Portrait of Honda Heihachirō (Important cultural property); two-panel folding screen; Edo period, 17th century;Tokugawa Art Museum.
807 Schermerhorn Hall
Please register here by Thursday, February 13, 2025 for campus access.
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This lecture examines the Portrait of Honda Heihachirō from the Tokugawa Art Museum, a two-panel folding screen from the Kan'ei era (1624–1644) that depicts an exchange of letters. Written records confirm that the screen was owned by the Owari Tokugawa family in the late Edo period. Based on the title, the painting has been previously identified as portraying the romance between Honda Tadatoki (1596–1626) and his wife Senhime (1597–1666), daughter of Tokugawa Hidetada. This attribution, however, remains inconsistent with visual details in the work. The analysis of the customs and historical documentation of samurai families of the time presents a new interpretation of the painting: while Senhime is the only possible candidate for the female figure wearing a Tokugawa-crested kosode, the painting might have deliberately portrayed Tadatoki with youthful features to evoke the image of Maeda Mitsutaka, Senhime's fifteen-year-old nephew who proposed marriage to her in 1629, three years after Tadatoki’s death. The painting would have served to justify and promote Senhime’s remarriage to the young Mitsutaka.