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The Courtesan Takao
Utagawa Hiroshige 歌川広重 (1797-1858)
ca. 1840
- Medium
- Color and gold on silk panel
- Classification
- Paintings
- Dimensions
- H x W (image): 100.8 × 42.6 cm (39 11/16 × 16 3/4 in)
- Culture
- Japanese
- Museum
- Smithsonian Institution, National Museum of Asian Art
- Credit line
- Gift of Charles Lang Freer
- Rights
- CC0 (Smithsonian Open Access), as the museum states it.
- Who can see it
- Teens profiles and older: its subject is for older viewers (war, death, the Passion, drink or the like). How works are placed
View at the Smithsonian Institution
About this work
This image of a beauty wrapped in an autumn maple leaf-patterned kimono with a bird streaking through the sky is an unmistakable reference to the courtesan Takao. From the mid-seventeenth through the mid-eighteenth century, eleven courtesans bore the sobriquet of Takao. The second Takao, however, who was active in the mid-1650s, was renowned for her skills in seducing rich and powerful patrons. Her ultimate conquest, the daimyo of Sendai, Date Tsunamune (1640-1711), purchased her freedom from brothel life, and they remained together until her death.
