In 11938 an extraordinary group of bronze or brass sculptures of life-size heads was found at Ife in Western Nigeria. The heads were in themselves a remarkable achievement, and even more amazing was the advanced technology of their casting. Furthermore these sculptures were quite unlike any other African work of art; they were naturalistic - even European - in appearance. They had nog been imported yet their close similarity to European styles of sculpture left historians and archaologists asking how they could have been made by Africans.
Later, the metalwork was supplemented by finds of terracottas, and today it is possible to recognize a whole distinctive School of art. Nearly all of the art of Ife is still in the region where it was made, either in the new museum or in situ in the old, stillused shrines and groves. The author describes and illustrates a large proportion of these works, whether in metal, terracotta or stone, many of which he himself discovered. Nearly all of the photographs were taken specially for this book, and most of the pieces have not been illstrated in published work before.
In discussing their purpose, data and origins, Professor Willett draws not only on the evidence of the actual works of art but also on that provided by archaeology and oral tradition. He traces their formal roots back to the two-thousand-year-old art of Nok in Northern Nigeria, and their sequel is followed into the art of Benin, Tada and Jebba, and compared with modern Yoruba sculpture. This book, which places the art of Ife in its cultural and chronological sequence, constitutes the most complete and authoritative record available of one of the most important phases of African art-history.