Azuchijō No Zu Byōbu : il paravento dipinto raffigurante il Castello di Azuchi

In 1576 Oda Nobunaga established his power base in Azuchi, now Shiga Prefecture, and ordered a lavish castle to be built and decorated by the famous Kanō Eitoku. Azuchi Castle was short lived as it burned down in 1582 and no accounts in Japan remain to testify its greatness. The only extant record seems to be a pair of wonderful folding screens, Azuchijō no zu byōbu, made by the master Kanō himself. The screens were sent to Rome by hand of the First Japanese Mission and presented to Pope Gregorius XIII in 1585, but then they disappeared. In a research period (2004-2007) with grant of the Japanese Ministry of Foreign Affairs, I examined primary source documents in Japan and Italy aiming at a critical investigations on extant documents. In this paper I set out the results of my research work.