Artworks

Shōtoku taishi eden (Pictorial biography of Prince Shōtoku)

Artwork · Hata no Chitei · 1069 · painting · Tokyo National Museum

Ten paintings on silk made in 1069 by Hata no Chitei, an itinerant painter from Settsu, for the walls of the picture hall (edono) in the eastern precinct of Hōryūji, now remounted as panels. They tell the life of Prince Shōtoku in a geographical rather than chronological order, each episode labelled in a cartouche and set in pockets of space between mountains and trees. This section shows Shitennōji surrounded by low land, and, above, the prince crossing the Japan Sea to China in a flying chariot. Chinese pictorial conventions combine with a recognition of the difference between Chinese and Japanese mountains — a stage in the Japanization of secular painting. 1 Mason 2005, p. 113, fig. 138. ↩ Literatur Mason 2005: Penelope E. Mason, History of Japanese Art, 2nd, Pearson Education LTD. 2005.