During the Qing Dynasty (1636-1911), many missionaries came to China and some of them were masters of Western art, especially with portraits and landscapes.

One of them was Italian Giuseppe Castiglione (1688-1766), a disciplined and hardworking artist.

In 1714, a trading ship stopped in Guangzhou with seven foreign missionaries on board. The news was immediately reported to Emperor Kangxi (1654-1722), who ordered the missionaries with scientific knowledge to the capital and sent others back. Among those allowed to stay was Giuseppe Castiglione.

Castiglione was invited to the palace by Emperor Kangxi, who, impressed by his painting talent, ordered him to study traditional Chinese painting.

Pine, Hawk, and Lingzhi Fungus
Hanging scroll, color on silk, 242.3×157.1 cm

For the next 50 years, Castiglione served as an imperial artist and took the Chinese name Lang Shining, witnessing the comings and goings of three emperors – Kangxi, Yongzheng (1678-1735) and Qianlong (1711-1799).

Castiglione succeeded in modifying European painting techniques by discarding projection and diminishing the contrast between light and shade, while retaining three-dimensional effects and perspective.

Deer Hunting Patrol, housed in the Palace Museum, is one such example.

The painting on silk, about 319 cm long and 268 cm wide, depicts a deer hunt at Mulan hunting paddock in 1741 attended by Emperor Qianlong (1711-1799).

Deer Hunting Patrol
Handscroll, ink and colors on silk, 319×268 cm

The third rider at the head of the cavalcade, astride a white horse with a red case carrying his bow by his side, is the emperor who was 30 years old at the time.

A number of ministers accompanied him. Most of them, like Laibao at the head of the procession who was the minister in charge of the royal household at the time, were older than him, while a dozen others, including Fuheng, a bodyguard, were somewhat younger.

Thirty-three years after the hunt, Qianlong wrote a poem to accompany the painting, relating how it had been done by Castiglione on his orders after he hunted in Mulan for the first time.

He was grieved to note that both men (Laibao and Fuheng) attending the hunt were dead.

The figures of the emperor and other important personages accord with the rules of Western portraiture.

Paintings of the men and horses are obviously based on real life as there is close attention to detail as well as a strong sense of solidity.

Even as the contrast between light and shade is less distinct, the use of hills and trees as backdrop accords with the principles of traditional Chinese painting.

The cavalcade on the move is vividly painted and the size of figures and objects, in the correct proportion to their relative distances, lends a sense of depth to the composition.

“Emperor Qianlong greatly appreciated Castiglione’s style but, at the same time, he didn’t want to abandon the traditional Chinese painting style,” said Tang Jianjun, an expert from the China Academy of Chinese Poetry, Calligraphy, and Painting. “So he asked Castiglione to work alongside Chinese painters.”

Castiglione worked with Chinese painter Tang Dai on Deer Hunting Patrol. He painted the emperor and the main figures while Tang took charge of the hills and trees in the background.

Located about 450 kilometers northeast of Beijing, the paddock, or hunting ground, was then covered with grass and was full of wildlife, especially deer.

Every year, the emperor, along with his retinue of princes, ministers and members of different ethnic groups, would go hunting there for about 40 days to escape the heat of Beijing.

Before the hunt, horns were blown in imitation of the sound of the deer to lure them out of the forest.

The painting depicts the hunting party entering the paddock.

Apart from this kind of historical painting, one of the most important works from Castiglione was court portraits of the emperor, empress and imperial concubines.

The Qianlong Emperor in Ceremonial Armor on Horseback, housed in the Palace Museum, portrays Emperor Qianlong with a mettlesome and handsome bearing.

The painting has no signature, but the brush lines and style indicate a work by Giuseppe Castiglione.

