. A letter from his daughter informs us that, according to his notes from the war, he may have found the statue there-part of the spoils of war left behind in the quarters left vacant by the defeated enemy and subsequently occupied by the French ; this is also logical given the short period that Mr. Gossen was actually there, and the fact that Kribi is rather distant from the Mvaï region where the statue originated, much more in the East. 70000 / 100000 €