Click to enlarge

In Korea portraits were painted to commemorate important occasions and also for ritual use. Portraits functioned not merely to record the outward appearance of the sitter but, more important, to symbolize the essence of the sitter’s personality. Thus, if portraits painted from life were worn or damaged, it was common practice to repair them through extensive retouching; if they were lost, entirely new portraits were created based on the originals.

An example of a posthumous portrait is this image of an official traditionally identified as Cho Mal-saeng (1370–1447). The sitter is shown in three-quarter view, wearing an official’s cap and a dark robe with a prominent hyungbae, or rank badge. An embroidered silk panel worn by officials to indicate their standing, the hyungbae was not in use during Cho-Mal-saeng’s lifetime; the form of the cap is also a later design. Moreover, the painting style compares very closely to that of portraits reliably dated to the seventeenth century.