“The Tomb of King Mausolus” (Ajia-shū Maurirya-ō keibo), from the series Newly published Dutch Perspective Pictures (Shimpan Oranda uki-e)

This woodblock print with a fanciful depiction of the Tomb of King Mausolus, built between 353 and 351 BCE in Halicarnassus, now Turkey. The series seems to have originally been intended to illustrate all of the Seven Wonders of the Ancient World, though only five designs are known, and the artist clearly did not have reliable illustrative models for all the famous sites or misinterpreted them. The other four designs in the series include:

Great Pyramid of Giza
Colossus of Rhodes;
Statue of Zeus at Olympia;
Hanging Gardens of Babylon.

The title indicates that this is series of uki-e, literally “floating prints”—usually translated as “perspective prints”—which was the term used to refer to a special genre of ukiyo-e that employs the convention of linear perspective of European paintings. Always remaining a bit of a novelty item, perspective prints were first created in the 1730s, by Okumura Masanobu, who had studied European engravings to learn the rules of perspective. The engravings he drew inspiration from entered Japan either through the entrepot of Dejima in Nagasaki—where Dutch traders were based, or from China. Masanobu was the first ukiyo-e artist to employ the term uki-e. Later, Utagawa Toyoharu fully developed the genre in the late 1750s when he produced ukiyo-e copies of engravings after Canaletto and Guardi. Toyoharu also the first to adapt these techniques to Japanese subjects. The interiors of Kabuki theaters were a common subject in uki-e prints, since depictions of interior scenes lend themselves well to applying one-point perspective. As demonstrated by this series of prints, ukiyo-e artists enjoyed imagining Western famous sites to test their skills with perspective prints. Such images are filled with anachronisms, such as Dutch visitors meandering around monumental structure that was built in the fourth century and destroyed by earthquakes in the fifteenth century.

We do not know exactly what sources the artist Kuninaga consulted, but we know that Ferdinand Verbiest (1623–1688), Belgian missionary to China, created an illustrated text in Chinese discussing the Seven Wonders of the Ancient World (七奇図説), published in1683. Verbiest’s essay was circulating among Japanese scholars of Western studies (Rangaku) intellectuals by the eighteenth century. Even if Kuninaga had access to this text, he probably was not referring to Verbiest's illustrated text when he designed this series. He may have been drawing on random pieces of information and an assortment of imported copperplate prints depicting the Seven Wonders, without properly understanding his sources.

Another inspiration for this image can be traced to a detail in the border of a world map designed by the celebrated Dutch cartographer Willem J. Blaeu (1571–1638).Blaeu’s Nova Totius Terrarum Orbis Geographica ac Hydrographica Tabula was first printed in 1606, and then continuously published after that. By the eighteenth century, it was most commonly reproduced in book or album formats, and it was probably in this format that it made its way to Japan. Here the subtitle can also be translated literally as “The Tomb of the Maurya Kings in Asia." Yet, it is clear it should be interpreted as The Tomb of King Mausolus in Asia. In what appears to be some confusion on Kuninaga’s part, his print is clearly derived from the image in the lower right border of Blaeu's map of the Temple of Diana at Ephesus, while the Mausoleum at Halicarnasus in Asia Minor appears as a separate image to the left of the Temple of Diana.

Artist’s signature: Kuninaga ga 国長画

Publisher’s signature: Izumiya Ichibei 和泉屋市兵衛 (Kansendō)