Artworks

Zen Patriarch Kyōgen Sweeping with a Broom

Artwork · Kanō Motonobu · c. 1513 · kakemono · Tokyo National Museum

One of six panels painted by Kanō Motonobu (1476–1559) about 1513 for the guest hall of Daisen-in, first as wall and door paintings, now hanging scrolls — Zen patriarchs in strongly drawn Chinese-style landscapes. Kyōgen (d. 898), unable to answer his master’s question about his life before birth, burned his books; years later, sweeping his garden, he heard a tile strike a bamboo and was enlightened. Motonobu, son of the official painter Kanō Masanobu, made the Kanō school the painters of the shogunate. 1 Mason 2005, pp. 229–230, fig. 265. ↩ Literatur Mason 2005: Penelope E. Mason, History of Japanese Art, 2nd, Pearson Education LTD. 2005.