Caryatid seat. Luba/Hemba culture. Democratic Republic of Congo, early 20th century.

Caryatid seat. Luba/Hemba culture. Democratic Republic of Congo, early 20th century.
Wood.
Provenance :- Public auction: Arts Primitifs, Cornette de Saint Cyr, Drouot Richelieu, Paris, France. July 3, 2007, lot 147.- Belgian private collection.
Measurements: 36,5 cm height.

Ceremonial stool of the Luba Ethnicity, carved in wood in one piece, with a female representation at the base that supports the seat like a caryatid. The tabute was traditionally intended for figures of rank within the community, such as village chiefs.

The Luba are a people of the Bantu linguistic family, living in the southeast of the Democratic Republic of Congo. In the middle of the 16th century, they constituted a feudal kingdom whose court developed a singularly refined art, which has survived to the present day: figures for ancestor worship, masks, stools supported by caryatids (kneeling women), goblets, etc. The Luba Empire was characterized by the existence of a central authority, called mulopwe (king), who, copying from the European colonizers, took on a sacred character. Their religion was traditionally based on ancestor worship, but with the arrival of the Belgians and their political domination, a large part of the Luba converted to Christianity.