The
Genji Album (1510) in the Harvard Art Museums is the oldest dated set of
Genji illustrations known to exist. In
The Tale of Genji. A Visual Companion, published by Princeton University Press in 2018,
Melissa McCormick discusses all of the fifty-four paintings by Tosa Mitsunobu and calligraphies in the album, thus providing a unique companion to Murasaki Shikibu’s eleventh century masterpiece of prose and poetry,
The Tale of Genji.
Ricarda Brosch is an Assistant Curator at the V&A’s Asian Department, East Asia section. You can follow her on Twitter: @RicardaBeatrix.