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(2) Kano Motonobu [Eisen; Genshin; Motonobu; Ko-Hogen]
(b Kyoto, 1476; d Kyoto, 1559). Son of (1) Kano Masanobu. He was probably trained in Kanga (Chinese-style ink painting) by his father, from whom he may also have acquired his skill as a portrait painter (e.g. the Priest Torin, 1521; Kyoto, Ryuanji). Later sources claimed that he married the daughter of Tosa Mitsunobu, the leading proponent of Yamatoe (Japanese-style painting) in Masanobu’s youth. Works by Motonobu in the Yamatoe style, such as the set of handscrolls Seiryoji engi (‘Origins of Seiryoji’, 1515; Kyoto, Seiryoji), show his mastery of its conventions. By the age of nine Motonobu had begun to serve the retired shogun Ashikaga Yoshimasa (1436–90), one of his father’s main patrons, and he subsequently painted for Yoshimasa’s successors, Ashikaga Yoshitane (1465–1522), Yoshizumi (1478–1511) and Yoshiharu (1511–50). He worked for other members of the military élite, such as Hosokawa Takakuni (1484–1531), who commissioned him in 1513 to paint a set of narrative handscrolls, Kuramadera engi (‘Origins of Kurama temple’; untraced), and his clientele also extended to the imperial court and the merchant class of Kyoto and Sakai. One of his earliest documented contracts was for a set of votive plaques (ema) depicting the Thirty-six Immortal Poets ordered by a group of Sakai merchants in 1515 for the Shinto shrine of Itsukushima in what is now Hiroshima Prefecture. In 1526 he was invited by the Sanjonishi, an eminent family associated with the imperial court, to give a virtuoso painting performance on a two-panel folding screen before a party of guests, and on at least two occasions he presented folding screens to Emperor GoNara (reg 1526–57).
Part of the Kano family
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