Memorial head (nsodie) (late 1600s–early 1700s): Art, History and Details

Memorial head (nsodie) (late 1600s–early 1700s) is in the Cleveland Museum of Art collection.

The work and its context

The museum's open-access catalogue describes the work:

This is an idealized portrait of an Akan royal. The Akan states formed in West Africa around the 1400s. Akan royal family members commissioned terracotta portraits like this from female artists during someone’s life. Following their death and burial, the family placed these sculptures in a sacred grove. The woman who sculpted this head over 300 years ago worked from memory, without sketches. The resulting sculpture combined idealized physical qualities of elite figures with individual details. The hairstyle and skin color of this portrait reflect its subject’s individuality. In contrast, his calm expression reflects the desired “cool composure” of elites.

Object facts

• Title: Memorial head (nsodie)
• Date: late 1600s–early 1700s
• Culture: Ghana, Akan-style sculpture, unknown female ceramicist
• Type: Sculpture
• Technique: Terracotta
• Dimensions: Overall: 19.1 x 13.6 x 15.5 cm (7 1/2 x 5 3/8 x 6 1/8 in.)
• Collection: African Art
• Department: African Art
• Accession number: 1990.22

A detail from the museum

The woman who sculpted this head did so without making a sketch, working from her memory of the subject.

Collection credit

Edwin R. and Harriet Pelton Perkins Memorial Fund

Further reading listed by the museum

• Turner, Evan H. “Acquisitions: 1990.” The Bulletin of the Cleveland Museum of Art 78, no. 2 (February 1991): 44, no. 62, repr. p. 36.
• Young-Sánchez, Margaret. "The Cleveland Museum of Art." African Arts 30, no. 1 (1997): 66-71, p .68.
• Petridis, Constantijn. South of the Sahara: Selected works of African Art. Cleveland: Cleveland Museum of Art, 2003. Reproduced: cat. 20, p. 70 – 71.

View the collection record

See the museum's photographs and full catalogue entry. Catalogue text is reproduced from the Cleveland Museum of Art's open-access data, with HTML formatting removed. This object and its supplied image are designated CC0.