Handcarved African Chokwe Chief Figure (Trade)

This seated figure depicts a Chokwe chief, or mwanangana — "lord of the land" — a title carrying both political authority and spiritual weight among the Chokwe people of what is now Angola, the Democratic Republic of Congo, and Zambia. The elaborate crested headdress, rendered here in carved wood, reproduces an actual Chokwe crown historically constructed from cloth-covered basketry, a marker reserved for chiefs and high-status figures in Chokwe court art. The figure sits with a staff in one hand and raises an object resembling a horn or lamellophone — whose music traditionally accompanied the recitation of oral histories and praise songs for important individuals — to his mouth with the other, a pose the Metropolitan Museum identifies in a closely related Chokwe figure as casting the chief as guardian of historical and cultural knowledge. The seated mwanangana form is closely tied to Chibinda Ilunga, the legendary Luba hunter-hero credited in Chokwe oral tradition with introducing the concept of divine kingship; figures like this one honor that origin story as much as they depict an individual ruler. The carving shows a fine, high polish with deep brown patina, naturalistic…