Untitled

The untitled handscroll, dated to 1657, was produced in Japan as part of a two-scroll set using ink, color, and gold on paper. It portrays a dancer and a man in a dance scene and is attributed to an anonymous painter. The work entered the collection of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, where it is held among the museum's Japanese paintings.

Its dimensions measure 36.5 cm in height by 1697.7 cm in width. No specific accession number is recorded in the available sources, and no exhibition history is documented beyond its presence in the collection.

This untitled handscroll, one of a pair, is a painting rendered in ink, color, and gold on paper. It depicts a continuous procession of small figures engaged in dance, set beneath luminous gold clouds. The scroll format is designed for sequential viewing, intended to be unrolled gradually, revealing the narrative or scene piece by piece as a viewer holds it.

This scroll belongs to a tradition of Japanese pictorial art that often captured scenes of dance and performance. Such works frequently depicted male dancers, reflecting cultural practices and aesthetic interests of the period. The existence of similar scrolls featuring dancing figures suggests this untitled piece is part of a broader artistic genre within Japanese painting, documenting various forms of ceremonial or popular dance.