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(7) Kano Mitsunobu [Ukyo; Ukyonoshin; Ko-Ukyo; Mitsunobu]
(b Kyoto, 1561 or 1565; d Kuwana, Seshu Province [now in Mie Prefect.], 1608). Son of (5) Kano Eitoku. As a young man he accompanied his father on a number of painting commissions, including the decoration of Azuchi Castle in 1576–81 (destr. 1582) for Oda Nobunaga and of Osaka Castle (1583–6) and the palace of Jurakudai (1587–8; both destr.) in Kyoto for Toyotomi Hideyoshi. With the untimely death of his father in 1590, Mitsunobu became head of the Kano school and assumed responsibility for Eitoku’s unfinished commissions. So complete was his mastery of his father’s style that many of his works are attributed to Eitoku. Possibly Mitsunobu’s earliest datable work is a preparatory drawing (now mounted as a six-fold screen, Saga, Prefectural Mus.) for a screen painting of Nagoya Castle (untraced), which, according to records, was executed c. 1592 by Mitsunobu, Kano Naizen (1570–1616) and others for Toyotomi Hideyoshi. In 1600 he executed bird-and-flower paintings (kachoga) on 12 sliding wall panels in the Kangakuin, a subtemple of Onjoji (Miidera) in Otsu (now in Shiga Prefect.). Flowering trees and groves of cypress, drawn with precision and naturalism, quietly alternate across a solid surface of gold leaf. The success of the Kangakuin project contributed to the revival of the Kano school’s popularity in the face of competition from other studios. In 1605 Mitsunobu worked with (9) Kano Koi and Watanabe Ryokei (d 1645) on the bird-and-flower paintings that decorate the guest room of the memorial chapel built for Toyotomi Hideyoshi by his wife Kita no Mandokoro at the Kodaiji (damaged in an earthquake in 1995) in Kyoto. In both these commissions Mitsunobu substituted a more delicate style for the bold and heroic manner associated with his father, Eitoku; influenced by Yamatoe, it is characterized by greater detail and a layering of pictorial motifs, as when gold clouds are used to create an illusion of depth in Flowers and Trees of the Four Seasons in the guest room at the Kangakuin. Several genealogies compiled in the Edo period (1600–1868) state that Mitsunobu married into the TOSA family of Yamatoe painters.
Part of the Kano family
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