CASTIGLIONE, GIUSEPPE

Jesuit missionary in China, where he painted for the emperors at Beijing and became a principal member of the Imperial Painting Bureau; b. Milan, July 19, 1688; d. Beijing, China, July 16, 1766. After initial schooling in art, Castiglione was attracted to religious life and entered the Jesuit novitiate in Genoa (1707). He executed a number of paintings in Genoa and completed his novitiate in Portugal before he was finally sent by the superior general, M. tamburini, to Beijing. He arrived in Beijing on Dec. 22, 1715; there he became known as Lang Shihning and a favorite artist and architect in the imperial court. He was active under three emperors: the grand Kang Xi (d. 1722); his son Yong Zheng (d. 1735); and the nephew of Kang Xi, Qian Long (d. 1795). Qian Long was an atrocious persecutor of Christians, but his high esteem for Castiglione afforded opportunity to the painter to inter-cede for his fellow Christians.

Castiglione is of little importance in the history of Chinese painting but emerges as a symbol of Western influence in 18th century China; apparently Chinese sophistication of the 18th century had an admiration for European-like painting somewhat similar to Europe's interest at that time in Chinoiserie. Castiglione brought with him a competence in European painting ability and was able to please his imperial patrons with "realistic" portraits, narrative accounts of imperial conquests, and studies of nature (flowers, animals). He produced few paintings in a thoroughly Chinese style. His fusion of Western and Chinese elements may be seen in a wide handscroll, about 30 feet long, representing 100 horses (National Palace Museum, Taiwan). In this work the mixture of light and shade with Chinese convention in composition and the more delicate Chinese brushwork produces a strong, almost surrealistic effect that is neither Chinese nor European in style.

Another scroll, "The Feast of Victory at the Purple Light Hall" (collection S. Kriger, Washington, D.C.), was painted to represent a victory feast (April 18, 1760) in celebration of the subjugation of the Eleuths. The painting, about 25 feet long, displays easy facility of delineation with a Western touch particularly marked in the rendering of the Emperor, which may very well be a true portrait likeness of Qian Long.

Castiglione served also as architect (in collaboration with the Jesuit M. Benoist) for the Emperor's Old Summer Palace (Yüan Ming Yüan), a European styled structure that gave the Emperor (Qian Long) his wish to have a Chinese equivalent of Versailles.

Castiglione is the only European painter recorded in the Chinese work History of Painting, composed in 72 chapters by Peng Songjian in about 1800. Other missionaries who were active artists in China during this period were Ignatius Sichelbarth (1708–80) and Denis Attiret (1708–68).

Bibliography: l. pfister, Notices biographiques et bibliographiques sur les Jésuites de l'ancienne mission de Chine 1552–1773, 2 v. (Shanghai 1932–34), 2:635–639. g. r. loehr, Giuseppe Castiglione (Rome 1940), with bibliog. and catalogue of paintings.

[r. j. verostko]