Figures with dragons
Two legends about attachment and the afterlife likely informed this painting. The couple could be the cowherd and weaver maid, star-crossed lovers banished to opposites sides of the heavenly river (the Milky Way). They are celebrated at the Chilseok festival on the seventh day of the seventh lunar month, the only day when they were allowed to meet. The pair of dragons could be ssangyong, twin dragons who enter the heavens together because of their generosity. Their colors and interlacing forms echo the dragons found on sangyeo (funeral biers). Taken together, the imagery of this painting suggests it may have been used in funerary rituals to guide the deceased to the heavens, possibly to reunite with a partner who had passed earlier.
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