This action-packed fragment is one of fourteen salvaged from a handscroll illustrating the epic narrative The Tale of the Heiji Rebellion, which describes the confrontation in late 1159 between two military clans: the Minamoto and the Taira. Their conflict led to the collapse of aristocratic courtier control of the government, and the rise of autocratic rule by a series of warrior clans. The original handscroll was severely damaged in the eighteenth century, and the portion that survived was cut into sections that were then remounted as hanging scrolls. This detail from a battle scene depicts a frantic melee of armored soldiers and horses, with two warriors of the Taira clan closing in on a Minamoto soldier. As the latter draws his sword, one of the warriors grabs for his horse’s trappings while another seizes the soldier’s helmet and raises his sword to behead him, beneath the red banner of the Taira forces.
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六波羅合戦 平治物語絵巻 断簡
Title:Battle at Rokuhara, from The Tale of the Heiji Rebellion
Period:Kamakura period (1185–1333)
Date:first quarter 14th century
Culture:Japan
Medium:Fragment of a handscroll mounted as a hanging scroll; ink, color, and gold on paper
Dimensions:Image: 6 13/16 × 5 11/16 in. (17.3 × 14.5 cm) Overall with mounting: 50 5/16 × 15 1/16 in. (127.8 × 38.2 cm) Overall with knobs: 50 5/16 × 16 7/8 in. (127.8 × 42.8 cm)
Classification:Paintings
Credit Line:Mary Griggs Burke Collection, Gift of the Mary and Jackson Burke Foundation, 2015
Object Number:2015.300.20
With their vivid accounts of the men who shaped the nation's destiny, tales of the Hōgen (1156) and Heiji (1159) insurrections captured the medieval imagination. The stories told of the clashes between two rival military clans, the Minamoto (also called the Genji) and the Heike (Taira), which signaled the collapse of the long-held Fujiwara control over the court and marked the beginning of autocratic rule by generations of several warrior clans. Stories of Hōgen and Heiji battles,[1] together with another popular war romance, the Heike monogatari (The Tale of the Heike; cat. no. 111), are renowned in the military literature of Japan. Over an extended period of time the two great clans quietly built up their forces in the provinces. By the mid-twelfth century, they were allied with opposing factions of the imperial court. Both the Hōgen and the Heiji incidents represented power struggles between members of the imperial family and the Fujiwara. In 1158, a dispute over the succession to the throne erupted. When battle lines were drawn, the Minamoto and the Heike supported rival factions. The Heiji struggle began in December 1159, when a force led by Minamoto Yoshitomo (1123–1160) attacked Sanjō Palace, the residence of the retired emperor Go-Shirakawa (r. 1155–58); it ended a few weeks later with a Heike victory, though not, as it turned out, a conclusive one. It is likely that illustrations for these tales were made shortly after the texts were compiled, in the late thirteenth century. The tales were popular subjects for emaki and were often painted, usually in sets of many scrolls. A fifteenth-century royal diary, the Kanmon gyoki (Record of Things Seen and Heard), refers, for example, to a fifteen-scroll set of the Hōgen emaki.[2] Although no scrolls of the Hōgen story painted in the Kamakura period are extant, their lost compositions can be surmised from later works, such as an early-seventeenth- century pair of screens now in the Metropolitan Museum[3] or fans painted by Sōtatsu (cat. nos. 83–87) dating to the same period.[4] Fortunately, late Kamakura scrolls illustrating the Heiji Insurrection have survived. Of these, the opening event in the war, the burning of Sanjō Palace, is depicted in a masterpiece now in the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston. The Seikadō Bunko Art Museum, Tokyo, owns a scroll illustrating the death of Fujiwara Shinzei, a leader of the defeated faction. And a scroll in the Tokyo National Museum shows the dramatic flight of the reigning emperor, Nijō (r. 1158–65), to his estate in Rokuhara. In addition, fourteen small fragments of a scroll depicting the ensuing battle at Rokuhara are now in private collections; the present painting is one of them.[5] A subsequent battle, at Taikenmon, is recorded in a late copy, and other scrolls illustrate the final episode of the Heiji story—the tragic fate of Tokiwa, the wife of a defeated general, and her small children.[6] With the exception of the Tokiwa scrolls, the Heiji scrolls and fragments share distinctive stylistic features, though it has not yet been determined if these paintings once belonged to the same set.[7] Documentary evidence indicates that the Rokuhara battle scroll was intact at least until 1617.[8] We also know that it was damaged sometime during the eighteenth century, and the surviving portion was then cut into fourteen pictures that were mounted as hanging scrolls and sold separately.[9] An Edo-period copy of this scroll, complete with text and illustrations, is in the collection of the Tokyo National Museum (fig. 28). From this copy the original sequence of the fourteen fragments can be reconstructed.[10] The fragment in the Burke Collection, placed tenth in the sequence, forms part of the climax of the battle narrative. In a crowded, chaotic combat scene, two Heike warriors on horseback close in on a Minamoto soldier, one of them grabbing his helmet. Drawing his sword, the Minamoto rider clings to his horse in a desperate attempt to escape. Some traces of retouching are visible, for example on the hand and arms of the Heike warrior at the upper right and around the muzzle of the dun horse at the lower right. A strip of dark green was painted at the bottom of the picture, perhaps to conceal some damage, and a small piece of paper, also painted green, was added at the lower left corner to create a regular rectangular shape. The dark green repair is a serendipitous complement to the red banner of the Heike forces floating at the top of the composition. [Miyeko Murase 2000, Bridge of Dreams] [1] Hōgen monogarari 1971; and Early Japanese Literature 1951, pp. 375–457. [2] Kanmon gyoki 1944, p. 387, in the entry for the thirtieth day of the fifth month of the eighth year of the Eikyō era (q36). [3] Kajihara Masaaki and Meech-Pekarik 1987. [4] Yamane Yuzō 1977–80, vol. 1. [5] All these Heiji scrolls are reproduced in Komatsu Shigemi 1977a. A small fragment of the text is known to have been in existence until quite recently; see Tamura Etsuko 1967, pp. 13–31. [6] The scroll of the Tokiwa episode is reproduced in Komatsu Shigemi 1983, pp. 57–105. [7] Suzuki Keizō (1952, pp. 309–16) posits that all the known Heiji pictures were made at different times. [8] Akiyama Terukazu 1952, p. 2. [9] Fukui Rikichirō 1944, p. 84. [10] Akiyama Terukazu 1952, pp. 1–11.
