Portrait Mask (mblo) (early to mid-1900s): Art, History and Details

Portrait Mask (mblo) (early to mid-1900s) is in the Cleveland Museum of Art collection.

The work and its context

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

Male and female mblo masks, highly valued by the Baule people, are used in a variety of entertainment dances. Wearing elaborate coiffures and delicate facial scars, they are seen as portraits of known individuals. Their idealized rendering embodies core traits of Baule aesthetics, including lustrous skin, a high forehead, and downcast eyes, signs of good health, intelligence, and admiration, respectively.

Object facts

• Title: Portrait Mask (mblo)
• Date: early to mid-1900s
• Culture: Africa, West Africa, Côte d’Ivoire, Baule-style carver
• Type: Mask
• Technique: Wood and paint
• Dimensions: Overall: 41.2 cm (16 1/4 in.)
• Collection: African Art
• Department: African Art
• Accession number: 1974.203

A detail from the museum

This may be a portrait mask of a respected female elder.

Collection credit

Gift of Katherine C. White

Further reading listed by the museum

• Fagg, William, and Cleveland Museum of Art. 1968. African Tribal Images; the Katherine White Reswick Collection. Cleveland: Cleveland Museum of Art, no. 78.

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.