Azuchi Screens

Oda Nobunaga gifted them to Alessandro Valignano and, via the Tenshō Embassy, were presented to Pope Gregory XIII.

[2] 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, and Tokugawa Ieyasu.

[1] In 1579, Oda Nobunaga commissioned Kanō Eitoku (1543-1590), the most famous Japanese painter of his time, to create a pair of folding screens of Azuchi castle.

[3] This became the so-called Tenshō embassy of 1582–1592, consisting of four young Japanese noblemen who left Japan to visit the Pope and the kings of Europe.

[3][6][7] In 1592, a Flemish artist from Leuven named Philips van Winghe made a few drawings copying details of Azuchi castle.

[2] In the early 2000s, during a restoration of Eggenberg Palace in Graz, Austria screens were discovered depicting Toyotomi's Osaka 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.

Painting of Azuchi Castle (by Iwasaki Ōu, 1855)
Etching showing the Gallery of Maps in the Vatican, 1765
Example of a folding screen depicting Osaka castle , which was discovered at Eggenberg Palace in Graz , Austria , during a restoration between 2001 and 2004
Example of a folding screen created by Kanō Eitoku around 1574, called Scenes in and around the capital ( 紙本金地著色洛中洛外図 , shihonkinji chakushoku rakuchū rakugaizu )