Giuseppe Castiglione

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Pine trees and cranes in spring ; Indian ink and watercolor on silk; 2nd half of the 18th century

Giuseppe Castiglione SJ ( Chinese  郎世寧  /  郎世宁 , Pinyin Láng Shìníng ; * (baptized) July 19, 1688 in Milan , † July 17, 1766 in Beijing , China) was an Italian Jesuit and painter in China . He worked as a court painter and architect under three emperors of the Qing Dynasty - Kangxi , Yongzheng and Qianlong - for over 50 years . Castiglione is considered to be the founder of the Qing court style in Chinese painting, in which elements of European and Chinese painting were merged into an independent style.

Life

There is little reliable data on Giuseppe Castiglione's childhood, youth and early artistic training. He was born the son of Pietro Castiglione and Anna Maria Vigone and was baptized on July 19, 1688 in the Church of San Marcellino. He grew up in the San Marcellino quarter near a renowned printing and art workshop, the Botteghe degli Stampatori , where Carlo Cornaro worked and from which he probably learned. The Jesuit Andrea Pozzo could also have had an influence , who was a virtuoso of several Jesuit churches in Europe and especially in Italy and who was active in Milan at the time.

In 1707, at the age of 19, Castiglione entered the Jesuit order and was sent to Genoa for further training as a painter. In 1713 he was delegated to Portugal with other friars with whom he was to go on a missionary trip to China. In Coimbra , Portugal, he first painted a Jesuit church and created portraits of members of the Portuguese royal family. The tour company started on April 2, 1714 in Lisbon and arrived in Beijing on September 22, 1714 after stops in Goa , Macao and Canton . He was housed in the Portuguese Jesuit College. Castiglione adopted the Chinese name Lang Shining (郎世宁), by which it is known in China. His mentor was the Jesuit priest and painter Matteo Ripa , from whom he learned Chinese and who introduced him to the Emperor Kangxi . The emperor kept him at court and had him copy pictures.

Castiglione, like other leading court Jesuits, remained largely unaffected by the fight against Christian missionaries, which was determined by the Pope in 1744 after the final ban on accommodation ( rite dispute ) . In 1750 he was appointed third class mandarin . He spent the rest of his life in China and died in Beijing in 1766 .

Gravestones in the Zhalan cemetery

The grave in Zhalan

Castiglione was buried in the Jesuit cemetery, the Zhalan cemetery, in full honor and at the expense of the emperor. The cemetery, where Matteo Ricci , Adam Schall and Ferdinand Verbiest were also buried, was located two miles west of Beijing at the time. The area was devastated during the Boxer Rebellion . Insurgents opened the graves and burned the bones. The tombstones were kidnapped and some of them were used as building material in the neighborhood. After the uprising was over, the property was returned to the Catholic Church and the cemetery was restored. At the beginning of the Cultural Revolution in 1966, the Red Guards ordered the site to be destroyed. The administration of the party college, which was now housed in the adjoining former Jesuit church, had the tombstones buried instead, so that they escaped complete destruction. In 1984, Chinese authorities restored the cemetery, collected old gravestones, including Castiglione's gravestone, and had them re-erected on the site. Since 1984 the Zhalan cemetery has been a listed building and Castiglione's grave memorial in its old place.

All tombstones in the Jesuit cemetery are made according to the same pattern. Castiglione's tombstone is also crowned with a dragon and a cross, a combination of symbols of Chinese culture and Christian religion. The epitaph in Chinese and Latin gives brief information about Castiglione's merits.

The Latin inscription on the tombstone reads:

DOM Fr. Joseph Castiglione, Italus, Mediolanensis, Coadjutor formatus Sos. Jesus. De mandato Imperatoris Pekinum venit, at. Dom. 1715, ubi pictoria sua arte quam magno europei nom. honor per annum. 50 in aula exercuit, praeclaram Missioni dedit operam, religiosae simul perfectionis praeclarus et ipse cultor. Pie obiit the 16 jul. ann. Dom. 1766, aetatis 78. Societ. 59 cum dimidio.

