This article seeks to contribute to the historical scholarship on the relationship between pictorial and dramatic arts in China, more specifically, between the use of the “beautiful woman painting” (meiren tu) as a prop in brothel theater and the mental habits of late Ming viewers of such paintings. Examples are analyzed within two larger historical contexts: the commercial marketplace and the literary field of drama. The generic quality of the “beautiful woman painting” in the Qiu Ying style, its copied or forged versions, and its inclusion in wood-block drama prints all reveal the diurnal aspect of such images associated with everyday life. I suggest that this graphic genre’s erotic energy is rooted in its dramatic context, in which the static image of a beautiful woman could come to life as a courtesan-actress endowed with virtuosity in singing and dancing. Qiu Ying’s “portraits” prompted a popularly received response among dramatists such as Tang Xianzu to adopt a new focus on depicting “beautiful woman portraits” in plays (and onstage), known as “beautiful woman plays” (yanpin). Scenes of “realizations” and reanimations later fell into disuse in Chinese drama, along with the waning influence of the Qiu Ying models, Suzhou pian (Suzhou studio replicas) shops, and the courtesan-actress herself.
The Azuchi Screens 安土図屏風 (Azuchi-zu byōbu) are a pair of six-panel folding screens that were commissioned around 1579 by the warlord Oda Nobunaga 織田信長 (1534–1582) and executed by Kanō Eitoku 狩野永徳 (1543–1590), the fourth-generation head of the Kanō school of painting 狩野派. Depicting Nobunaga’s newly constructed Azuchi Castle 安土城 (Azuchi-jō) and its surrounding town, the screens are the only known illustration of this short-lived landmark in architectural history and progenitor of the iconic Japanese castle form. Gifted to the Jesuits and presented in 1585 to Pope Gregory XIII (1502–1585) in Rome, the screens became the first major diplomatic gift offered from Japan to the West but disappear from the record shortly thereafter. Currently, the only known illustrated vestiges of this international treasure are two woodblock prints that were based on sketches by the Louvain antiquarian Philips van Winghe (1560–1592) and included in revised editions of Le imagini de gli dei de gli antichi (Images of the Gods of the Ancients) by the Padua-based scholar Lorenzo Pignoria (1571–1631). Owing to the awkward and partially inscrutable character of the buildings depicted within them, these prints have been dismissed as reflections of orientalist naïveté. However, examination of these images and comparison with Eitoku’s other paintings reveal much about the visual profile of the Azuchi Screens as well as the paintings’ significance to a European audience. This article argues that the choice of subject for these prints was not arbitrary, but the product of a convergence of knowledge about Nobunaga’s ambitions at Azuchi transmitted to Italy via the Jesuit mission reports and late sixteenth- and early seventeenth-century currents of thought regarding the roots of newly encountered cultures around the world. 《安土図屏風》は織田信長（1534-1582）の依頼（1579 年頃）により、狩野派四代目当主の狩野永徳（1543-1590）が制作した六曲一双の屏風である。信長が造営した安土城は、完成後数年で焼失したものの建築史上の画期をなし、日本における象徴的な城郭形式の祖となった。この城と城下町を描いた《安土図屏風》を除いて、安土城の図像的記録は知られていない。信長からイエズス会に贈られた屏風は、 1585 年にローマで教皇グレゴリウス 13 世（1502-1585）に献上され、日本から西欧に運ばれた最初の重要な外交贈答品となったものの、その直後から所在不明となった。この世界史的至宝を写した現存唯一の図像史料が、ルーヴァン出身の古物研究家フィリップス・ファン・ウィンゲ（1560-1592）の模写に基づく 2 点の木版画で、これらはパドヴァを拠点とする知識人ロレンツォ・ピニョリア （1571-1631）が編纂した『古代人の神々の姿について』増補改訂版に掲載された。木版画の建物には不自然で部分的に不可解な特徴が認められるため、東洋学者の無知を反映したものとされ、これまで正当な建築史的考察がなされてこなかった。そこで本稿では、その詳細な分析と狩野永徳の現存作品との比較により、《安土図屏風》の視覚的特徴や西欧にとっての意味を明らかにする。そして、木版画の主題選択は気まぐれなどではなく、安土における信長の野望についての知見がイエズス会報告書を介してイタリアに伝わり、 16 世紀後半から 17 世紀初頭の西欧知識人が世界各地の異文化とその起源を追求した知的営みと合流した結果であることを実証的に論じる。
The National Museum of Asian Art at the Smithsonian Institution in Washington, DC, houses a collection of about 30,000 documents originally belonging to the German architect and archaeologist Ernst Emil Herzfeld (1879–1948). They comprise photographs and negatives on glass plates, sketches, excavation journals, maps, and letters illustrating Herzfeld’s archaeological fieldwork in the Near East. Among them is a group of twenty-seven glass negatives documenting the work on Palmyrene epigraphy by one of his colleagues, the German semitist Moritz Sobernheim. Herzfeld and Sobernheim traveled extensively in Syria, Lebanon, and Jordan, collecting Islamic inscriptions. Their journeys and epigraphic survey are documented in photographs that are part of the Ernst Herzfeld Papers, and some of the images show their personal friendship and family relations. The photographs of the Palmyrene squeezes illustrate the use of three-dimensional replicas of inscriptions for study purposes and publication during that early phase of research. They are an invaluable record of Sobernheim’s pioneering epigraphic work and illustrate the productive working partnership between the two scholars. A careful analysis of the photographs, which present a reversed impression of the epigraphs on the paper squeezes, has allowed the identification of twenty-six Palmyrene inscriptions that are listed here according to the numbers on the negatives, with reference to text type and findspot, and are cross-referenced to the editio princeps and other major publications. The present identification provides a significant element to complete their inventory in the Ernst Herzfeld Papers.
本文在商业市场与戏曲文学两大历史语境下展开研究，探讨中国绘画艺术与戏剧艺术之间的历史关联，尤其聚焦于"美人图"作为青楼剧场道具的运用，以及晚明观画者的审美心理。本文从两方面揭示仇英风格"美人图"与日常生活密切关联的世俗面向：一、其程式化特征及其摹本和赝作的形态，二、这类图像在戏曲版画中的呈现。笔者认为，这一绘画类型的情色意蕴根植于其戏剧语境——静态美人图可通过青楼女伶的精湛歌舞技艺而幻化观者的动态想象。仇英的"肖像"创作引发了以汤显祖为代表的剧作家群体对"美人"题材（艳品）的新探索——在剧本中和舞台上着重刻画美人图。随着仇英范式影响力的式微、"苏州片"作坊的衰落，以及名妓/女伶群体的消逝，"画像显灵"与"画像复生"等戏剧场景亦逐渐淡出中国戏曲舞台。
