作者：施惠淳 Shield, Bernard J.年份：1979
JESUIT PAINTER AT THE COURT OF PEKING
Court painter and architect in the imperial capital for over half of the 18th century, confidant of three of the greatest Ch'ing dynasty Emperors, protector of the Chinese Church in times of persecution, pioneer in introducing Western techniques of painting and architecture to the Middle Kingdom, greatest of the missionary artists of his time with a secure place in Chinese art history -- and yet a simple, self-effacing religious man who never neglected his missionary vocation to bring Christ to others: such was Brother Joseph, whose life and work deserve to be better known to students of Chinese Church history and of Chinese art.
It all began with a letter sent from Peking to Rome more than 250 years ago asking for a painter. The international team of Jesuits, whose predecessors led by Matteo Ricci (利玛窦) had first been permitted to live in the imperial capital almost a century previously, now felt that they needed a talented Western-trained artist to help them in their work at the court of K'ang-hsi. A young Milan-born Jesuit-in-training then barely twenty years old, Giuseppe Castiglione, was selected for this very unusual assignment at the other end of the known world. Before being attracted to join the Society of Jesus in Genoa he had studied art under a famous artist of the day and shown not a little promise. But quite consciously putting all that behind him, he asked to enter the religious life, not with a view to becoming a priest but in the humble grade of a coadjutor brother.
Setting out for Lisbon, then the usual port of departure for the East, he found himself directed, once in Portugal, to travel to the university city of Coimbra, where he was detained for several whole years decorating the house chapel of the local Jesuits, painting portraits of the Portuguese royal children, and the like. It took an express order from the Father General of the Jesuits in Rome, Michele Tamburini, to whom he had written on 22nd February 1714, to obtain his release, enabling him, now at last a fully-fledged Jesuit, to set sail on 11th April of that year. In the company of Brother Costa he boarded the vessel "Our Lady of Hope" bound for Goa and points East. Meanwhile his confreres in Peking were impatiently awaiting the arrival of their new painter. Sailing into the harbour of Macao, for centuries the base for most missionary work in East Asia, on 10th July 1715, he eventually reached Peking just before Christmas, now in his twenty-seventh year.
From that time until the day of his death just over half a century later--17th July 1766-- he lived and worked uninterruptedly at the Court as painter and subsequently also as architect to three of the most enlightened Emperors of the Ch'ing dynasty: K'ang-hsi (康熙, died 1722), his son Yung-cheng (雍正, died 1735) and his nephew the long-lived Ch'ien-lung (乾隆, died 1795).
Taking the Chinese name Lang Shih-ning (郎世宁) he set to work with a will to master the secrets of Chinese brush-work and to learn to paint with oils on glass and mirrors, and in water-colours on silk. The rules of his art as he had learned them ten and more years before in Italy he had regretfully to set aside, having to adopt instead many new artistic values and techniques.
Accustomed to handle historical and religious subjects and to paint portraits, from now on he was called upon to paint subjects such as trees, flowers, fish, eagles and, above all, horses, dogs and everything connected with the battle and the hunt to which his Manchu patrons were so addicted. He did in fact paint some historical scenes, such as the vast panoramas depicting the military conquests of Emperor Ch'ien-lung, but had time for few pictures with religious themes. (1) Arnold Silcock in his discriminating work on Chinese art speaks of the opposition that Castiglione met with at first when he used "high lights and cast shadows, mathematical perspective and conventional well-filled background". (2)
His paintings of horses are justly famous. No less a person than Emperor Ch'ien-lung, himself a skilled painter, composed the following tribute to him in poetic form which was calligraphed on one of his paintings in 1743: "The Emperor asked Lang Shih-ning to paint for him this dragon-like horse. Henceforth it can no longer be said that no one can equal Ts'ao and Han (two painters famous for their paintings of horses)". (3) In another painting, an enormous panoramic scroll measuring 7.76 meters in length and now, like most of his surviving works, in the National Palace Museum in Taipei, he succeeded in painting a round hundred horses -- the celebrated "One Hundred Steeds" (百骏图) -- each in a different position or movement. (4) Aready as early as 1728, then, he had solved the technical problems of depicting a horse at full gallop, i.e. sixty-six years before the first European artists began to attempt it in the West.
