Le corps dans la peinture narrative des xvie et xviie siècles à travers l’exemple du Bunshō zōshi

Bunshō Zōshi is a tale of love and social ascent. This tale, composed during the Muromachi period, has had many illustrated editions, in both handwritten scrolls and printed books, from the beginning of the 17th century until the middle of the 18th century. Among these anonymous illustrated scrolls, one set stands out for its unique depiction of an aristocrat in disguise. The representation of his body, naked and disguised, show the whole social hierarchy underlying the story. The study of this set of scrolls is thus an opportunity to highlight the role of the representation of the body in narrative painting, and to link it to both the genre painting that emerged in the sixteenth century and to the new attention paid by painters to the naked body.