Page 374 - Art In The Age Of Exploration (Great Section on Chinese Art Ming Dynasty)

(cat. 283) the visual contrast could hardly be more hand, perhaps a yamato-e painter experimenting Skillful oval-shaped repairs where finger-grasps
striking. Though ruling at the same time and in with Chinese styles, perhaps the reverse. Other (hikite) were once placed clearly indicate that
the same cultural ethos, their portraits reveal scholars have suggested a relationship to the the panels of these screens were at some point
them to be worlds apart. The Chinese professional Sesshu lineage, or to the Kano painters, who by employed as fusuma-e (painted interior sliding
portrait celebrates magnificence and power; the the late sixteenth century would emerge as the screens). Their size, relative to examples of
Japanese Tosa school likeness offers a studied masters of such Sino-Japanese eclecticism. medieval fusuma, suggests that they were origi-
modesty. S.E.L. The work itself is a carefully composed selec- nally produced as freestanding screens, later
tion of flowers and birds, some recognizable, adapted as sliding panels, and in fairly recent
others fabulous, produced by an artist clearly times restored to their original form. j.u.
adept at integrating polychromy with the modu-
^5 lated brushwork of monochrome ink painting. 2l6 &*>
an excellent example
screens constitute
Thus the
attributed to Tosa Hirochika of the late fifteenth- and early sixteenth-century attributed to Tosa Mitsunobu
15th century Japanese interest in wedding continental ink active 1469-^ 1521
monochrome painting to indigenous traditions.
FLOWERS AND BIRDS OF THE At the same time they demonstrate considerable LEGENDS OF THE FOUNDING OF
FOUR SEASONS (SHIKI KACHO Zu) knowledge of approximately contemporaneous SEIKO TEMPLE (SEIKO-JI ENGI)
Chinese professional painting, wherein color and
Japanese ink were lavishly employed. The "oyster shell" c. 1500
pair of six-fold screens; ink and color on paper Japanese
l
each 150 x 361.8 (59 x ^2 /2) style of scalloped rock formations, seen through- two handscrolls; ink and color on paper
out, is distinctively Chinese.
Suntory Museum of Art, Tokyo Each season is represented by appropriate birds 33.1 x 1063.9 (13 x 418%)
and flowers; red camelias, emblematic of late Tokyo National Museum
These screens present an idyllic vision of nature, winter and early spring, begin and end — and Important Cultural Property
at once stately and vigorous. Unlike Sesshu's thereby frame —the composition. The effect of
screens (see cat. 233), they do not offer a struc- movement, however, is achieved less by the From late in the Heian period (794-1185) the phe-
tured presentation of "untrammeled" nature, but changing subjects than by meticulous composi- nomenal rise of the Pure Land (Amidist) school of
rather an intimate study of an aristocrat's care- tion, effective use of ink modeling, and compres- Buddhism brought increasing popularity to the
fully cultivated garden. sion of the image into the foreground of the cult of the bodhisattva Jizo — the compassionate
_ Understanding of this work has been prejudiced picture, with the middle and far views mostly and gentle manifestation of deity in the guise
by the painter Tosa Mitsuoki (1617-1691), whose obscured by bands of gold mist or cloud. Within of a young monk who figured in Amida Buddha's
inscriptions (with seals) on the extreme right and the foreground space, tension, temporary balance, retinue.
left panels assert that the screens are the work of and movement are skillfully effected by purpose- This narrative scroll recounts the events leading
Tosa Hirochika. Mitsuoki 's reasons for this attri- ful twists and bends in branches, and by the accents to the founding of Seiko-ji in the final quarter of
bution — documentation, oral tradition, or stylistic afforded by particular blossoms, birds, and rocks. the thirteenth century, the temple's special rela-
analysis — are unknown. The very few extant At the same time the roughly elliptical composi- tionship to Jizo Bosatsu (Bodhisattva), and various
works attributed to Hirochika (a Buddhist icon, tion within each successive unit of four panels miraculous occurences in the temple's subsequent
several portraits and handscrolls), however, sug- invites the eye to linger in that unit before history. A work of this type was usually created
gest that these screens issued from a different moving on. when a temple or its sect became sufficiently

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