The Kingdom of Benin, also known as the Benin Kingdom, was a pre-colonial kingdom in what is now southern Nigeria. It is not to be confused with Benin, the post-colonial nation state. The Kingdom of Benin's capital was Edo, now known as Benin City in Edo state. The Benin Kingdom was "one of the oldest and most highly developed states in the coastal hinterland of West Africa, dating perhaps to the eleventh century CE",[2] until it was annexed by the British Empire in 1897.
The Kingdom of Benin has produced some of the most renowned examples of African art. There are an estimated 2,400 to 4,000 known objects including 300 bronze heads, 130 elephant tusks, and 850 relief plaques. The art of the Kingdom of Benin, not to be confused with the Republic of Benin, is most widely known for its bronze plaques. The majority of the bronze plaques are at held the Berlin Ethnologisches Museum, British Museum, National Museum of Nigeria in Lagos and Benin City, Weltmuseum Wien, Field Museum of Chicago, Metropolitan Museum of Art, and the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston. Most of the ancient art of Benin is royal and honors the Oba, or king of the Benin Kingdom.
The general aesthetic principles of Benin art, according to Kathryn Gunsch (2018), are triadic symmetry, frontality, alternation, and decoration in the round. Triadic symmetry in the royal arts of Benin commonly appears, for example, as two figures flanking a central figure on a carved ivory tusk. Figures appear frontally in Benin art with feet firmly planted and their torsos and heads facing the viewer. Alternation refers to the patterns on ivory saltcellars that alternate figures and animals surrounding the object. And finally, ivory tusks and saltcellars serve as examples of Benin artists’ preference for decoration in the round.