Giuseppe Castiglione (Jesuit painter)

[1] He stayed at a Jesuit church called St Joseph Mission or Eastern Hall (Dong Tang) in Chinese.

[6] In 1765, Castiglione and other Jesuit painters also created a series of "Battle Copper Prints" commissioned by the Emperor to commemorate his military campaigns.

This series of sixteen prints by Castiglione (who contributed two) and his contemporaries Jean-Denis Attiret, Ignatius Sichelbart and Jean-Damascène Sallusti were created in this way.

[2] Castiglione's architectural works were lost, although influences of his trompe-l'œil murals survive in paintings on walls and ceilings which were executed by his assistant in Juanqinzhai in Qianlong Garden in the Forbidden City.

[9][10] Castiglione's style of painting is a unique blend of European and Chinese compositional sensibility, technique and themes.

The painting needed to be worked out in detail beforehand, which Castiglione did in a preparatory drawing on paper before he traced the design onto silk.

[5] An example is the most important early work by Castiglione, One Hundred Horses in a Landscape (百駿圖), for which the preparatory drawings survive.

However, the dramatic chiaroscuro shading typical of Baroque paintings is reduced and there are only traces of shadow under the hooves of the horses.

Other members of the hunting party, the trees and landscape were painted by other court painters in a Chinese style that is distinctly different from Castiglione's.

[1] Due to Castiglione's work, Qing court paintings began to show a clear Western influence.

The influence of Western art on the Qing court paintings is particularly evident in the light, shade, and perspective, as well as the priority given to recording contemporary events.