context: painting > early painting > buddhist painting

Tamamushi shrine

Bodhisattva's Sacrifice, from the Tamamushi shrine

This portable shrine from the mid-seventh Century is extraordinary on a few levels. It's the first known Japanese work with a narrative content - the Boddhisattva is up top, taking his clothes off for the dive to become the tiger's meal at the bottom. He appears three times in the same scene, a pretty sophisticated use of narrative. I note that the sequence is top to bottom, whereas the usual for the centuries to come would of course be right to left - but there are occasional top-down examples.

Secondly, I have read recently that scientific examination of this artwork, painted on wooden panels, shows them not to be the lacquer that had been believed but a kind of oil paint - this is, as far as I know, the only instance of Japanese oil painting before Europeans brought the technique a thousand years later. I've not seen any explanation of this, or of why it didn't catch on.

forwards: Horyuji murals