Giuseppe Castiglione’s Gathering of Two Auspicious Signs is a painting intimately connected to the fate of China. It is also the very work that marked the entry of a Western painter onto the stage of the Chinese imperial court, a figure forever etched into the canon of art history. From its very moment of creation as an allegorical painting in the imperial court to win the favour of the Yongzheng Emperor, Gathering of Two Auspicious Signs was destined to be symbolic of the Mandate of Heaven. Its silk threads bear signs of the vicissitudes of time, witness to the nation’s fateful turns of fortune and a bygone era of the last three hundred years. There is perhaps no other painting that beholds such a powerful line of succession, passed through the hands of many of the most influential figures in Chinese history from the Great Qing to this day.

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