Some Early African Ivories in Venice

An Armlet and Spoon Rediscovered in the Collection of the Museo Correr

Bibliographic Data

ID9023797
AuthorsNoah Michaud (corresponding author)
Year2025
Volume58
Issue4
Pages70-79
Publication date2025-12-22
Peer ReviewedYes
Open AccessNo
TypeARTICLE
VenueAfrican Arts (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 0001-9933 • E-ISSN: 1937-2108
PublisherMIT Press (PUBLISHER • US)
DOI10.1162/afar.a.816
OpenAlexW7128508757
LanguageEN
References cited23

Scholars of African art objects in early European collections have long known and written about the stunning works once owned and displayed by illustrious Italian nobility, particularly the Medici in Florence and the Chigi and Cospi in Rome and Bologna. Indeed, Ezio Bassani dedicated more than thirty pages and seventy entries to Italy within his major catalogue of African art and artifacts in European collections before 1800 (2000: 137-68), including, though not limited to, Luso-African ivory salt cellars and oliphants.1 Collections and collectors from Venice, however, have remained largely absent from this literature, based on an (apparent) lack of evidence. In fact, Bassani listed only one object for Venice in African Art and Artefacts: an ivory oliphant from the Uele-Mbomou River basin in northern Central Africa,2 bought from Venice in 1869 and presently held in the Musée de la Musique in Paris (Fig. 1) (2000: 168, no. 533).3 Earlier catalogues of this corpus by Kathy Curnow (1983) and Bassani with William Fagg (1988) documented no Luso-African ivories in Venice.Given Venice's cosmopolitan mercantile identity and ongoing, albeit distant engagements with Africa and Africans, the Venetian elite's disinterest in collecting Africana long seemed to me especially improbable. My conjectures about their disposition were eventually confirmed when, in May 2022, I first encountered the two curious objects that inspired the present article. In the online catalogues of the Fondazione Musei Civici di Venezia (FMCV), I found listings for a carved ivory armlet and spoon belonging to the Museo Correr that, given their style, form, and iconography, were apparently West African although not listed as such (Figs. 2–4). Having since photographed and examined the armlet and spoon in the Correr storerooms, I am certain that both ivories come from West Africa, probably the kingdoms of Benin and Owo in present-day Nigeria. The Correr (or Venice) armlet and spoon are thus the earliest known artworks from sub-Saharan Africa still in the City of Water. Also, they expand and diversify the corpus of African objects once or still found in historic Italian museums and domestic collections.4The armlet and spoon were (mis)attributed respectively to Indian (Ambito indiano) and Chinese (Ambito cinese) workshops—as many early African art objects have been. But comparanda for both objects in major collections in Europe and the United States (Figs. 5–6) verify their production in West Africa. The “Indian” ivory armband in Venice resembles the Owo-style ivory armlets presently located in Berlin's Ethnologisches Museum and Copenhagen's Nationalmuseet. It also recalls the Owo armlet once part of the Tishman Collection and now at the Smithsonian's National Museum of African Art in Washington, DC, as well as the larger of two bands from the Weickmann Wunderkammer in Ulm. The “Chinese” Venice spoon resembles the widespread corpus of Benin export or “Bini-Portuguese” spoons.5 Iconographically, the specimen compares with spoons with hand finials found in Vienna's Weltmuseum and the Musée du Quai Branly-Jacques Chirac in Paris, as well as the spoon handle fragment found at Ksar es-Seghir, Morocco (Afonso and Gomes 2021: 822-24). These comparanda date the Venice armlet to between the sixteenth and the eighteenth century; the Venice spoon, to the sixteenth century.The Venice armlet (“armilla decorata”) measures 7.5 cm high and 8.5 cm in diameter (Fig. 2). It is constructed of two coaxial layers: the inner ring contains a perforated, rectilinear, and lacelike grid; the outer includes solid rectangular bands that span the armlet's height. Its carver probably produced both layers from a single piece of ivory and, with extraordinary prowess, interlocked them such that the outer band can rotate separately from the inner without ever disconnecting. Geometric motifs, animals, and cosmological figures are mounted atop these bands or else directly on the latticed tier. From the edges of this cylinder extend a series of semicircular brackets with ivory rings attached; from these rings hang small ivory teardrop crotals. Some of this ornamentation is damaged or missing. The formations of brackets and beads, while absent on the Berlin armlets, are near-identical to the organization of rings and rattles on the Copenhagen armlet and similar to those in Washington.Across