조선 전기 회화와 ‘연사모종(煙寺暮鍾)’

Abstract

Landscape, now in a private collection, has been considered a generic landscape painting with no specific theme. The scene of a temple enveloped in mists and clouds in the distance strongly suggests that this painting depicts “Evening Bells from Mist-Shrouded Temple,” one of the “Eight Views of the Xiao and Xiang Rivers.” The iconography of “Evening Bells from Mist-Shrouded Temple” consists of evening, temple in the misty hills, distance (across the river or up in the hills), and figures standing to listen to the sound of bells or wandering through the mist toward a distant temple. The two figures in the foreground, a man with a staff and a young attendant, and the misty temple in the background indicate that the subject of Landscape is “Evening Bells from Mist-Shrouded Temple.” Paintings of the Eight Views of the Xiao and Xiang Rivers have been disassembled. Eight round fans, eight square album leaves, eight hanging scrolls, eight screen panels, and eight sections of a handscroll, painted originally as a linked group have been taken apart, dispersed, and remounted as individual paintings. Landscape is one such example. Rainy Landscape with Travelers in the Metropolitan Museum of Art shows a man with two attendants traversing a bridge in a mist-shrouded mountain valley on the way to his temple. Due to the overall evocative and misty setting and the figures, this painting is thought to depict “Evening Bells from Mist-Shrouded Temple.” However, none of the iconographic core elements of the theme is found in the Rainy Landscape with Travelers. Even the Buddhist temple is absent. The subject of Evening Bell from Mist-Shrouded Temple in the Yamato Bunkakan, Nara, Japan, has never been questioned because of the inscription on the painting, a poem on “Evening Bell from Mist-Shrouded Temple” by the Ming poet Shi Jiushao (active early fifteenth century). The misty temple seen in the upper right is too small to be visible. The moored boats and drying nets in the foreground are suggestive of the theme of the painting: either “Fishing Village in Evening Glow” or “Returning Sail off Distant Shore.” In all likelihood, the Yamato Bukankan painting has nothing to do with “Evening Bell from Mist-Shrouded Temple.”