The Azuchi Screens (Japanese:安土図屏風) are a set of six panelfolding-screens depictingAzuchi Castle and its nearbytown.Oda Nobunaga gifted them toAlessandro Valignano and, via theTenshō Embassy, were presented to PopeGregory XIII. They were displayed in theVatican collections, where they were admired by visitors. However, they disappeared from historical record. Their fate is unknown and they are considered to be lost. The screens were seminal works in the development of Japanese folding screens.[1]
Variations on the name are Azuchiyama screens (安土山図屏風) or Azuchi Castle screens (安土城図屏風).[2]
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The second half and the start of the seventeenth century saw the unification of Japan through the conquests of three great military leaders: Oda Nobunaga,Toyotomi Hideyoshi, andTokugawa Ieyasu.[3] This era is also called theAzuchi-Momoyama period, after the sites of the great castles of Nobunaga and Hideyoshi. The period saw a rapid development in Japanese castle construction: castles on a larger grander scale boasting a large stone basis, a complex arrangement of concentricbaileys, and a tall tower.[4] But also, in the visual arts, such as the folding screens decorating the palatial residences.[1]
In 1579, Oda Nobunaga commissionedKanō Eitoku (1543-1590), the most famousJapanese painter of his time, to create a pair of folding screens of Azuchi castle.[1][3][2] It was a meticulously detailed birds-eye view of the fortress and its nearby town.[1][3][2] In 1581, theItalianJesuitAlessandro Valignano (1539 – 1606) visited Japan. Oda Nobunaga gifted him with the screens.[3] The Jesuit conceived the idea of sending a Japanese embassy to Europe, and the screens became part of this plan.[3] This became the so-calledTenshō embassy of 1582–1592, consisting of four young Japanese noblemen who left Japan to visit the Pope and the kings of Europe.[1][2] OverIndia,Portugal andSpain, they traveled toItaly. In March 1585, the embassy arrived inRome. In the afternoon of 3 April 1585, in thePapal apartments of theVatican, they presented the screens to Pope Gregory XIII (1502-1585).[5][1][3] Afterwards, they are set up for display in a gallery of the Vatican, probably the Galleria delle carte geografiche ('Gallery of Maps') or the gallery of Cosmography.[3][6][7]
In 1592, aFlemish artist fromLeuven named Philips van Winghe made a few drawings copying details of Azuchi castle.[2][3][6] This is the last historical record of the screens.[3] They were major renovations of the gallery between 1592 and 1596, and between 1630 and 1637, but there is no record what happened to the screens.[3]
There is a faint hope that the screens will be discovered in a forgotten corner of the Vatican.[2] It is also possible that a Pope has re-gifted them to someone else, and that they are hidden in a repository elsewhere in Europe.[2] In the early 2000s, during a restoration ofEggenberg Palace inGraz,Austria screens were discovered depicting Toyotomi'sOsaka Castle.[2] In the 18th century, they were repurposed to decorate a room of the palace. Something similar may have happened to the Azuchi screens. However, a scholar raised that compared to Japan the climate is comparatively dryer in Italy, which may have caused the screens to disintegrate, which is also a possibility.[2]
The sketches by Philips van Winghe are also lost.[2] However, the Italian Filippo Ferroverde made two woodblock print copies for Lorenzo Pignoria’s (1571-1631) addendum,Second Part of the Images of Indian Gods, in the 1624, 1626, and 1647 editions of Vincent Catari’s (circa 1531-1569)Images of the Gods and Ancients.[2] These prints are still there and often discussed in studies on the Azuchi castle.[2]
Most likely, the Tenshō embassy also presented folding screens to the king of Spain in the court of Madrid, but they left no trace here at all.[3]
In 1984, the town of Azuchi conducted the first research project into the screens at the Vatican, but no information is found.[3] Multiple investigation attempts were performed by a group of scholars and government officials between 2004 and 2016.[3] This resulted in the 2016 creation of the Azuchi Screens Research Network, a group dedicated "to finding these priceless artworks, or in lieu of the real thing, discovering vestiges, descriptions, or other mentions of the screens that might offer new insights into the screens' composition, character, quality, meanings, or fate."[3] The network sponsors two part-time researchers in Rome.[3]