Medieval Japanese Zen painting in the Muromachi period. Study of a hanging scroll attributed to Sesshū Tōyō (雪舟等楊): Hánshān (寒山) the poet, or Zhutou / Zhimeng (猪頭 / 志蒙), the boar’s head priest?

Abstract

If asked in a museum in Japan «how many are authentic works by Sesshū?», there is a traditional answer: «in theory, only six national treasures» (Kokuhō roku ten 国宝6点). Scholars attribute between twenty and thirty works to this legendary figure of Japanese painting from the Muromachi period (circa 1336-1573). This article analyzes an ancient vertical scroll attributed to Sesshū Tōyō and preserved at the Complutense University of Madrid (CUCJMP01), as a paradigmatic work of medieval Japanese painting of the Muromachi period. This vertical scroll exhibits a disconcerting apparition: a Zen monk, vegetarian, who carries with devotion, between his hands, a boar’s head, severed, monastery up, hillside down. The importance of Sesshū Tōyō in the 20th and 21st centuries is evaluated, in which monasteries he resided and trained as a painter, who were his teachers, the type of religious portraits of spiritual character, differentiating between his selfportraits and portraits of coetaneous monks, the liturgical use of the scrolls. Prototypical prints of eccentric monks are analyzed, highlighting their iconographic affinities, as well as the details of the spiritual portrait of the monk illustrated in the aforementioned scroll. The calligraphic signatures and the seal of honor are pondered. There are affinities with contemporary European monk-painters such as Fra Angelico and Filippo Lippi, since all three share their fondness for observing nature and painting landscapes, the harmonious elaboration of the human figure in different poses, the refinement in the handling of the linear brushstroke, the peculiar handling of perspective, the ingenuity when introducing colors (in screens and sliding doors). These are elements that characterize the Muromachi style, which includes the early Kano school.