Royal Certificate of Meritorious Subject Issued to Yi Jung-ro and Portrait of Yi Jung-ro

The Portrait of Yi Jung-ro is a full-length seated portrait showing the subject wearing an osamo (a black gauze official's cap) and a dallyeong (an official robe with a round collar), seated in a chair. He wears a rank badge (hyungbae) embroidered with peony and haetae motifs, and a hakjeong-geumdae, a gold belt decorated with a crane's-head design, indicating that this is an image of him as a military official of junior second rank. The distinguishing features of this portrait are as follows. The height of the osamo is quite low, and the wings extending to either side are broad and rounded, their outlines drawn thickly with no gradation of colour. To emphasise the pose in a chilbun-myeon, or three-quarter view showing roughly seven-tenths of the face, a marked difference is shown between the shape and slope of the two shoulders: the left shoulder appears round and full, while the line of the right shoulder shows a considerably steep slope. Likewise, in the overall pose the face and upper body are rendered fully in three-quarter view, while the lower body is shown in an almost full side view of eight to nine-tenths; whereas the earlier merit-subject portraits of the Seonmu, Hoseong and Cheongnan meritorious subjects show the opening of the dallyeong only on the left side, in this portrait a slight opening is also shown on the right, producing a faint twist between the poses of the upper and lower body. In the treatment of the face, the base skin tone is a pale, bright flesh colour; the features and the outline of the face are defined with brown lines, while only the upper eyelids are rendered with fine black lines. A faint reddish tinge has also been applied, without visible brushstrokes, to the raised areas known in physiognomy as the 'Five Peaks' — the parts of the facial bone structure that project outward. This is understood as an attempt to express the contours of the face, its higher and lower planes, through the underlying structure of bone beneath the skin. The dallyeong is outlined as a whole in thick black lines, and the folds of the robe are drawn only in brief outline, with no shading yet attempted within the folds. A brightly coloured woven carpet (chaejeon) is spread on the floor; the considerable height given to this carpet is an archaic feature, and it lends a dignified, solemn feeling to the picture as a whole. The Portrait of Yi Jung-ro represents the most typical example of an early seventeenth-century Joseon meritorious-subject portrait, while its painting technique is also especially skilful.

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Where it is

Region

Yongin, Gyeonggi

Designation

Treasure · 보물