Escena de teatre kabuki

This diptych shows the theatrical scene that explains the death of the popular Japanese bandit from the 16th century Ishikawa Goemon, who stole from the rich to help the poor. His legend, elaborated in the 17th and 18th centuries, inspired several narratives and kabuki theatre dramas. Kabuki is a traditional form of Japanese popular theatre that is characterised by the stylised drama and the very elaborate use of make-up. This woodblock print is a clear example of the ukiyo-e school, a new form of mass-produced art promoted by the merchant classes from the main urban centres as from the late 17th century and during the 18th and 19th centuries. The art of ukiyo-e, an expression that literally means "images of the floating world", made paintings, and above all a large number of very economic polychrome woodblock prints with popular subject matter, available to all. In this sense, the ukiyo-e woodblock prints, as is the case here, represented legends and histories disseminated through the kabuki theatre shows. The diptych is the work of Utagawa Kunisada, one of the most prolific artists from the ukiyo-e school in the 19th century. The scene shows the drama of the death of Goemon, sentenced after having attempted to murder the great feudal lord Toyotomi Hideyoshi. To the left we see the samurai Iwaki Toma looking with scorn at Goemon's wife, who is pleading clemency and looks desperately at her husband, who is being boiled in a cauldron while making a last desperate effort to save the life of their son. From the late 18th century this story produced diverse theatrical versions. Specifically, this diptych refers to the culminating moment of the work Kamagafuchi gutatsu tomoe, premiered in the Nakamura Theatre in Edo in 1857 with the actors, represented here, Iwai Kumesaburo, Sawamura Tossho, Onoe Waichi and Sawamura Yoshijiro.