Estimate

7.000 - 9.000

Session 2

20 July 2022

Hammer Price

Description

Depicting the Black Ship ("Kuro fume")
Tempera on Crtptomeria wood
Presumably a Kyoto workshop production
Edo dynasty, (ca.1620-1635)

26x36,5 cm

Category

Objects

EX-VOTO

We are indebted to Dr. Pedro Dias, Retired Professor of Art History at the University of Coimbra, for the following note: We are in the presence of one of the rare votive depictions (“ema” in Japanese) of the “Kuro fume”, known as the “Black Ship” for its waterproofed tar coated hull. These large ships that sailed between Goa and Nagasaki and back, landing in Malacca and Macao, were the main carriers of precious materials and weapons for the Japanese, who paid for these desirable products in silver and other luxury objects, such as small pieces of furniture copying European prototypes. Silk and silver entered this complex exchange network as crossed contributes between China and Japan. This regular and profitable trade route, established between both parts involved, also benefitted the Chinese and Malay traders that participated in the trips. The arrival of the first Portuguese to Japan in 1543, to the coastal city of Tanegashima, was the starting point for this yearly trip that was controlled from the Portuguese State of India. This exchange would be suspended in 1639, when the shogun Tokugawa decreed the policy of isolation following from the Shimabara massacre, the expulsion of the Portuguese, which by then were restricted to the Island of Dejima, and the prohibition of the Catholic cult, whose practice carried the death penalty, even for the Japanese. From that date onwards few ships traded with Japan until 1853, when the Japanese ports were once again opened to some western nations, particularly to the United States of America. We know three such votive objects, the best researched of which having belonged to the erudite collector Francisco Hipólito Raposo and presented at various exhibitions both in Portugal and overseas. It features script characters on the left, confirming that it corresponds to an ex-voto that carries wishes of safe journey, having on the right the date 1632. Another almost identical object belongs to an Oporto private collection, but it does not feature any script characters. The one herewith described has only minor differences comparatively to the other two referred. It is not dated but its inscription can translate into “safety” and “safe return”, and “wealth” or “prosperity” in addition to “travel”. It is known that other such ex-votos exist, all in the temple of Kiyomizu-dera, in Kyoto. However, they are not exhibited to visitors and, although we heard of their existence from reports by Japanese colleagues, we have not had the opportunity to observe them. The present example is made in Japanese cedar wood “Cryptomeria japonica”, the tempera painting applied directly onto the right-angled plaque with upper triangular frame. Albeit made in the same type of wood the frames have been blackened. What the three ex-votos portray is the Portuguese Black Ship in a simplified version of the large screens that illustrate in detail the ship’s arrival to a Japanese port, most certainly Nagasaki, as well as its Portuguese crew, which can be attributed to Kenzo Naizen and admired at the Museu Nacional de Arte Antiga in Lisbon. Other screens of identical thematic are known in the Japanese Imperial collections and at the Museu Nacional Soares dos Reis at Oporto. The observation of the object is more illustrative than any words. The tempera painting quality is delicate, as already referred, portraying a simplified ship, even considering those painted in the context of the Kano School, with four masts, raised stern and bow and with approximately 10 Portuguese figures on deck and others in a bow approaching barge. The sails are rolled, suggesting that the trip has finished or is yet to start. On the basis of its analysis this rare Namban artwork must date, similarly to the other identical extant examples, to between 1620 and 1635, and it must have been painted in a workshop active in the Temple of Kiyomizu-dera, in Kyoto, always receptive to producing these as well as other votive paintings, common offerings before the Portuguese presence, as well as after, albeit by then without the iconography that could associate the offers to the banished Christians.