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Castiglione's relations with his three imperial patrons are of interest and of some importance in the history both of Chinese art and of the Catholic Church in China, for the dedicated artist, toiling away year after year in his studio at the Court, never forgot that he was a missionary of Christ with a religious mission to perform, a religious message to communicate. Ch'ien-lung, although a savage persecutor of the Chinese Catholics and of many of those who cared for them, enjoyed lavishing the marks of his esteem and benevolence on his Jesuit friend, giving him gifts, sending him food from his table, even, to the astonishment of his courtiers, going to visit him almost every day and conversing familiarly with him. He sat to his foreign friend for more than a dozen portraits. Finally overcoming the modesty of the humble Brother who had so frequently declined such an honour, the Emperor insisted in 1750 on making him a mandarin of the third rank, fortunately a purely honorific title without any obligation of functioning as an official.
During the periodic outbursts of religious persecution, decreed or tolerated by the Emperor, Brother Joseph did not hesitate to intercede with his imperial visitor for his brethren and correligionists scattered throughout the imperial realm. From the year 1583 to 1616 Fr. Semedo counted no less than fifty-four different persecutions of the Catholics, most of them of local character. From then until the death of Brother Castiglione in 1766, there were almost as many more, five of them general persecutions. (5)
When Ch'ien-lung ascended the Dragon Throne in 1735 at the age of twenty-four, the missionaries were hopeful that he would be more tolerant towards Christianity than his father, but when he renewed the prohibitions, Castiglione was charged with presenting a petition to the Emperor in person, Now forty-seven, he had acquired great experience of Court affairs. A contemporary relates how on 3rd May 1736,
the Emperor came as usual to sit by him and watch him paint. The Brother laid down his brush and, suddenly assuming a sad expression, fell to his knees and after uttering a few words Sacred Law drew from his breast our Memorial wrapped in yellow silk. The eunuchs of the presence trembled at this Brother's sudacity, for he had concealed his purpose from them. However, the Emperor listened to him calmly and said to him in a kindly way: "I have not condemned your religion; I have simply forbidden the people of the Banners to embrace it". At the same time he signed to the eunuchs to receive the Memorial and turning to Castiglione he added: "I shall read it, do not worry, and go on painting". (6)
The persecution which had lasted two months abated, but every morning Castiglione was searched as he entered the palace to make sure he did not carry any similar documents. We know of at least two other occasions, in 1737 and in 1746, when he approached the Emperor for a similar purpose.
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We possess very few writings from the hand of Castiglione that would throw light on his inner thoughts during these long years. (7) However, Jean-Denis Attiret, a French Brother artist and junior contemporary of his in Peking, on occasion gives vent, with not a little "Gallic fire", to some of the frustrations which they faced together:
To be attached to a chain from day to day, to have time to say one's prayers scarcely even on Sundays and feast days, to paint almost nothing according to one's own taste or aptitudes, to meet a thousand other difficulties which it would take too long to explain -- all this would make me want to return to Europe if I did not believe that my brush were useful for the good of religion, to make the Emperor more favourable to the missionaries who preach it, and if I did not see paradise at the end of my trials and labour. That is the only thing that keeps me here, and the same is true for the other Europeans who are in the Emperor's service. (8)
Still, there were times when it was possible to introduce the subject of religion more directly or even when the Emperor himself raised such questions:
The Emperor, according to his habit, was one day in the studio of Brother Castiglione, who was working with several Chinese and Tartar painters. "Do Christians fear death?", asked the Emperor. The Brother replied: "Those who have lived a good life do not fear it. Those who lived an evil life fear it greatly." "But", said the Emperor, "how is one to know if one has lived a good or an evil life?" "One knows", said the Brother, "by the evidence of one's conscience."
The Emperor then addressed a Chinese painter. "Tell me the truth. I have seen you for a long time with the Europeans: have you embraced their religion?" The Chinese said that he was not a Christian; what had always stopped him was the incarnation of a god. Castiglione then intervened to give some explanations. "But this mystery", he added, "is developed at length in our religious books." Then the Emperor declared to the Chinese painter: "It is because you can- not read the European books that you have not become a Christian". Castiglione protested that such books existed in Chinese characters. Whereupon the Emperor concluded drily with two words addressed to Castiglione: Hua-pa -- Get on with your painting". (9)
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Brother Joseph was shortly to be called to face a still more demanding artistic challenge. In 1747 Ch'ien-lung decided to construct at his Summer Palace six miles north-west of Peking a whole complex of buildings in the European -- or at least Chinese-European -- style, a veritable Peking Versailles fit to rival Louis XIV 's Chinese dream of a "Trianon de porcelaine". So Castiglione, now aged 59, was summoned by imperial command to lay down his paintbrush and become "architect-in-ordinary" for this grandiose new venture at Yuan-ming-yuan (圆明园). Together with a French hydraulic engineer, Pere Michel Benoist, who was to install the very elaborate system of fountains, he set about drawing up the detailed plans required and supervised the actual building operations.
