The Chokwe Princess: A highly refined & extremely rare Chokwe female statue from 19th century Angola.

One of the greatest accomplishments of African art, and indeed of world sculpture, are the magnificent figure sculptures of the Chokwe people, created in their Uchokwe homeland in 18th and 19th century Angola. The surviving corpus is small in number, with about a dozen major male figures extant which depict the ancestral culture hero Chibinda Ilunga (Petridis, Art and Power in the Central African Savanna, 2008, p. 93); these are among the most highly esteemed of all African figural sculptures, and are icons of African art. Much rarer are the equally impressive female figures, which formed the essential female half of the primordial couple.

Famed for their prowess as hunters and metalsmiths, the Chokwe rose from a decentralized network of chiefdoms to a major regional power during the 19th century, conquering and eclipsing neighbouring kingdoms as they achieved unprecedented wealth and power by trade with the Portuguese. They carried with them a rich oral tradition that celebrated the grand lineage from which they descended. A sophisticated court tradition blossomed, culminating in a tradition of wood figure sculpture which celebrated the mythical origins of those sacred dynasties. The art historian Marie-Louise Bastin defined the Chokwe artistic golden age as that of the "pays d'origine" – that is the Uchokwe homeland style before the expansion of Chokwe populations out of the region in the late 19th century (Bastin, La Sculpture Tshokwe, 1982, pp. 29-35). Statues of extraordinary refinement depicted the heroes of the stories which told of the foundations of their culture, and extolled the virtues of their revered predecessors.

FEMALE POWER: Mothers, Queens and Maidens

The present figure is one of a very small number of female figures in the pays d'origine style which survive today, and is unsurpassed in its sculptural quality. Art historians have suggested multiple iconographic interpretations for these depictions of women. Especially when paired with the hunter Chibinda Ilunga, the female is thought to represent his wife Lweji, the female protagonist of the Lunda epic, or another highly ranking wife of Chibinda Ilunga. It has also been proposed that they commemorate individual dignitaries as successors to the founding couple, and indeed as the subject may be styled as the mythic ancestor, this interpretation does not exclude the first. A third interpretation is that the female subject may be the Queen Mother, embodying the matrilineal succession of power within Chokwe lineages.

One of the greatest sovereigns in African history was the famed female Chokwe chieftaness Princess Nzinga, who during the 17th century led the struggle of the Ngondo and Matamba kingdoms against the Portuguese. As an archetype of female power, this historical character and the legendary retelling of her story testify to the role of women in classical Chokwe culture.

“THE BOW BELONGED TO A WOMAN, BEFORE IT WAS TAKEN UP BY A MAN.”

LUNDA PROVERB

The present figure certainly depicts a youthful, fertile woman of fleshy idealized features. It may therefore be suggested that this is not the queen mother herself but rather one of the beautiful young wives of the chief. The primordial significance of the female as mother and responsible for the foundation and perpetuation of the culture is particularly essential to the Chokwe, as they organized themselves in matrilineal lineages (ibid., p. 32).

Furthermore the Chokwe applied an aesthetic principle which prized vigour and well-being; with "the criterion of youthfulness [...] applied to sculpture itself." (Stéphan in Kerchache, Paudrat, & Stéphan, L'art africain, 1988, p. 283). Petridis (ibid., p. 109) notes: "Female figures […] are rare compared with their male counterparts. It has been suggested that they incarnate and commemorate female ancestors (Bastin, ibid., p. 155). Whether they represent the queen mother (the mother of a chief) or his first wife (the leading woman among a chief's multiple spouses), the images signal the importance of the female line and female power." These depictions of women evoke in their commemoration of a powerful female, "the veneration of the Chokwe sculptor for that which opens the door to the ancestors" (Neyt, Fleuve Congo, 2010, p. 345).

Courtesy

The Chokwe Princess: An Exquisite Beauty