In the Style of a Page (Kosho fu), Center Sheet of Triptych (Sanpukutsui chu)

The center sheet of a sanpukutsui (set of three) [triptych](/glossary/triptych) in the Art Institute of Chicago, this [hosoban](/glossary/hosoban) urushi-e by Shigenaga is titled In the Style of a Page (Kosho fu) and depicts a young figure dressed in the costume of a kosho, a page or attendant in samurai and aristocratic households. Mid-Edo prints frequently played on the visual ambiguity of the wakashu (adolescent male) and bijin, with page-attendant costumes signaling youthful androgyny and the boy's own attractive position in Edo social and erotic culture. As the center of a three-print set, the figure was designed to be flanked by complementary sheets, and the triptych as a whole would have been displayed together. Urushi-e technique enhances the print with lacquered ink and hand-applied beni, giving the costume the rich material presence that the iconography requires. The Chicago impression is one of the Art Institute's substantial group of Shigenaga sheets and demonstrates his treatment of figural subjects in serial format, a precursor to the triptych and pentaptych formats that would become commercial mainstays in the later eighteenth century.