The Kota (or Bakota) people live in the east and south-east of Gabon – a smaller proportion also in the Congo. The original religion of the Kota people was a distinct ancestor cult:
the skulls of important chiefs and clan founders were placed in large baskets with other memorials.
These baskets were sealed and preserved in special huts, or ‘sacred shrines’. If the village was moved, the baskets containing the bones of the ancestors accompanied the tribe to the new village, where a new, special ‘shrine’ was erected for them.

The reliquary guardians:
On each of these baskets containing the ancestors’ bones ‘sat’ a reliquary guardian figure, the ‘Mbulu Ngulu’ (‘relics basket with figure’). They were carved from wood and covered with brass and/or copper plaques (or lamellae). The figures towered over each basket. The lower diamond shape extended into the vessel and was attached there. The purpose of these ‘guardians’ was to prevent any unauthorised person from disturbing the peace of the ancestors.
Only during important ceremonies were the ‘guardians’ removed, the baskets opened, the relics presented, explained, and venerated. It is generally assumed that the ancestor cult of the Kota people, with its baskets and famous reliquary guardian figures, began in the 18th century and by roughly 1940 was extinct.

‘Icons’ of modern art:
Since the end of the 19th century the first reliquary guardian figures came to Europe and became some of the most coveted collectors’ pieces within the field of African art, which they still are today. The ‘modernist’ artists living in Paris in the early 20th century were especially fascinated by the radical abstraction of the human body manifested in the Kota ‘Mbulu Ngulu’. Pablo Picasso had a large reliquary guardian figure in his own collection. Alberto Giacometti had one, and Juan Gris, Cubist painter and friend of Picasso’s, was so taken by them that, in 1922, he crafted his own ‘Mbulu Ngulu’ out of brown cardboard.

A very old piece:
The present, large (69 cm) and typical reliquary guardian figure probably originates from the south of the Kota settlement area (in the headwaters of the Ogowe River) and stylistically belongs to the subgroup ‘Kota Obamba’. Its ‘body’, including the lower diamond shape, has been carved from one piece of hard, brown wood and dyed black. The elongated, oval face, with its concave curvature, projects somewhat (c. 2 to 3 cm) beyond the surfaces of the half-moon shaped ‘hairstyle’ above and the side ‘cheeks’. The face displays almond-shaped eyes and a short, protruding nose with triangular profile, all made of brass. In addition, the face is divided into four sections by one vertical and one horizontal brass stripe. In these sections, finely lined copper platelets create a ‘sun’s rays’ motif (no copper lamellae). Also the flat brass mounts on the ‘hairstyle’ and ‘cheeks’ is decorated on its edges with linear bands in relief and displays age-related small cracks and dents. The two projections below the cheeks are enveloped with brass sheets. The neck and shoulders are decorated with lozenges. The back of the object has no metal fitting and displays a vertical lozenge raised in relief with a linear carved diagonal bulge. On the back are also found two old collection labels and an earlier fracture (above), which has been fixed with an old repair. In particular the back of the piece, as well as the open wooden parts on the lower lozenge, indicate the great age of this reliquary guardian figure, with its impressive, in part slightly encrusted, naturally developed patina. It is without doubt a museum-quality object. Height: 69 cm; width: 38 cm. 19th century.

Provenance:
According to the consignor, from the collection of the Belgian ethnologist Frans M. Olbrechts (1899–1958); then: Stephan L. Collection, Munich; then: Galerie von Miller, Frankfurt; then: German private collection. (ME)

Lit.:
‘Chefs-d’oeuvres d’Afrique, dans les collections du Musée Dapper’, Musée Dapper Paris, ill. p. 42; ‘Ancestral Art of Gabon’ by Louis Perrois, ill. p. 191, 192; ‘L’Art Kota’ by Alain & Francoise Chaffin, ill. p. 169, 170, 171, 174; ‘Eternal Ancestors’, Metropolitan Museum of Art New York, by Alisa Lagamma, ill. p. 259; etc.