By Chung Ah-young
Staff Reporter
There was a time when portraits meant more than paintings. They were regarded more as spiritual artworks, vividly capturing the models' souls and postures.
For that reason, both the portrait and the sketch were highly appreciated because the process was believed to instill vitality and spirit into paintings in the past.
The National Museum of Korea is holding an exhibition titled ``Portrait Sketches of the Joseon Dynasty'' to show the painting skills and techniques during that time.
The exhibition which is being held in the painting room of Gallery I of the Permanent Exhibition Hall, will continue to run until Oct. 28.
The exhibit features 35 artworks, including the Portrait Sketch of Choe Deok-ji (Treasure Number 594).
Focusing on portrait sketches, dubbed ``chobon'' in Korean, the exhibit has received little attention from the academic world so far.
The basic sketches functioned as a preliminary work that offered a preview of the portrait before the final version was born on silk.
The exhibition not only shows the end-results, the actual portraits, but also the process in which the sketches translate into the finished product.
Among the many complicated procedures in the painting of a portrait, the initial sketch was highly regarded, and proved most challenging.
The portrait sketches still exist today but the faces in the past sketches are so detailed as to be equivalent to the final works.
``Painters drew the sketches first by attempting various styles of details such as eyebrows and lips, choosing the greatest result as their completed work,'' Lee Soo-mi, curator of the museum, said.
Lee also said that during the Joseon era (1392-1910), if portraits perfectly captured real persons but not the spirits and personalities of the models, they were disregarded.