Soryeongwondo (Tomb of the Royal Lady Choe)

This is a set of tomb-and-mountain maps depicting Soryeongwon in Yangju, the tomb of Royal Consort Suk-bin Choe (1670–1718). Suk-bin Choe, the birth mother of King Yeongjo, died in 1718, the forty-fourth year of King Sukjong, and was buried at Ongjang-ri, Goryeong-dong, Yangju (present-day Yeongjang-ri, Gwangtan-myeon, Paju, Gyeonggi Province). As Yeongjo had not yet ascended the throne at that time, the grave was called an ordinary tomb; it was elevated to the status of a royal won as Soryeongwon in 1753, the twenty-ninth year of King Yeongjo. Myoso dohyeong yeo sallon ('Diagram of the Tomb Site and Discussion of its Geomancy') is drawn in ink on thick paper, with the title at the top, a mountain diagram in the middle, and a geomantic discussion below; it is presumed to have been made while an auspicious site was being chosen, and may be the original produced in 1718. Soryeongwondo takes the form of a mountain diagram, placing the tomb in the centre, the ritual hall to the left and the stele pavilion to the right, with fields shown below; the landscape uses thin, elongated 'hemp-fibre' texture strokes together with 'rice-grain' dots, with light colour washes applied throughout. Soryeongwon hwaso jeonggyedo marks the firebreak zone — an area cleared by controlled burning of vegetation out to a set distance to stop wildfires reaching the royal tomb — with its boundary shown by a red line; it too takes the form of a mountain diagram, its landscape rendered in coarse, rapid hemp-fibre strokes. Soryeongwon baechido is an ink-outline drawing showing the arrangement of the stone furnishings at Soryeongwon, depicting in their actual positions the wall around the burial mound, the stele, the spirit-seat stone, the offering table, the stone lantern, the pillar stones and the civil-official statues. The latter three paintings are thought to date from after Soryeongwon's elevation in status, probably to the late eighteenth century. These four pictorial maps, drawn on well-beaten mulberry paper, are, together with the Royal Protocols, highly valuable visual sources relating to royal tombs.

AI Translation

Where it is

Region

Seongnam, Gyeonggi

Designation

Treasure · 보물