The resulting set of palaces, as described by a modern sinologist, would not have been unworthy of the "Sun King" himself:
It was a complex of pavilions, gardens, gates, canals, fountains, lakes, waterfalls, flower-beds, labyrinths, etc., bearing the name Hsi-yang-lou. Much use was made of marble and faience of different colours, yellow, green, bright and dark blue. The brilliantly-coloured roofs shimmered in the sunlight. The boundary wall did not lack even the fine red of Pompeii. The fronts of the buildings had columns, pilasters, balustrades, life-sized lions on Western pedistals and other architectural features in marble or a stone similar to Florentine "serena".
Contrary to the Chinese style, the buildings had several storeys. The columns and pilasters were decorated with Ionic and Corinthian capitals. The staircases and terraces were at times like those at the Farnese palace at Caprarola; at other times the steps and the gates were of bronze. For the windows first-quality glass from Venice or from France was used lavishly. Baroque art and that of the Italian Renaissance appeared in certain architectural forms. There were even pavilions destined for concerts of different types of music, Chinese, Tartar, Tibetan or Mongolian. (10)
What a pity that this splendid example of Italian architecture in China, unique of its type, was completely lost in the burning and destruction of the ancient Summer Palace, for which the Anglo-French troops led by Lord Elgin and General Cousin-Montauban were responsible in 1860.
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After the completion of this architectural wonder of truly royal dimensions in 1759, Bro-ther Joseph returned quietly to his studio and worked on at his paintings for 7 years more. But in 1766, when he had reached the venerable age of seventy-eight years, the time came for him to lay down his Chinese brush for the last time, to take leave of Ch'ien-lung and of his other Chinese and foreign friends and to join his Jesuit brethren of former days in the Chala cemetery. There he still rests, a mile or so from Peking. To the posthumous honours heaped on his tomb by a grateful Emperor (11) was added that of being included -- the sole Western painter to be given this supreme artistic accolade -- in the classic seventy-two chapter work, A History of Painting (历代画史汇传), composed by P'eng Jun-ts'an (彭蕴璨) in about 1800, although not printed until fifty years later. (12)
However, Brother Joseph's own greatest satisfaction at the close of his long life must surely have been to have helped to introduce to the "Middle Kingdom" not just a new Western artistic "dimension" but a new religious "perspective" destined to unite and even transcend East and West in the long centuries to come.
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Bibliography
Cecile and Michel Beurdeley, Giuseppe Castiglione; A Jesuit Painter at the Court of the Chinese Emperors, London, 1972
P. Bornet, Notes sur l'evangelisation du Tcheli et de la Tartarie aux xvii et xviii siecles ..., Peking, 1937, pp. 14, 107,154
F. Bortone, I Gesuiti alla corte di Pechino 1601-1813, Rome, 1969, pp. 188, 206, 208
P. D'Elia, "Castiglione, Giuseppe", Enciclopedia Cattolica, Rome, vol. 3 (1949),columns 1038-1040
J.F. Kearney, "Brother Castiglione, Artist to Emperors", in: The Four Horsemen Ride Again, Shanghai, 1940, pp. 33-58
J. Krahl. China Missions in Crisis: Bishop Laimbeckhoven and His Times, 1738-1787, Rome, 1964, pp. 11-13, 81-89, 114-116, 199-202
L. Le Boisselier, "Decouverte d'unc Stele en l'honneur du Frere Castiglione", Relation de la Chine (Paris), October 1916
G.R. Loehr, Giuseppe Castiglione, 1688-1766, pittore di corte di Ch'ien-lung, Imperatore della Cina, Rome, 1940
G.R. Loehr, "Missionary Artists at the Manchu Court", Transactions of the Oriental Ceramic Society (London), vol. 34,1962-63
Archbishop Stanislaus LoKuang, Lecture on G. Castiglione on occasion of exhibition of Castiglione's paintings in Taipei, Central Daily News (Taipei), 16th May, 1969
J.G. Mahler, "Lang Shih-ning" in: B.S. Myers ed., Encyclopedia of Painting, New York, 1955, p. 110
Mikinosuke Ishida, "A Biographical Study of Giuseppe Castiglione", The Memoirs of the Toyo Bunko, No. 19, 1960
P. Pelliot, Les influences europeenes sur 1 'art chinois, a speech at the Musee Guimet in 1927, Paris, 1928
L. Pfister, Notices biographiques et bibliographiques sur les jesuites de l'ancienne mission de Chine 1552-1773, vol. 2,18th century, Shanghai, 1934, pp. 635-639
