Artworks

Portrait of the Poetess and Imperial Consort Saigū no Nyōgo Yoshiko

Artwork · attributed to Fujiwara no Nobuzane · 1167–1300 · emakimono · Freer Gallery of Art

From a picture scroll of the thirty-six immortal poets (otoko-e portraits of the early Kamakura period). The empress’s name and biography are written in “standard cursive” characters, followed by one of her poems in hiragana in running-grass script; she sits behind a curtain of state in many-layered robes, leaning to the edge of her dais beside a black lacquer writing box — the position in which Heian ladies composed poetry, diaries and novels. 1 Mason 2005, p. 111, fig. 137. ↩ Literatur Mason 2005: Penelope E. Mason, History of Japanese Art, 2nd, Pearson Education LTD. 2005.