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.