Portrait of Three Great Calligraphers 三迹（三跡）画像サンセキガゾウ

Description

Inscrived in its upper left corner with the words Hippo Sanseki (Three Masters of Invigorated Calligraphy), this painting is judged from its style to belong to the latter years of the Kamakura period. Seated prominently on the tatami mat, on a cushion made from a colourful silk brocade, and holding a sceptere, is Emperor Saga (786-842). Immediately in front of the emperor, clad in the faint yellow-red of a priest’s robe, is the priest Kukai (774-835), the man revered as the first master of calligraphy in Japan. In his right hand is a gilt bronze ritual pestle with a five-pronged handle, and over his sholder a cassock, which is made to appear as if it is made up of a patchwork of discarded or second-hand cloth. To Kukai’s left is the scholar statesman Sugawara no Michizane (845-903), a man posthumously deified and worshipped as the tutelary god of learning and calligraphy. In the history of Japanese Calligraphy, the Sanpitsu (Three Masters of the Writing Brush, namely Emperor Saga, Priest Kukai and Tachibana no Hayanari) and the Sanseki (Three Great Calligraphists, Ono no Michikaze, Fujiwara no Sukemasa and Fujiwara no Yukinari) are listed in the Wakan Meisu (Denominate Numbers of Japan and China) compiled by Kaibara Ekiken (1630-1714), a scholar in Edo period. Besides Fujiwara no Koreyuki (dates of birth and death unknown), the sixth-generation descendant of Fujiwara no Yukinari (972-1027), in his book on the secrets of the calligraphic art, Yakaku Teikinsho, refferd to priest Kukai, Sugawara no Michizane and Ono no Michikaze as the Sansei (Three sains of calligraphy).