Portrait of Abbot Sengan

This portrait depicts Sengan, the 326th abbot of the Zen temple Myoshinji. Called chinzo, such portraits of Zen masters were first painted in the 1300s.

Unlike other Buddhist paintings, which idealize buddhas and bodhisattvas to suggest their transcendent nature, portraits of Zen masters depict them as ordinary human beings though they were thought to possess extraordinary spiritual powers. In this chinzo the priest Sengan is shown as an old man with wrinkles and hollowed cheeks, and with an expression thought to convey religious conviction.