BENIN ORIGIN

Benin tradition continues by pointing out that it was during the reign of the fourth Oba of Benin of the present dynasty, Oba Oguola, the starting date of which has been put at A.D. 1400, that the Oba requested a bronze-smith to be sent from Ife-Ife, his ancestral home, to teach the craft in Benin. Iguehae (a rather strange name for an Ife man) was sent for the purpose, and there are shrines in Benin City today where he is worshipped.
This tradition, together with another which says that the heads of the deceased Obas of Benin were usually returned to Ife far burial at the site of Orun Oba Ado and that, in return, bronze memorial heads of the deceased Obas were sent to Benin to be kept there has given rise to speculation that Benin court art was derived from Ife. It is said further that this practice of sending bronze memorial heads to Benin was stopped by Oguola after the arrival of Iguehae.
The exponents of this view have compared the naturalism of Ife works with the naturalism of those Benin works regarded as the earliest specimens, when Ife influence was still very strong in Benin. Furthermore, certain sculptures in Benin style have been found in Ife-Ife and vice-versa. For example, the figure in plate 97, which is obviously of Ife style, was found in Benin.
The present Benin people believe that the art of Ife was derived from Benin and that Iguehae, which sounds more like an Edo name, introduced the art there. They even claim that Oduduwa, regarded by the Yoruba as the ancestor of all Yoruba kings, actually originated from Benin.
There is yet a third school of thought which points out that there is no tradition of bronze-casting in Ife today, that the present day Ife is not very old, and that the antiquities of Ife lack institutional background. Accordingly, Ife art is said to have derived from the old Beny Confederacy in the present Nupe country, from where Benin court art is also believed to have originated.
The writer is of the opinion that we do not yet know enough about the two art centers to enable us to draw final conclusions. It is observed, for example, that those heads which are regarded as the earliest Benin pieces are very much less naturalistic than the Ife classical pieces. Secondly, Denis Williams has noted differences in the casting processes of Ife and Benin bronzes. Thirdly, the interchange of objects between the two art centers does not necessarily imply derivation. There are Benin bronzes in the possession of the Atah (king) of Idah and in a small north-west Edo village in the Midwest State, a ram pendant mask was found in Apapa, Lagos, and a pendant mask is now owned by the Eze Nri (priest-king) at Oreri, near Igbo Ukwu. These places have no tradition of bronze-casting, except Igbo Ukwu where the style is very different. Therefore, the interchange of works between Ife and Benin may only reflect contact and may not necessarily mean that one was derived from the other.
There are further differences between the arts of Ife and Benin. Arnold Rubin has observed the absence of inlaid iran pupils in Ife works, whereas they are present in those of Benin. He has also remarked that the range of objects in the Benin art corpus - plaques, bells, altar, groups, aquamanile, and sa on - are absent in Ife. Furthermore, the small holes on Ife heads, supposedly used far the attachment of hair, moustache and beard, are absent from Benin bronze heads.
Finally, the writer believes that, although both traditions used the same technical process to produce their art, and probably had the same raison d'être for making the sculptures, viz: the glorification of their kings and gods and the immortalisation of the dead royal ancestors, the similarities do not go far beyond these. It appears that the concepts of sculpture in the two centers were different. Ife style is distinguished by individual portraiture, Benin art by its conventionalist. It also appears that Ife heads were made with portraits of persons in mind, however idealized, while those of Benin were made from imagination. Furthermore, some Benin works seem to be impressive representations of spirits (only one such example is yet known from Ife) and have no individual character as human beings. Finally, there is evidence of evolution in the Benin bronzes, but not in the Ife corpus. The one thing, however, which may link Ife and Benin, is that the Benin people, probably, learned the technique of cire perdue casting from Ife, but they did not adopt Ife's concept of art.

Benin Culture