Reconciling Two Careers: The Jesuit Memoir of Giuseppe Castiglione Lay Brother and Qing Imperial Painter

This essay explores the dual nature of Giuseppe Castiglione's career. As a professional trained artist and Lay Brother, from 1715 to 1766 Castiglione was deployed through the Jesuit Order in the Qing workshops. My analysis of Castiglione's unique career is based predominantly on an unpublished manuscript source, the Jesuit posthumous memoir of the artist, today in the main archive of the Order in Rome. The memoir describes Castiglione's professional engagement between his European and Chinese patrons who supported and supervised his work: the Jesuit Order, and the mid-Qing Emperors. Far from being just the description of an individual career, the memoir sheds light on important aspects of the early modern cultural interchange between Europe and China, as well as on the eighteenth-century European missionary strategy in Asia.