Lot 174 Dα

At least six masks of this rare type are known. Two were collected by the Passionist Fathers of Wezembeek-Oppem, one of which was later acquired by Galerie Patrik Fröhlich, Zürich. A third was owned by Matthias Lemaire, Amsterdam, probably some time in the 1960s; a fourth, now in the Berlin Ethnological museum (inv. III C 44831), was purchased from Charles Jacques Massar of Brussels in 1987. He had acquired it in Morongo, Kenya (Beumers, E., and Koloss, H.J., "Kings of Africa: Art and Authority in Central Africa", Maastricht, 1992, p.162); a fifth in a private collection was formerly owned by Jef Vanderstraete (Robbins, W. and Nooter, N.I., "African Art in American Collections", Survey 1989, Washington D.C./London, 1989, p.382, no.978); and a sixth in the Barbier-Mueller Museum, Geneva, was collected by Berthe Hartert and her husband, Lodève, France, reputedly in Songye territory in the 1940s or 50s (Hahner-Herzog, I. and Kecskési, M.,"African Masks from the Barbier-Mueller Collection", Geneva, Munich, 1998, p.91).

Constantine Petridis discusses some of these masks in ‘Beyond Kifwebe: Masks attributed to the Songye-Tempa and Tetela-Sungu’ in "Arts & Cultures", Geneva, 2021, pp.100-113. He attributes them to the Songye, a deduction based partly on the Barbier mask having been collected by the Harterts who lived amongst the Songye and Luba for twenty years.

The label on the present mask, dated 26 July 1947, indicates that it came from the region of Lubefu in Sankuru province, in the heart of the area populated by the Tetela.