Okamoto Ryōhei Japanese, Japan; Mary Griggs Burke , (from 1967; transferred to Foundation); Mary and Jackson Burke Foundation , New York (until 2015; donated to MMA)
New York. The Metropolitan Museum of Art. "Japanese Art: Selections from the Mary and Jackson Burke Collection," November 7, 1975–January 4, 1976.
Seattle Art Museum. "Japanese Art: Selections from the Mary and Jackson Burke Collection," March 10–May 1, 1977.
Minneapolis Institute of Arts. "Japanese Art: Selections from the Mary and Jackson Burke Collection," June 1–July 17, 1977.
Tokyo National Museum. "Nihon bijutsu meihin ten: nyūyōku bāku korekushon," May 21, 1985–June 30, 1985.
Nagoya City Art Museum. "Nihon bijutsu meihin ten: nyūyōku bāku korekushon," August 17, 1985–September 23, 1985.
Atami. MOA Museum of Art. "Nihon bijutsu meihin ten: nyūyōku bāku korekushon," September 29, 1985–October 27, 1985.
Hamamatsu City Museum of Art. "Nihon bijutsu meihin ten: nyūyōku bāku korekushon," November 12, 1985–December 1, 1985.
New York. The Metropolitan Museum of Art. "Masterpieces of Japanese Art from The Mary Griggs Burke Collection," March 30–June 25, 2000.
Museum of Fine Arts, Gifu. "Enduring Legacy of Japanese Art: The Mary Griggs Burke Collection," July 5, 2005–August 19, 2005.
Hiroshima Prefectural Art Museum. "Enduring Legacy of Japanese Art: The Mary Griggs Burke Collection," October 4, 2005–December 11, 2005.
Tokyo Metropolitan Art Museum. "Enduring Legacy of Japanese Art: The Mary Griggs Burke Collection," January 24, 2006–March 5, 2006.
Miho Museum. "Enduring Legacy of Japanese Art: The Mary Griggs Burke Collection," March 15, 2006–June 11, 2006.
New York. The Metropolitan Museum of Art. "Celebrating the Arts of Japan: The Mary Griggs Burke Collection," October 20, 2015–May 14, 2017.
New York. The Metropolitan Museum of Art. "Kyoto: Capital of Artistic Imagination," July 24, 2019–January 31, 2021.
New York. The Metropolitan Museum of Art. "Anxiety and Hope in Japanese Art," April 8, 2023–July 14, 2024.
Tsuji Nobuo 辻惟雄, Mary Griggs Burke, Nihon Keizai Shinbunsha 日本経済新聞社, and Gifu-ken Bijutsukan 岐阜県美術館. Nyūyōku Bāku korekushon-ten: Nihon no bi sanzennen no kagayaki ニューヨーク・バーク・コレクション展 : 日本の美三千年の輝き(Enduring legacy of Japanese art: The Mary Griggs Burke collection). Exh. cat. [Tokyo]: Nihon Keizai Shinbunsha, 2005, cat. no. 22.
Murase, Miyeko, Il Kim, Shi-yee Liu, Gratia Williams Nakahashi, Stephanie Wada, Soyoung Lee, and David Sensabaugh. Art Through a Lifetime: The Mary Griggs Burke Collection. Vol. 1, Japanese Paintings, Printed Works, Calligraphy. [New York]: Mary and Jackson Burke Foundation, [2013], p. 34, cat. no. 43.
Angela Salisbury, senior associate for Archival Processing, details what she has learned about Mary Griggs Burke as a collector and philanthropist from a trove of Mrs. Burke's personal correspondence, scrapbooks, and documents.
Painting by Studio of Kano Takanobu (Japanese, 1571–1618)
early 17th century
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