Giuseppe Castiglione

Giuseppe Castiglione arrived in China in 1714 as a Jesuit missionary, a 26-year-old from Milan trained as a painter. He never really worked as a missionary. Instead he spent the rest of his life, more than fifty years, as a court artist to three Qing emperors, and became known across China under a Chinese name, Lang Shining.

His problem, and his invention, was that Chinese taste and European training pulled in different directions. The emperors admired his lifelike modelling but disliked heavy shadow on a face, so he worked out a hybrid: Chinese brushes, silk and pigments, with European shading and perspective used with a light hand. His portraits of the Qianlong Emperor on horseback, in full ceremonial armour, are the best-known results.

Castiglione rose higher in the Chinese state than any other Jesuit, put in charge of the imperial parks and given senior official rank. He also helped design the European-style palaces and fountains the Qianlong Emperor built at the Old Summer Palace outside Beijing, buildings a French and British force would burn in 1860. He died in Beijing in 1766, and the emperor paid for his funeral.