The second inscription on the tombstone is written in Chinese. It begins with the copy of the imperial decree from 1766 and is more or less an obituary for Lang Shining, a European who has served the court since Kangxi. It goes on to say that he was able and clever and that he was promoted to third degree Mandarin because of his services. He [the emperor] took note of his death with regret. In view of the long time of his merit and in view of his old age of almost 80 years, he was awarded the title of Deputy Court President (it. Vicepresidente di un Tribunale ). The sum of 300 ounces of silver, with which the costs of the funeral could be covered, are a special sign of "our deep pain".

plant

and display information about the image
Ayusi pursues bandits with a lance , scroll painting, ink and color on silk, 27.1 × 104.4 cm; Taipei Palace Museum, Taiwan (reading direction from right)

In China, Castiglione painted portraits of the imperial family and courtiers, above all pictures with animal motifs, flower pictures and some pictures with narrative content about life at court or hunting and war events. He played a decisive role in the famous cycle "The ten victorious campaigns of Emperor Qianlong ", which was engraved in copper by Charles-Nicolas Cochin in Paris around 1770 and sent back to the Chinese imperial court from there.

In 1744 he made an album with garden motifs of the Yuanming Yuan . From 1749 he designed the plans for an area called Xiyang Lou at Yu Yuan (so-called "Old Summer Palace" on the northwestern outskirts of Beijing) with a palace and a garden in a European-Chinese style. He was responsible for overseeing the work that was carried out in 1749–1751 and 1755–1759.

Emperor Qianlong on a throne decorated with dragons , 1736
Emperor Quianlong on horseback , 1758

The portraits, especially his imperial portraits, follow the traditional forms of the canonical portraits of rulers for China . The emperor sits in an imperial pose on a throne, which is usually provided with a stepped pedestal, footstool and cushion. The entire picture is painted flat and shows no signs of European perspective painting. The face is not modeled by light and shadow, nor is the two-dimensional and ornamentally designed magnificent robe or the carpet of honor shown from above. The space itself remains indefinite.

The equestrian portraits of courtiers, however, are executed in the mixed style typical of Castiglione. Faces are always shown as two-dimensional and emphatically linear, without any modeling by light and shadow. The background usually remains indefinite or is at best indicated by fleeting brushstrokes. The horses and riders, however, are depicted realistically, with bright colors and with an almost tangible materiality , according to the principles of painting as they were developed in the Netherlands and Italy . The elegant, saddled and metal-studded horses, whose hooves shine in the light, are carried by their riders, whose clothing is just as perfect in its materiality and perspective.

Collections and exhibitions

Most of Castiglione's paintings are kept in the palace museums of Beijing and Taipei . Museums in Shanghai, Jiangxi, Zhenjiang, the Shenyang Imperial Palace and the Art Museum in Tianjin have other works . In addition, the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York and the Museum of Asian Art in Berlin own a few works by Castiglione.

In 2015/2016 the Taipei Palace Museum presented the exhibition “Portrayals from a Brush Divine. A Special Exhibition on the Tricentennial of Giuseppe Castiglione's Arrival in China ". The show was supplemented by eleven loans from the Palace Museum in Beijing, as well as further loans from the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York and the Casa di riposo Pio istituto Martinez in Genoa.

Giuseppe Castiglione's first solo exhibition in Europe was held in Santa Croce in Florence in 2015/16 under the title “Nella lingua dell'altro. Giuseppe Castiglione Gesuita e pittore in Cina ”. It was organized by the Opera di Santa Croce in collaboration with the Taipei Palace Museum . The occasion was the 300th anniversary of Castiglione's arrival in China.

