Portrait of Song Si-yeol

A portrait of Uam Song Si-yeol (1607–1689), a leading Confucian scholar of mid-Joseon. Song was a representative Neo-Confucian of Joseon who devoted his life to the study of Zhu Xi and led the Giho school descended from Yulgok Yi I. He was also renowned for his forceful, logical prose and his calligraphy. The portrait, 89.7 cm high and 67.6 cm wide, is a half-length painted in colour on silk. He wears a black cap and the changui, the everyday robe of Confucian scholars, and looks to the right. The exaggerated bulk of the body, the distinctive brows and the deep lines at the cheekbones convey the depth of his learning. The face is lightly coloured with the lines drawn in brown, and the folds of the robe are rendered simply in soft curves. At the upper right is a text Song wrote in 1651 on seeing his own portrait, in regular script, and at the top centre is a poem King Sukjong wrote in 1707 for the portrait of Jeong Mong-ju, in clerical script, with the note 'Jeongmyojo'. But when these two texts were written onto the picture is uncertain, and they differ in date, which makes the portrait hard to date. The simple folds and the absence of shading on face and dress are features of seventeenth-century portraits, so some date it to the seventeenth century; others, on the evidence of the second text, take it to be a good copy of a seventeenth-century portrait made in the late eighteenth century or later. After Song's death, those who revered him built many portrait shrines and academies across the country, and many copies of his portrait were made to enshrine in them, many of which survive. This is the most outstanding of them, and it represents the look and character of the Joseon Confucian scholar's portrait.

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Where it is

Region

Yongsan-gu, Seoul

Designation

National Treasure · 국보