Page:Brinkley - Japan - Volume 7.djvu/131

RV 107 ninth century and a great part of the tenth are distinguished as a period of amateur work, when religious zealots, insufficiently instructed in the art of sculpture, modelled statues with majestic and beautiful faces, but neglected truth of proportion and decorative accessories. Emergence from that imperfect conception of artistic purpose was due to Kōshō, who worked at the close of the tenth century, and above all to his son Jōchō, whose genius made the beginning of the eleventh century one of the most notable epochs of Japanese sculpture. There is a curious resemblance at this point between the history of pictorial art and that of sculpture in Japan. In the former, Kawanari, the immediate predecessor of Kanaoka, figures as a great painter, the first really great painter of his country, and the originator of an art impulse which culminated, some sixty years later, in the celebrated Kanaoka. But none of Kawanari's typical pictures survive, and Kanaoka's skill also is known by tradition only. So in sculpture the annals speak of Kōshō as the leader of a renaissance carried to a high altitude immediately afterward by Jōchō. But there are no specimens of Kōshō's work, and the greatest of Jōchō's perished almost immediately after their completion. What these men achieved for art was to add virility to the idealism of their immediate predecessors, and to insist upon accuracy of proportion, skill in the use of the chisel and the attainment of decorative effect. Living in a time of excessive refinement and voluptuousness, their style necessarily reflected something of this mood. Thus the bodies of their figures are full, and the contours rounded; the faces are circular rather than oval, the eyebrows are finely pencilled, and the folds of the drapery soft