its surface, the ivory armband displays high-relief crocodiles, pecking birds, and a coil of four snakes, or maybe mudfish, emerging from the cavities of a ram's or bull's head. One finds much of this imagery on comparanda in Berlin (Fig. 5a), Washington (Fig. 5b), and Copenhagen (Fig. 5c). Especially conspicuous on the Venice armlet is a figure with a tapered, pentagonal head, raised ears, and sinuous upper limbs. It wears a flowing skirt and displays humanlike feet. Similar looped-wing bats—formerly identified as “snake-winged bird[s]” and “abraxas[es]”—appear on brass medallions and figures found at Jebba and Tada in the Lower Niger Basin, on Benin ivory gongs, and the Owo Copenhagen armlet (Fraser 1975: 32-33; Willett 1988: 122-24; Bassani 2005: 252; Peek 2021: 203; Curnow 2024: 285-87). Unlike the Copenhagen armlet, however, the Venice armlet's bat is not self-dompting; it does not grasp its own legs (Fraser 1975: 35). A ram's head likewise features on the pectoral of the bronze “Gara” figure recovered at Tada, Nigeria (Fraser 1975: 33-34). The snake-infested head on the Venice armlet may relate to the bovine (or ovine) head found on the larger of two Owo ivory bands in Ulm (Fig. 5d) (Jones 1994: 34; Micots 1994: 24).In sum, the Correr armband's aquatic and composite animal figuration echoes that on other Owo armlets.6 Such imagery bolsters interpretations of these ivory bracelets as sartorial liaisons between rulers, their ancestors, ritual sacrifice, and the water deity Olokun (Poynor 1978: 154-55, 167-68, 170-72, 179; Willett 1988: 124-25; Micots 1994: 22, 24). The bat and birds, creatures of the sky, and the crocodile, creature of the water and thereby Olokun's ancestral realm,7 grant the armlet's wearer holistic power and prestige (Fraser 1975: 35, Micots 1994: 24). The loop-winged bat, furthermore, represents female witchcraft and supernatural transformation (Curnow 2024: 287), themes echoed by the snake-infested heads and liminal creatures included.The ivory spoon (cucchiaio con manina) in the Correr measures 26 cm (Figs. 3–4), the exact length of the Vienna spoon and squarely within the range of other recorded specimens. The Venice spoon's shallow bowl is fig- or shoehorn-shaped, and it cups around with the signature tripartite hooked plate at the base of the handle. Like many others, the Venice spoon's carver has worked its bowl so thin as to be translucent (Curnow 1983: 213; Bassani and Fagg 1988: 171). On its reverse, the spoon also displays the typical thin rib that vertically bisects the bowl. The spoon handle is constructed from a series of interlocked, delicate loops, edged with short horizontal ridges, oriented perpendicular to one another, and connected by sets of circular, cross-hatched buttons. The spoon finial features a small, palm-up, open right hand that, as mentioned, recalls the hands and handles of the spoons in Paris, Vienna, and Ksar es-Seghir (Figs. 6a-c). All these aspects support a Benin attribution for the Correr spoon.The Venice Benin export spoon still has some notable idiosyncrasies. Its bowl appears proportionally shorter and rounder than the bowls on many known examples. Its handle is also unique: It is, to my knowledge, the only of its kind featuring three sets of buttoned loops. Additionally, compared with the long, pearly, and pristine pieces preserved in the British Museum, the Venice spoon's carving appears less refined8; its ivory has yellowed and mottled somewhat, and its buttons are chipped. Nonetheless, these singularities are easily explained, whether by natural variations in the (piece of) tusk chosen; commissioner's or carver's creative decisions; execution by a particular hand or workshop or after a finer prototype9; or by the sites, conditions, and techniques of the ivory spoon's storage and conservation. Furthermore, some known Luso-African ivories appear rougher in finish than others: compare, e.g., the patinaed and striated Quai Branly spoon with the gleaming and scarcely handled Vienna piece. Ultimately, the Venice spoon's deviations from the norm are not enough to contest its identification as an African art object; rather, they add new textures to the corpus of known Luso-African ivories.What the hand sculpted atop the spoon signifies is less obvious. The other three spoons with handed handles display a finger or fingers raised, with the others folded over the palm. The Quai Branly spoon's index fingertip is broken, while the Vienna spoon's index and middle fingers are preserved, and the Ksar es-Seghir spoon fragment only has a raised index finger. Their gesture resembles one of Catholic blessing, suggesting their commission by or creation for European missionaries in Benin (Ryder 1969: 46-52, 69-75). In this context, one is tempted to interpret the two grooves cut into the Venice spoon's open palm as stigmata (Fig. 7). Perhaps the