J. Joshua, "Chinese Art The Month 167 and a Jesuit Artist" (1936) pp. 324-333
A. H. Rowbotham, Missionary and Mandarin: The Jesuits at the Court of China. Berkeley, 1942 .
S. Schuler, "Bruder Giuseppe Castiglione, der bedeutendste Jesuitenmaler am kaiserlichen Hofe in China", Katholische Missionen 44 (1936) pp. 301-308
R. J. Verostko, "Gastiglione, Giuseppe", New Catholic Encyclopedia, New York, vol. 3 (1967) p. 192
「郎世宁画集」，北京，1931。
刘乃义著，「郎世宁修士年谱」，天津，1944。
施惠淳著，刘赛眉译，「名画十骏犬的作者郎世宁」， 神学论集13 (1972)，页473-478。
In the detailed Catalogue of Castiglione's paintings drawn up by Cecile and Michel Beurdeley, pp. 163-191 of their sumptuous volume, only about a dozen of the 163 extant paintings deal with religious subjects. During a period of house-arrest under Yung-Cheng, Castiglione was able to decorate the new Church of St. Joseph, the Tung T'ang. Said to have been the finest in Peking, it was seriously damaged by fire in 1811 and later demolished, cf. Beurdeley, p. 33. Castiglione also did two large paintings for the Nan T'ang, "Constantine on the Point of Victory" and "The Triumph of Constantine" which have likewise perished, cf. Beurdeley, p. 93.
An Introduction to Chinese Art and History, London, 1947, p. 209.
Beurdeley, p. 165. On a portrait of himself as a young man Ch'ien-lung wrote the lines: "Shih-ning has no rival in the art of portraiture... He painted me in my young years. When I enter this room today with my white hair, I no longer know who this person is." Beurdeley, pp. 97-98.
In 1970 the Chinese postal authorities, to commemorate the International Symposium on ancient Chinese painters held in Taipei, issued a splendid set of Castiglione's horses, including his "Hundred Steeds" on a continuous series of five stamps, surely destined to become a collector's item. In 1972 some of his attractive dogs were similarly honoured. In 1978 a leading Hong Kong bank celebrated the Year of the Horse with a fine calendar of one of his three paintings of "Eight Horses".
Kearney, p. 50
Dominique Parrenin, in: Lettres edifiantes et curieuses ecrites des missions etrangeres. Memoires de la Chine, Toulouse, 1810, vol. 20, pp. 287 ff., quoted in Beurdeley, p. 39.
The Jesuit archives in Rome possess seven letters written by Castiglione between 1714 and 1733, usually to the Father General of the time. Beurdeley gives some extracts from these, pp. 154-155. He collaborated with Nien Hsi-yao a high Court official, on an adaptation into Chinese of Andrea Pozzo's Perspectiva Pictorum et Architectorum in 1729, cf. Beurdeley, p. 136.
Kearney, p. 45.
Jean-Gaspard Chanseaume, in a letter of 1746, in: Lettres edifiantes, vol. 23, p.88, quoted in Beurdeley, p. 44.
D'Elia, columns 1039-40.
His tombstone was found in the plain of Peking by a missionary, Father Ducarme, at the beginning of this century: "The inscription is flanked by two dragons. At the top are engraved the two characters which indicate that the stele was erected by order of the Emperor. The inscription recalls that the Emperor Ch'ien-lung, wishing to reward the services of the European Lang Shih-ning, erected this stone in his memory and gave him all the surrounding land." Cf. P. Ducarme , Bulletin catholique de Pekin, March 1915, quoted in Beurdeley, p. 60.
Many of Castiglione's paintings figure in the official catalogues of the paintings in the Imperial Palaces, the Shih-ch'u pao-chi (石渠宝笈), cf. Beurdeley, p. 161. The most recent edition, in 1979, of the standard Chinese encyclopedic dictionary, the Tz'u Hai, has the following expanded entry under "Lang Shih-ning": ... he arrived in China to do missionary work and was subsequently appointed Court painter to the Ch'ing Court. He took part in the architectural work of renovating and enlarging the Summer Palace (Yuan-ming-yuan). He excels in portraiture, flowers, birds, animals in movement and especially in painting horses. He combines harmoniously the Chinese and Western techniques of painting, paying attention to perspective and light and shade; however in his artistic work he mostly emphasizes the smal details and stops at the external form.