Focus on Heiji Monogatari Emaki and explain the Dating, author and sponsor.
Very little information is available about the realisation of the original scrolls, and the events explaining their condition and partial destruction. The artist(s) remain unknown; the work was previously attributed to the supposed 14th century painter Sumiyoshi Keion, but that attribution has been deprecated since the second half of the 20th century, as the very existence of that painter is doubtful.The sponsor is no better known, but was probably a relative of the Minamoto clan, ruler of Japan at the time the emakimono was made, as suggested by the brilliant representation of the Minamoto warriors.According to estimates and stylistic comparisons, the creation of the work dates from the middle and second half of the 13th century, probably between the 1250s and the 1280s. The pictorial proximity between all the scrolls shows that they probably come from the same workshop painters, but slight variations tend to confirm that the preparation took place over several decades during the second half of the 13th century, without the reason for such a long period of creation being known.Fragments of the fourth or Battle of Rokuhara scroll, a little more recent and slightly different in style, may belong either to the original work or to an old copy from the Kamakura period according to art historians, but again the true position is uncertain.
Kamakura Kamakura period Rokuhara Minamoto Minamoto clan emakimono