hand-crafted hand also operates as a material metonymy, embodying and representing manual power and skill, to wit: that of the sculptor and perhaps also that of the spoon user. In that sense, the spoon's hand resonates with the “cult of the hand” found in Benin and across southern Nigeria (Bradbury 1973: 261-62; Vogel 1974; Poynor 1978: 189-90).10The armlet's and spoon's whereabouts before the nineteenth century are so far unknown. Both were part of Venetian nobleman Teodoro Correr's (1750-1830) founding bequest to the Venetian state that formed the core of the eponymous museum.11 The institutional records of the Museo Correr contain no record of the spoon and armlet predating the judicial inventories of the collection, taken posthumously from 1830-1831 by the state. The armlet and spoon were both noted as ivories on Thursday, September 2, 1830; their entries read, respectively:The first printed reference to the ivories is Vincenzo Lazari's Notizia delle opere d'arte e d'antichità della raccolta Correr di Venezia (1859: 154):The entries in the 1899 catalogue Elenco degli oggetti esposti for the Museo Civico e Raccolta Correr are more terse: “272. Chinese spoon—R.C. [Correr Collection],” and “552. Figurative armlet—Indian workshop?—R.C.” (Correr 1899: 191, 211).14From what little else we know about Correr's collecting practices, the ivories were probably in European possession well before the nineteenth century. Correr often bought items off other Venetian patricians selling their collections because of hardship incurred by the decline of the Venetian Republic, culminating in Napoleon's occupation of Venice in 1797 (Fondazione Musei Civici di Venezia n.d.; Haskell 1980: 381-83). The ivories’ prior owner(s), in turn, could have acquired them from any number of Italian, Iberian, or Northern collectors at various times. The armlet's initial identification of “manifattura delle Fiandre” suggests a prior Flemish owner, who in turn received it from Portuguese or Dutch slave traders in West Africa. Moreover, the armlet could have arrived in Venice via the merchant networks that supplied Murano glass beads for the slave trade, providing Venetians with commercial partners in Lisbon, Antwerp, Amsterdam (at least until the seventeenth century), London, and Liverpool, among other cities.15 Alternatively, in local parlance, “Fiandre” could also refer to the Venetian muda di Fiandra, the state galleys routed through Flanders; these ships stopped at Lisbon, leaving open a Venetian procurement and exchange of the objects in Portugal.16 Given its iconography, the Benin spoon could have appealed to a Portuguese or Italian missionary and returned from overseas in his possession. Several African objects collected in Italy—including raffia cloths and “Chinese” wooden “idols” from West-Central Africa in Padua (then part of the Republic of Venice)—were donations of Capuchin friars (Bassani 2000: 157-58, Fromont 2022: 89-91).17 These are all, nevertheless, only educated conjectures; in his catalogue's introduction, Lazari laments that Correr neglected to document his possessions’ provenances (1859: ix).18The judicial inventories also specify that both ivories were preserved and displayed in “the second room [after the terrace on the second floor]” of Correr's house at the time of their bequest.19 In 1859, Lazari and another draughtsman made drawings of most rooms and displays in Correr's home, including several second-floor cabinets and a camerino in which were arranged bronzes, small statues, porcelains, and likely ivories. The drawings, unfortunately, do not represent every item inventoried; neither the armlet nor the spoon are clearly present among the objects sketched. The armlet, however, may be pictured among the objects stored on the seventh shelf in the third column of the cabinet that Lazari numbered 60 and noted as “fac[ing] the window” (Fig. 8a-b).20 Furthermore, in the 1830 inventory, the armlet and spoon are five numbers apart from each other, and in the 1859 inventory they are one number apart, suggesting their display in close proximity to one another.Simultaneously, the armlet's and spoon's characterizations in the inventories (the former “of Flanders” and “Indian”; the latter “Gothic-style” and “Chinese”) apparently contradict what to us seems most obvious and valuable: that these are African objects and were recognized and valued as such. These descriptions seem especially incongruous because Italians were employed and invested in initial contacts and commerce with West Africa, and Italians, especially Venetians, led efforts to compile knowledge about and map the African continent until the seventeenth century (Greenfield 2016: 140; Michaud 2024: 74-76, 81-84).21 Lazari's and his predecessor's entries suggest that such misattributions nonetheless persisted as late as the nineteenth century, after centuries