Birth of the Artist and Architect Giuseppe Castiglione on 19 July, 1688

It was on this day 331 years ago that the Italian missionary, painter, composer, and architect Giuseppe Castiglione was born in Milan. He showed artistic promise in childhood and was given training in painting and music. Aged 19, he joined the Society of Jesus as a lay brother. Soon after, he set off to join the Jesuit missions in China, where artists had been requested.

Arriving in Beijing in 1715, Castiglione served the Kangxi (r. 1661-1722), Yongzheng (r. 1722-1735), and Qianlong (r. 1735-1796) emperors as a court artist for the rest of his life. He never saw his native Italy again.

Melding European painting techniques, such as perspective, with Chinese linear techniques, Castiglione pioneered a new, hybrid school of painting. In addition, he also designed a complex of Baroque-styled buildings and gardens for the Qianlong Emperor in one of the old Summer Palace gardens. He was assisted in this work by other Jesuits skilled in engineering and the arts. The Grand Trianon is said to have been one of the inspirations for the complex, which was named Xiyang Lou in Chinese. Sadly, little remains of the complex, which was burned by the invading Anglo-French forces in 1860 during the Second Opium War.

Castiglione, whose Chinese name was Láng Shìníng (郎世寧), died in Beijing in 1766. The Qianlong Emperor personally wrote his favourite artist’s obituary and commissioned his gravestone.

Much has been written about the vogue for Chinoiserie in the 18th century European courts, but the full story of the European vogue at the contemporary Chinese court remains to be told.

Further reading: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Giuseppe_Castiglione_(Jesuit_painter)

Image: The Haiyantang pavilion designed by Castiglione for the Changchun Garden of the old Summer Palace in Beijing,1750s.

I had never heard of Cristobal de Villalpando (1649-1714) before stepping through the doors of the Palacio de Iturbide in Mexico City’s Centro Historico in May, 2017.

The Palacio (see the previous post for details of this building: http://versaillescentury.com/2017/06/20/versailles-century-building-palacio-de-iturbide/#more-1068) now belongs to the Banamex Cultural Foundation, which happened to be running an exhibition dedicated to Villalpando.

Sign for the Villalpando exhibition at the Banamex Cultural Foundation, May, 2017.

Walking through the exhibition, I was thunderstruck by Villallpando’s canvases and amazed that I had never heard of him.

In some ways, the Kingdom of New Spain, centred in what we now call Mexico, was at its height in the Versailles Century (1682-1789).

It certainly reached its greatest territorial extent in the 1700s, as the map below illustrates.

By Eddo – Own workFile:BlankMap-World-90W.svgFile:New Spain.pngFile:Nueva España 1795.pngFile:Spanish Provinces in the Pacific.png, CC BY-SA 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=11435488

The light green areas represent the last areas to be claimed by the Spanish before the onset of the Napoleonic Wars and the War of Independence, which resulted in the collapse of Spanish rule and Mexico’s independence in 1821, not to mention that of the other countries of Central and South America.

The rape of Orithyia by Boreas seems to have been a popular subject in art during the Versailles Century (1682-1789).  A Google search turns up a number of works in oil, in bronze, and in porcelain.  Our featured art work today on the blog is the small bronze Rape of Orithyia by Boreas by the Florentine sculptor Foggini, pictured below. Dated “before 1702,” it’s on display at the Art Gallery of Ontario (AGO) in Toronto.

The Rape of Orithyia by Boreas; Giovanni Batista Foggini, Florence, before 1702.

The lighting was not conducive to getting a clear shot on my phone camera, so I’ve had to doctor it with filters.  My apologies for the sepia tone.

The work of Francesco Guardi, the last of the great Venetian view painters, is well represented in Lisbon’s Fundaçao Calouste Gulbenkian.

The foundation actually has 2 museums on its campus, as well as extensive gardens. One of the museums is dedicated to modern art.  It’s in the other one, the larger and older of the two, that you’ll find Guardi’s works.  In fact, there’s a whole room dedicated to them, with a number of paintings hung on each of the 4 walls.

One wall in the Guardi room at the Gulbenkian.

Another wall in the Guardi room at the Gulbenkian.

A third wall in the Guardi room at the Gulbenkian.

The final wall of the Guardi room in the Gulbenkian.

Tiepolo was the last great Venetian master, apart from the view painters Canaletto, Bellotto, and Guardi.  I was delighted to find 3 of Tiepolo’s smaller works in the collection of the Museu Nacional de Arte Antiga (MNAA) in Lisbon when I visited there last April (2016).

Born in 1696, Giambattista Tiepolo trained in the studio of Lazzarini before being accepted into the Venetian painters guild in 1717.  He was also influenced by his study of the great Venetian masters of the past, such as Veronese and Tintoretto.  His success seems to have been almost immediate.  Eventually, his renown spread across Europe and he accepted commissions in Germany, notably in the Residenz at Würzburg, and later in Spain.  He died in Madrid in 1770.

Here is a view of the Tiepolo wall at the MNAA.

A trio of small Tiepolo works in the MNAA.

Today we pay another visit to Lisbon’s Museu Nacional de Arte Antiga (MNAA)* to have a look at Fragonard’s ‘The Two Cousins.’  As I’ve said in a previous post, Portugal is actually a great place to see French fine and decorative art because the Portuguese aristocracy collected it with such enthusiasm.

Fragonard’s ‘The Two Cousins’ as seen in the MNAA.

We’re switching gears now.

The Versailles Century was led by France, but it played out all over Europe, indeed the world, as we’ll see in due course.  This post is the first of several inspired by my travels in Portugal in April of 2016, when I visited Porto and Lisbon after leaving Paris and Versailles.  I’m going to bring you words and images about all the Versailles Century art and architecture I found in Europe’s westernmost Latin country.  As it happens, Portugal is a great place to see French fine and decorative art because the Portuguese elite was so heavily influenced by French taste.  Versailles lovers, don’t despair — there will be many more posts about the Chateau in future!

I don’t know about you, but when I think of 18th century painting, a handful of artists spring immediately to mind.  Two that leap fastest are Canaletto (1697-1768) and Bellotto (1721-1780), probably the most famous uncle and nephew artists in history, both known best for their cityscapes.  It was my luck that when I visited the Museu Nacional de Arte Antiga (the National Museum of Ancient Art) in Lisbon, there was a special exhibition of a work by Bellotto.  The museum, which we’ll call MNAA for short, went all out to highlight it: