Scholarly Accoutrements
Munbangdo (“scholar’s study paintings”) emerged as a still-life genre in eighteenth-century Joseon Korea. It includes three compositional types: bookcases, isolated objects, and stacked assemblages, as seen here. At first, folding screens were the predominant format for munbangdo. In the later nineteenth century, as the stacked type became increasingly popular, single-panel images were made in larger numbers either for individual display or as part of sets. Like the Kunst und Wunderkammern (cabinets of curiosity) popular in Europe during the Renaissance, munbangdo illustrate the surging interest in collecting and display in late Joseon
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