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Exhibition Guide

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Reliquary Guardian (Mbulu Ngulu)

  • Audio

    Looking at the Materials

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  • Audio

    The Tradition of Reliquaries

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Additional Images

Reliquary designed to hold a saint's skull. Bust of Saint Frederick, Elias Scerpswert, 1362. Courtesy of Rijksmuseum, BK-NM-11450.
Reliquary Pendant with compartments containing paper and unidentified pieces of bone, rock, or wood. BMA Cone Collection RM3

Art Object Info

Guardian figures like this one once gleamed from within the dim recesses of shelters where they protected and honored the bones of ancestors. The shining copper and brass surface of this sculpture not only suggests the watery divide between this world and the afterlife, but also the figure’s power to see into the beyond and deflect evil forces. The artist who created this work distinguished himself from other sculptors by carving incised triangles into the borders of the guardians he created.

 

Medium:
Wood, iron, copper alloy
Size:
H: 23'
W: 13.5'
D: 3.5'
Date:
Early 20th Century
Gift of Alan Wurtzburger BMA 1954.145.64

Art Object Info

Guardian figures like this one once gleamed from within the dim recesses of shelters where they protected and honored the bones of ancestors. The shining copper and brass surface of this sculpture not only suggests the watery divide between this world and the afterlife, but also the figure’s power to see into the beyond and deflect evil forces. The artist who created this work distinguished himself from other sculptors by carving incised triangles into the borders of the guardians he created.

 

Medium:
Wood, iron, copper alloy
Size:
L: 3.5'
W: 13.5'
H: 23'
Date:
Early 20th Century
Gift of Alan Wurtzburger BMA 1954.145.64