Giuseppe Castiglione, who later adopted the Chinese name Lang Shining, was already an accomplished painter before coming to China as a Jesuit missionary. After arriving in China after 1715, he lived in the Forbidden City as a court artist for the rest of his life and painted for three emperors, Qianlong, Yongzheng, and Kangxi. Castiglione developed this unique artistic style by subtly combining Western techniques with traditional Chinese media of ink on silk. Qianlong had an exotic taste in art and loved this style of art and ordered large quantities. This allowed this zhongxihebi (east and west) style to become the iconic artistic style of the Qing court. The influence of Western artistic creation is evident in many ways in the Portrait of the Qianlong Emperor in Ceremonial Robe. In terms of composition, it is symmetrical and the golden ratio (rule of thirds) is applied (the edge of the rug is one third of the height of the entire composition), producing a feeling of balance and harmony. The subtle technique of highlights and shadows helped produce a rather realistic, volumetric and three-dimensional representation as well as an illusion of space as opposed to traditional flat Chinese paintings. For example, where Qianlong bent her left arm to touch the beads of her ceremonial necklace, shadows were applied to show the inward folds of the soft silk fabric, while the highlighting represents