Works (selection)

  • Women at the game , Museum für Völkerkunde Hamburg
  • Portraits of Emperor Qianlong, the Empress, and Eleven Imperial Consorts , 1736 - c. 1770. scroll painting; Ink and paint on silk; 53.80 × 1154.50 cm, Cleveland Museum of Art
  • Kazakhs bring horses to Emperor Quianlong as tribute , 1757. Musée Guimet , Paris
  • Xian'e Changchun Album (Immortal Blossoms in an Everlasting Spring), 16 pictures with birds and flowers on silk, National Palace Museum , Taiwan
  • Imperial Rites of Sericulture , 13 scrolls on silk, Palace Museum in Taipei, Taiwan
  • Ten Prized Dogs Album , 10 pictures with the Emperor's favorite dogs ; Silk, Palace Museum in Taipei, Taiwan

Reception in literature, art and mass media

In 2006 the sinologist Tilman Spengler published the novel “The Painter of Beijing”. The role model for the title character is Giuseppe Castiglione.

In 2013, the Taiwanese journalist Jade Y. Chen published the novel "The Tears of Porcelain", which was published in 2014 in a translation by Ilka Schneider by Dryas-Verlag. The theme of the novel is the journey of a Meißen mineralogist who was sent to China on behalf of the Elector of Saxony to investigate the production technique of blue Ru ceramics . A large part of the novel is his encounter with the European artists Castiglione, Attiret and Scherbarth at the imperial court.

In 2005, Castiglione was a subject on the Chinese TV series "Palace Artist", which was broadcast on China Central Television (CCTV). The role of Castiglione was played by the Canadian Da Shan (Mark Rowswell), who is very popular in China .

In 2012, the Taiwanese film companies Kuangchi Program Service (KPS) and China's Jiangsu Broadcasting Corporation, in collaboration with the American Jesuit Jerry Martinson, produced a four-part documentary about the life of Castiglione entitled "Giuseppe Castiglione in China-Imperial Painter, Humble Servant" (郎世寧在 中國 - 謙卑 服務 的 帝國 畫師). The film, which was shown in US and European museums in addition to Chinese TV channels, is the third in a series of documentaries about the work of Jesuits in imperial China.

In 2015, the Chinese artist Ai Weiwei showed an installation with twelve Chinese zodiac signs (e.g. aries, pig, tiger, snake, rabbit) in the Palm Springs Art Museum . The sculptures, cast in bronze, pay homage to Castiglione, who designed a corresponding series for the Summer Palace. The heads are gargoyles that belonged to a well system. They spit water every two hours, in accordance with the two-hour phases to which the animals are assigned. The artefacts, which were initially lost after the looting of 1860, occasionally appear on the art market and trigger discussions about looted art . Some of the Castiglione figures have now returned to China, while others have been lost to date. Ai Weiwei's installation alludes to the ongoing debate about the connection between national Chinese art, looted art and the return of works of art to China.

Castiglione on the art market

Small-format paintings by Castiglione reached prices in the range of 2,000 to 5,000 US dollars at auctions up to the turn of the millennium. In the course of the increasing interest of Chinese collectors in Asiatica , his pictures, which are rarely offered at auctions, are now reaching prices in the one to two-digit million range. Castiglione's scroll painting “Autumn Cries on the Artemisia Plain”, with an imperial seal and undisputed provenance , fetched 2.3 million US dollars at an auction in New York in May 2000, at that time a price record for a Chinese painting. In 2015, an unknown bidder bought a portrait of Emperor Qianlong's wife of Castiglione for 137.4 million Hong Kong dollars, double the estimate and a record price for a portrait from the period. Castiglione's horse painting "Eight horses" was sold in Hong Kong in 2016 for 15 million US dollars.

Engravings by Charles-Nicolas Cochin based on works by Castiglione are now selling for between 8,000 and 10,000 US dollars at auctions. A bundle of 13 from a series of 16 copper engravings (format 505 × 864 mm) from the series "Conquest of Jinchuan or the Military Campaigns at Jinchuan", in which, in addition to Castiglione, Jean-Denis Attiret , Ignaz Sichelbarth and the Italian Augustinian monk Joannes Damascenus Salusti (? -1781) was auctioned at Christies's on April 5, 2016 for $ 245,000.

Castiglione is one of the artists who were brought onto the market by the English master forger Eric Hebborn and have been shown as originals in renowned museums.

Honors

The Castiglione crater on the planet Mercury was named after Giuseppe Castiglione.

literature

Catalog raisonnés

  • Collected Works of Giuseppe Castiglione (Collezione delle opere di Giuseppe Castiglione). Edizione in cinese ed in italiano. Edito da National Palace Museum, Taipei 1982.
  • Bruno Zoratto: Castiglione, pittore italiano alla corte imperiale cinese . Fasano di Puglia: Schena editore 1994.
With a detailed bibliography and an annotated list of Castiglione's works in the Palace Museum in Taipei. Full text, pdf .

Secondary literature

  • Isabella Eramo Doniselli: Giuseppe Castiglione. Un pittore milanese alla corte dell'Imperatore della Cina. Milano: Luni ed. 2016. ISBN 978-88-7984-499-4 .
  • Diana Gore, David Su Liqun: Vermilion Ink . Createspace 2011. ISBN 1-4515-9000-8 .
  • Michèle Pirazzoli-T'Serstevens, Marco Musilio: Giuseppe Castiglione. 1688-1766. Peintre et architecte à la cour de Chine. Thalia Ed. 2007. ISBN 978-2-35278-026-7 .
  • Cecile Beurdeley: Giuseppe Castiglione. A Jesuit Painter at the Court of the Chinese Emperors . Tuttle, 1971. ISBN 978-0-8048-0987-0 .
  • Alessandro Aldreini, Francesco Vossilla: Giuseppe Castiglione. Gesuita e pittore nel celeste impero. ISBN 88-6430-119-4 .
  • Roland Kanz: Giuseppe Castiglione. In: General Artist Lexicon. The visual artists of all times and peoples. Volume 17. Saur, Munich and Leipzig 1997, pp. 226-227. ISBN 3-598-22757-4 .

Web links

Commons : Giuseppe Castiglione  - collection of images, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Susan Naquin: Giuseppe Castiglione / Lang Shining. A Review, in: T'oung Pao . 2nd series. Vol. 95. 2009. p. 293.
  2. ↑ according to the entry in the Archivio Storico Diocesano, Milano
  3. ^ China Online Museum
  4. ↑ Gianni Criveller. A Reflection on Zhalan, a cemetery in Beijing where illustrious Italians rest. Retrieved February 15
  5. ↑ At last they rest in peace. Retrieved March 7, 2017.
  6. ↑ Both quotations from: Bruno Zoratto: Giuseppe Castiglione, pittore italiano alla corte imperiale cinese. Fasano di Puglia 1994. p. 65
  7. ^ National Palace Museum , accessed March 8, 2017.
  8. ↑ Da Shan: A foreigner involved in Chinese culture China Central Television, accessed February 13, 2017
  9. ^ Giuseppe Castiglione - pittore di corte della dinastia Qing CRI online, accessed on February 12, 2017; Christine Stoddard: Documentary focuses on an Italian missionary in Imperial China The Arlington Catholic Herald, March 31, 2015, accessed February 13, 2017.
  10. ↑ Speedmuseum (with images) accessed on February 12, 2017
  11. ^ Souren Melikian: Auction Houses Add Insult to Injury The New York Times, May 6, 2000, accessed February 9, 2017.
  12. ↑ Bloomberg, October 7, 2015. Retrieved February 9, 2017.
  13. ↑ Giuseppe Castiglione's “Eight Horses” painting fetches HK $ 117 million at Hong Kong auction Asian Art News, accessed February 9, 2017.
  14. ↑ Christie's, sale 12259 April 5, 2016, accessed February 9, 2017.
  15. ^ Art Crime Index: Giuseppe Castiglione , accessed February 12, 2017.
  16. ^ Gazetteer of Planetary Nomenclature
personal data
SURNAME Castiglione, Giuseppe
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Italian Jesuit missionary and painter in China
DATE OF BIRTH July 19, 1688
PLACE OF BIRTH Milan , Italy
DATE OF DEATH July 17, 1766
Place of death Beijing , China