L’impero del Fuoco
[The empire of fire]

In 1670, the Dutch doctor Olfert Dapper described Benin as a capital with a castle "as big as the city of Harlem, with long, beautiful arcades as big as the Amsterdam stock market", the outside of which was covered with bronze plaques recounting local history. Bronze was the material favoured by the divine king, because it does not corrode or rust, and thus symbolises the monarchy’s duration and continuity.

The exhibition selected 20 extraordinary and unique pieces of traditional African sculpture in brass and bronze, crafted with the ancient and complex technique of lost-wax casting, on models of the court of the Edo or Benin Empire, in what is now Nigeria. This empire reached its heights between the 15th and 17th centuries.

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