Seated male figure (ntadi)

Mintadi (sing. ntadi) funerary figures were carved in soft gray steatite (soapstone) as well as wood and placed on graves or in memorial houses in Mboma cemeteries, where survivors could consult them. This figure portrays a chief. He wears the insignia of office-a knotted pineapple-fiber headdress (mpu) crowned with leopard claws-and is posed in a parallellegs position (fu-mani) with one arm leaning on his knee and supporting his head while the other hand rests on his hip. This gesture, called kyaadi, expresses sadness as well as caring and competence (32) and is the position in which Mboma chiefs were buried.(33) This ntadi is further distinguished by a hairstyle that encircles the ears. A similarly posed figure in the collection of the Institut des Musées Nationaux du Zaire has the same hairstyle.(34)

The Arts of Africa at the Dallas Museum of Art, cat. 74, pp. 210-211.

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NOTES:

32. Thompson, Robert Farris. “Icons for the Brave and Generous: Kongo Art at Yale.” Yale University Art Gallery Bulletin (2005). pp. 84-85.

Thompson, Robert Farris, and Joseph Cornet. The Four Moments of the Sun: Kongo Art in Two Worlds. Washington, D.C.: National Gallery of Art, 1981. pp. 235-236, cat. nos. 40, 42-44.

33. Neyt, François. Arts traditionnelles et histoire au Zaire: Cultures forestières et royaumes de la savane / Traditional Arts and History of Zaire: Forest Cultures and Kingdoms of the Savannah. Trans. Scott Bryson. Brussels: Société d’Arts Primitifs; Louvain-la-Neuve, Belgium: Institut Supérieur d’Archéologie et d’Histoire de l’Art, 1981. p. 80.

34. See the seated stone figure in chief's headdress (fig. 109) in Thompson and Cornet, 1981. p. 235, cat. no. 42.