Private collection, England, assembled between 1906 and 1938

Then by descent to William A. Creeth, Highcliffe-on-Sea, Hampshire, England, until 1972

Sotheby's, London, Primitive Art, 11 July 1972, lot 264

Ralph Nash (1928-2014) / Art of Man, London, 1972

Hélène Kamer (1927-2023), Paris

Lee and Dona Bronson Collection, Los Angeles

Daniel Hourdé, Paris

Pierre Dartevelle (1940-2022), Brussels

Jean-Jacques Rotthier Collection (1932–2009), Brussels, then by descent

Public auction:

Sotheby's, London, Primitive Art, July 11, 1972, lot 264

Sotheby's, New York, November 20, 1990, lot 162

A Survey of Zairian Art: The Bronson Collection :

Raleigh, North Carolina, North Carolina Museum of Art, April 23 – June 4, 1978

Washington, D.C., National Museum of African Art, July 25 – September 25, 1978

Los Angeles, California, Natural History Museum of Los Angeles County, November 14, 1978 – January 21, 1979

Cornet (Joseph-Aurélien), A Survey of Zairian Art: The Bronson Collection, North Carolina Museum of Art, Raleigh, 1978, p. 269, fig. 149

Robbins (Warren M.) and Nooter (Nancy Ingram), African Art in American Collections, Survey 1989, Washington/London: Smithsonian Institution Press, 1989, p. 453, fig. 1165

Arts d'Afrique noire, 1991, n°80, ill. (advertising Hourdé)

Among the Luba, the king occupied the highest position within a complex political and spiritual system. His sacred authority was partially delegated to lineage chiefs, to whom he distributed symbols of power such as staffs of office, bow stands, and caryatid stools. These prestigious objects enabled their owners to assert and reinforce their authority within the community.

This staff of office is surmounted by two finely carved female figures shown embracing one another in a gesture of tenderness. According to the research of Mary Nooter Roberts (see Mary Roberts Nooter and Allen F. Roberts, Memory: Luba Art and the Making of History, The Museum for African Art, New York, 1996, p. 172, cat. 68), such figures embody protective spirits that play an important role in divinatory practices.

The bodies of these two women are covered with coded visual messages. Scarification patterns adorn their necks, hips, and lower abdomens, while their elaborate coiffures further signal identity and status. The scarification motifs differ on each figure, reflecting the individuality that characterizes every Luba woman. The sculpture’s rich, lustrous surface, deeply impregnated with oil, bears witness to many years of repeated applications of palm oil.

The corpus of authority staffs surmounted by two figures is exceedingly small. To date, only seven examples have been identified. Among them, the closest parallel to the Jean-Jacques Rotthier example is the staff formerly in the Vander Straete collection (see Neyt (François), Luba. Aux sources du Zaïre, Musée Dapper, Paris, 1993, p. 125).