of Venetian material involvement in transatlantic trade and missionary endeavors and continued printing of books about Africa.22Curnow suggested that these misattributions resulted from fifteenth- and sixteenth-century Europeans’ greater familiarity with and patronage of ivory-working in the Islamic world and the Far East (1983: 31-32). Bassani predominantly evaluated these entries as erroneous or else vague (2000: xv and passim), though he and Fagg supposed that Europeans may have considered Africans “unable to produce such refined work” (1988: 53; cf. Bassani 2000: xxviii). Stefan Eisenhofer (1997: 29) proffered that an indication of African origin was “either not that important to the collectors or communicated incorrectly to the buyers”; only the objects’ “vague exoticism” mattered for European buyers and sellers. From her extensive analysis of Florentine and Roman collections and archives—including records for the Medici's Kongolese oliphants—historian K.J.P. Lowe has concluded similarly that most African objects arrived in sixteenth-century Italy, sometimes even in Lisbon, without provenance information and thus effectively dissociated from the continent (2024: 16-17, 29-31, 140-57).23 Conversely, art historian Ingrid Greenfield has interpreted inventory entries for African ivories as testaments to the plural identities and relationships they could assume within collections (2016: 45, 208-209; 2022). She has also proposed two more “solutions” to this formidable “problem of origin”: misidentification resulting from disparate knowledge about sub-Saharan Africa between collector and inventory-maker, as well as the conflation of Africa and the East Indies by the Portuguese imperial and mercantile bureaucracy (2016: 115, 146, 151).24Because the known inventories of Correr's collection are posthumous records, they neither his any prior knowledge about these nor are they among The of the ivories between 1830 and 1859, from and Flemish to Indian and suggests that their identities were The entries also that Lazari was the first Venetian we know of) to the armlet and spoon as art his their as European the of even Lazari's of 1859 for it is that he no among the the armlet, his of another ivory as a di (1859: and the of in Italian natural cabinets 1994: 2005: The 1899 of records about the armlet's other African objects in the in also to be could the similar to objects the Correr spoon (Bassani 2000: with other “Indian” or in Lazari's those objects may have first as such centuries In other and could have an object in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries as the a and at the an object from or could have first an more of the not as East or and 2021: and Lazari's to Indian and Chinese as his Bassani and the of and in the eighteenth century and widespread by the nineteenth that not African have Lazari's attribution of these to than West African Correr ivories to the and of carved ivories and other early Africana with their to The armlet, probably once an or and a or trade the Benin spoon, however, was and for export to Scholars have by now long the Luso-African ivories as material of African of Europeans and their and as of African and creative in with Europeans (Curnow African art objects not for export and European in the Correr as of the as well as with least with this is also of the over ivories Bassani located in European collections before 1800 were made for local (2000: what and knowledge not only of objects for also their and of objects to ivories were the most objects of African origin in early Europe (Bassani 2000: and are several Africans these works over others for European possession. In as well as and was with the ancestral or other water such as Olokun and, in Europeans (Curnow 1983: Eisenhofer thus ivories were and African also that the objects’ on both with power and and the armlet and spoon's were of I have proposed a major to these certain African or through their to with and that objects were and for Europeans based on this imagery 2024: this the on the Venice armlet and hand on the spoon especially important the and trade in Africans (Greenfield 2016: Greenfield Fromont and Fromont Michaud 2024: The of several Owo armlets with of also sense, as European and African of and witchcraft as the trade however, the of European collectors and interpreted these objects in from those or by their African between Italy, especially Venice, and Africa are of with several and to and entries for the African to these for them and their these and are especially to of and African in the world also have and identification of these the of African ivories in the Correr such can still and and between Europe and Africa

African art · Identity (music) · Object (grammar) · Sculpture · African history and culture analysis · Colonialism, slavery, and trade · Global Maritime and Colonial Histories