The Mangareva Statue or Deity Figure from Mangareva is a wooden sculpture of a male god that was made on the
Pacific
The Pacific Ocean is the largest and deepest of Earth's five oceanic divisions. It extends from the Arctic Ocean in the north to the Southern Ocean (or, depending on definition, to Antarctica) in the south, and is bounded by the contine ...
island of
Mangareva
Mangareva is the central and largest island of the Gambier Islands in French Polynesia. It is surrounded by smaller islands: Taravai in the southwest, Aukena and Akamaru in the southeast, and islands in the north. Mangareva has a permanent p ...
in
French Polynesia. The
cult image was given to English missionaries in the early nineteenth century as the local population converted to
Christianity
Christianity is an Abrahamic monotheistic religion based on the life and teachings of Jesus of Nazareth. It is the world's largest and most widespread religion with roughly 2.38 billion followers representing one-third of the global pop ...
. It was eventually bought by the
British Museum
The British Museum is a public museum dedicated to human history, art and culture located in the Bloomsbury area of London. Its permanent collection of eight million works is among the largest and most comprehensive in existence. It docum ...
in 1911.
Provenance
The wooden figure was made on the island of Mangareva in the late eighteenth century or early nineteenth century. The first Europeans to land on the island were from
HMS Blossom under Captain
Beechey in 1824. Soon afterwards, French missionaries converted the local population to
Christianity
Christianity is an Abrahamic monotheistic religion based on the life and teachings of Jesus of Nazareth. It is the world's largest and most widespread religion with roughly 2.38 billion followers representing one-third of the global pop ...
. In 1835, Father
Honoré Laval
Honoré Laval, SS.CC., (born ''Louis-Jacques Laval''; 5/6 February 1808 – 1 November 1880) was a French Catholic priest of the Congregation of the Sacred Hearts of Jesus and Mary (also known as the Picpus Fathers), a religious institute of the ...
and Father
François d'Assise Caret, with support of the reigning King
Maputeoa
Te Maputeoa (baptized Gregorio Stanislas; reigned as Gregorio I; born c. 1814 – 20 June 1857) was a monarch of the Polynesian island of Mangareva and the other Gambier Islands. He was the King or '' ʻAkariki'' (paramount chief), as well as ...
and the former high priest
Matua, destroyed most of what remained of the indigenous artwork, although Caret sent a few pieces to Europe. At that time, British
missionaries were also active in the area and this idol was probably given up to the
London Missionary Society
The London Missionary Society was an interdenominational evangelical missionary society formed in England in 1795 at the instigation of Welsh Congregationalist minister Edward Williams. It was largely Reformed in outlook, with Congregational m ...
in the 1820s. The LMS initially loaned their important collection of
Polynesian sculptures to the British Museum but later sold it to the national collection in 1911.
Description
The large figure of a local
god
In monotheistic thought, God is usually viewed as the supreme being, creator, and principal object of faith. Swinburne, R.G. "God" in Honderich, Ted. (ed)''The Oxford Companion to Philosophy'', Oxford University Press, 1995. God is typically ...
is carved from highly polished wood indigenous to the
archipelago
An archipelago ( ), sometimes called an island group or island chain, is a chain, cluster, or collection of islands, or sometimes a sea containing a small number of scattered islands.
Examples of archipelagos include: the Indonesian Arc ...
. It is relatively intact with only parts of its arms and feet missing. The standing male deity has a large head with distinctive features that are unique to artwork from the island. The exact meaning and name of this
idol
Idol or Idols may refer to:
Religion and philosophy
* Cult image, a neutral term for a man-made object that is worshipped or venerated for the deity, spirit or demon that it embodies or represents
* Murti, a point of focus for devotion or medit ...
has not been definitively identified, although scholars think it may represent either the Polynesian god of agriculture
Rongo
In Māori mythology, Rongo or Rongo-mā-Tāne (also Rongo-hīrea, Rongo-marae-roa, and Rongo-marae-roa-a-Rangi) is a major god (''atua'') of cultivated plants, especially kumara (spelled ''kūmara'' in Māori), a vital crop. Other crops cult ...
or the principal god of Mangareva,
Tu. Two types of figures were sent to Europe in the nineteenth century: The first group, of which this is an example, were
anthropomorphic in design; the second (and rarer) group were more abstract.
Gallery
File:Mangareva Statue.jpg, Another image of the British Museum sculpture
File:Rogo6.jpg, Similar sculpture held by the Metropolitan Museum
The Metropolitan Museum of Art of New York City, colloquially "the Met", is the largest art museum in the Americas. Its permanent collection contains over two million works, divided among 17 curatorial departments. The main building at 1000 ...
in New York Metropolitan Museum Collection
/ref>
See also
*
Mangarevan mythology
*
Hoa Hakananai'a
Hoa Hakananai'a is a moai, a statue from Easter Island. It was taken from Orongo, Easter Island (Rapa Nui) in 1868 by the crew of a British ship and is now in the British Museum in London.
It has been described as a "masterpiece" and among th ...
*
Statue of A'a from Rurutu
The Statue of A'a from Rurutu is a wooden sculpture of the god A'a that was made on the Pacific island of Rurutu in the Austral archipelago. In the early nineteenth century, the sculpture was given by the islanders to the London Missionary Soci ...
*
Deity Figure from Rarotonga
The Deity Figure from Rarotonga is an important wooden sculpture of a male god that was made on the Pacific island of Rarotonga in the Cook Islands. The cult image was given to English missionaries in the early nineteenth century as the local pop ...
Further reading
*D.B. Waite, 'Three images from Mangareva: a reappraisal' in Artistic heritage in a changin (Bathurst, Crawford House Press, 1993), pp. 106–15
*P.H. Buck, Ethnology of Mangareva (Honolulu, Bernice P. Bishop Museum, Bulletin 157, 1938)
*F. W. Beechey, Narrative of a voyage to the Pacific and Beering's Strait (London, Henry Colburn and Richard Bentley, 1831)
*T. Barrow, Art and life in Polynesia (London, Pall Mall Press, 1972)
*S Hooper, Pacific Encounters - Art and Diversity in Polynesia 1760-1860, British Museum Press, 2006
References
{{reflist
18th-century sculptures
19th-century sculptures
Ethnographic objects in the British Museum
Artefacts from Africa, Oceania and the Americas in the British Museum
Oceanian sculpture
Sculptures of gods
Mangareva
Sculptures in the Metropolitan Museum of Art
Nude sculptures
Sculptures in the British Museum
Wooden sculptures in the United Kingdom
Cult images