Bak Yu-myeong Portrait Mobon

Bak Yu-myeong (1582-1640) belonged to the Sangju Bak clan and used the courtesy name Hyeongbu. In 1623, while serving as magistrate of Deokwon, he took part in the King Injo Restoration as a deputy commander under Yi Gwi, for which he was ranked third class among the Meritorious Subjects of the Restoration (Jeongsa gongsin) and ennobled as Lord Sangwon. This painting is an imobon, a copy made from the original Portrait of Bak Yu-myeong as a Meritorious Subject of the Restoration. Such copies of portraits were made for one of three reasons: when the original had deteriorated and needed to be preserved, when a new place of enshrinement required its own copy, or simply as a precautionary extra copy. This copy faithfully reproduces the form and distinctive features of the original, losing nothing by comparison with it. Bak Yu-myeong is shown wearing a samo cap and a dallyeong, the round-collared official robe, seated in a chair with his hands clasped inside his sleeves in the gongsu gesture. A triangular panel called a mu, which appears at the right-side slit of the robe when its wearer is seated in official dress, is visible here; this mu panel is a feature common to most portraits of meritorious subjects and of officials in court dress painted in the seventeenth century. The dallyeong also shows side slits at the lower left and right skirts, a feature found only in portraits of Meritorious Subjects of the Restoration. The embroidered rank badge, a part of the painting on which the court painter clearly lavished great care, bears a tiger, the emblem of a military official. Looking closely, however, its head carries the spotted pattern of a leopard while its body bears the stripes of a tiger. This hybrid leopard-and-tiger imagery can be seen on the rank badges of seventeenth-century portraits of meritorious subjects and their copies. The tiger on this rank badge provides an important clue for the study of tiger imagery from before the late Joseon period.

AI Translation

Where it is

Region

Suwon, Gyeonggi

Designation

Cultural Heritage Material · 문화유산자료