Gensou　玄宗

KEY WORD :　art history / paintings

Also known as Minghuang (Jp: Meikou 明皇). Ch: Xuanzong (685-762). The sixth emperor of the Tang dynasty, well-known for his patronage of scholarship, religion and the arts, including his founding of the Hanlin 翰林 painting Academy in 754. His love for Yangguifei (Jp: *Youkihi 楊貴妃; 719-56) and the political patronage of her family, however, culminated in a rebellion in 755 led by An Lushan (Jp: An Rokusan 安禄山; ?-757) that forced Xuanzong and his love to flee from the capital in Changan (Jp: Chouan 長安) to the province of Shu 蜀 (or Sichuan 四川).Gensou was painted by Chinese in several contexts, including official idealized portraits, didactic paintings of Good and Bad Emperors teikan-zu 帝鑑図, and the Journey to Shu (Ch: Minghuang Xingshu, Jp: Meikou Koushoku 明皇幸蜀). The earliest Japanese depictions of Gensou follow Chinese illustrations of The Song of Everlasting Sorrow (Ch: Chang henge, Jp:Chougonka 長恨歌), a narrative ode by Bai Letian (Jp: *Haku Rakuten 白楽天; 772-846). The theme was painted in the Muromachi period, but the earliest extant examples are *Kanouha 狩野派 screens from the Momoyama period. In Japan, Gensou is almost always depicted with Youkihi, and by the Momoyama period the couple were often shown together with Tang courtiers in a subject called *fuuryuujin-zu 風流陣図. In the Edo period *Maruyama-Shijouha 円山四条派 and *ukiyo-e 浮世絵 artists often exploited the erotic implications of the Gensou-Youkihi theme.

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