The Qianlong Emperor in Ceremonial Armor on Horseback
Hanging scroll, color on silk, 332.5×232 cm

This portrait of Emperor Qianlong in armor shows him as a brilliant young man of 29 years. He was inspecting the Qing armies from horseback. Although the painting materials were traditional Chinese brush and pigments, his appearance, the horse, elements like the cumulous clouds and the plants in the foreground are all portrayed with shade and light that betray the painter’s Italian training. Only the distant mountains conform to the stylistic tradition of Qing court landscape paintings.

The Qing Banner troops practiced martial skills under the leadership of the emperor. Manchus were very proud of their talent for equestrienne shooting since their empire was established by conquest on horseback. To keep the army vigilant and powerful, every three years Emperor Qianlong would carry out a grand military inspection of the Eight Banner troops. In 1739, the fourth year of his reign, the emperor reviewed battle deployment and skills with military equipment at Nanyuan, the imperial hunting reserve south of Beijing.

Spring’s Peaceful Message
Hanging scroll (originally attached to wall panel), ink and color on silk, 68.8 x 40.6 cm

Far more intimate portraits of emperors provide us insight into their personalities that are impossible to obtain from rulers of earlier times. Spring’s peaceful message, a full-length portrait of the young Qianlong with his father, Yongzheng, is one good example.

The inscription records Qianlong’s comment on the work by Giuseppe Castiglione: “In portraiture Shining is masterful. He painted me during my younger days; the white-headed one who enters the room today does not recognize who this is. It was inscribed by the Emperor towards the end of spring in the year 1782.”

The painting was originally fixed to a wall of a room adjoining the Qianlong Emperor’s study in the Hall of Mental Cultivation (Yangxin Dian) in the Forbidden City, where the emperor granted audiences, consulted members of the Cabinet and signed edicts. Only later was it removed and mounted on a scroll, to which the inscription was added in 1782. The inscription shows proof of the emperor’s filial piety became less significant over time than the passage of time itself.

The intense blue background was unprecedented in a Chinese painting and the artist used this device typical of European illumination and miniature painting to highlight the sitters’ faces and the bamboo.

Emperors would also ask imperial artists to paint portraits for country heroes as praise. Ayusi was one who was given such an honor.

Ayusi Scattering Rebels with Upraised Spear
Handscroll, ink and color on paper, 27.1×104.4 cm

From the region of Emperor Kangxi to the region of Qianlong, conflicts often occurred between the Qing and the Zunghar tribe. In 1755, the Zunghar khan Dawats and Tsarist Russia collaborated, leading to another rebellion. After a pincer attack led by Qing armies, Dawats were forced to retreat.

Ayusi, a Zungar (Western Mongol) who surrendered in 1750 to the Qing following his leader Saral, led more than 20 cavalry in successfully breaking their defense and brought the chaos of the Zunghar rebellion to a temporary halt.

Ayusi, as he appears in the painting above, is wearing a peacock-feather warming cap and a protective suit while strapped to his back is a musket rifle and to his waist a quiver of arrows. With one hand holding the reigns and the other a spear-lance, he concentrates on his heroic advance. The horse appears against a spotless background devoid of any rocks, trees or even the ground. This suggests a sense of speed, as if in flight, but also appears frozen in time, creating an extremely “moving” scene!

One Hundred Steeds
Handscroll, ink and colors on silk, 94.5×776.2 cm

A master of vividly naturalistic draftsmanship and large-scale compositions, Castiglione worked as a muralist while in Europe. He helped to create a new, hybrid style that combined Western realism with traditional Chinese conventions of composition and brushwork.

The monumental scroll One Hundred Steeds is the model of his most famous paintings. Preserved in the National Palace Museum in Taipei, the drawing, although done with a brush rather than a pen, is executed almost exclusively in the European manner. Landscape is represented using Western-style perspective, figures are often shown in dramatically foreshortened views, and vegetation is depicted with spontaneous arabesques and cross-hatching. The large scale of the painting also suggests a European influence, as if Castiglione had taken a typical Western canvas and extended its length to make an architectural frieze.