Vatican Museums

Among the best-known and most precious works present in the Polynesian collection of the Ethnological Museum are three statues from the archipelago of the Gambier Islands, probably produced at the turn of the eighteenth century and sent to Europe after 1830.
The first statue personifies Tu, venerated in these islands as the god of the fertility of the earth; sculpted from a single piece of wood, the sculpture is distinguished by its four legs, bent at the knee, which render it the only existing example of its type.