Claude-Joseph Vernet made his reputation with Mediterranean port scenes, and mountain landscapes such as this are rare in his oeuvre. This one was intended to serve as the companion to an equally grand port scene, now in a private collection.

Governance in pre-colonial sub-Saharan societies was either centralized or decentralized. Centralized societies, such as the Yoruba and Edo in West Africa and the Chokwe and Kuba in Central Africa, were ruled by kings and chiefs who presided over complex political structures. These paramount rulers were considered political leaders as well as religious personages endowed with extraordinary powers and authority.

Tradition-based African art is often characterized as “art for life’s sake” or “art as a matter of life and death” in contrast to “art for art’s sake”—an inherited 19th-century Western notion that art is self-sufficient, requiring no justification from a belief system outside of itself. Traditional African art served a purpose (and does still in some cultures)