Linden-Museum Stuttgart: 005409
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| Linden-Museum Stuttgart: 005409 License: Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International (CC BY-NC-SA 4.0) |
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Object description
This information was provided by the German museum where the object is currently located or where it was located prior to restitution.
| Object Name | Snake head sculpture (copper alloy). Fragment of palace decoration |
| Description | This fully plastic snake head is one of the most significant and valuable objects in the Benin collection. It belonged to a 12 meter long body that descended from a ridge turret-like structure on the roof of the royal residence to the ground where this head lay. This cult image with the related architecture is also depicted on some relief plates. It symbolizes the animal and also the king connecting the upper world and the earth, somewhat in the form of the rainbow serpent. Text: Dietmar Neitzke. |
| Type | Plastik |
| Materials | Copper alloy |
| Size, Dimensions | Length: 54 cm. Width: 38 cm. |
| Dating of Object |
Museum / Collection / Acquisition
This information was provided by the German museum where the object is currently located or where it was located prior to restitution.
| Museum | Linden-Museum Stuttgart |
| Museum Inv.-No | 005409 |
| Collector | Felix von Luschan (Berlin) purchased a large number of royal objects produced in the Benin Kingdom and sold parts of the collection to other museums. The objects reserved for Stuttgart were paid by Karl Knorr (Heilbronn, Germany). |
| Acquisition date | 1899 |
| Circumstances of acquisition | In October 1898, the Hamburg company "H. Bey & Co" offered the Berlin Ethnological Museum a Benin collection that came directly from Africa. However, due to a lack of funds, the entire collection could not be purchased and was therefore to be passed on to other interested parties. Felix von Luschan of the Berlin Museum therefore informed Karl Graf von Linden in November 1898, and offered him a right of first refusal. The Linden Museum then made 15,000 M available for the purchase of objects. The purchase price was paid by the Heilbronn entrepreneur Karl Knorr, which is why the collection became known as "Die Karl Knorr'sche Sammlung von Benin-Altertümern". Von Luschan published a detailed description of the collection under the same title (1901) on behalf of Count Linden and Knorr. Other buyers of the collection included the museums in Vienna and Munich, but also people such as Hans Meyer (Leipzig) and Eugen Rautenstrauch (Cologne). Text: Markus Himmelsbach. |
| Notes |
Current ownership status and location
| Status | restituted |
| Date of last status change | 14 December 2022 |
| Current ownership | Federal Republic of Nigeria |
| Holding institution | National Commission for Museums and Monuments (NCMM, Nigeria) |
| Current location | Temporarily at the Linden-Museum Stuttgart |
Categorization for the search functions
This information was included by the German Contact Point for Collections from Colonial Contexts and is intended to make the object easier to find in the database.
| Object Type | sculpture |
| Materials | metal; copper alloy |
| Tags |
Dataset
| ID | 143 |
| last Change | 2023-01-26 12:15:00 |
| License | Linden-Museum Stuttgart |