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context: painting > early painting > court painting
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Shogun Minamoto no Yoritomo by Fujiwara Takanobu |
Portrait of the First Shogun
Frankly I've not quite been able to pin down dates. He became shogun in 1185, and supposed artist Fujiwara Takanobu lived from 1142-1205, so that gives us a narrow little window, during which Zen was introduced in about 1191. The reason I'm interested in that point is that I've seen this work cited as an example of the changes that Zen made to portraiture. This is a work where you see a person with a mind and personality; apparently in Heian times it had been considered rude to copy a person's likeness (see the Genji scrolls page for notes on faces then), and Zen changed that.
Another interesting note is that it is said that Takanobu only painted the faces, and left all of the rest to his specialist assistants. I've seen almost no discussion about whether this happened in later periods of painting (as it does now in Japanese comics), but it seems quite likely to me.