Born in Milan, Giuseppe Castiglione was sent to China by the Jesuit Mission in 1715 and subsequently served a total of fifty-one years as painter in the Imperial court, until his death.
The three Emperors of the Golden Age were his patrons. Besides producing a great body of work himself, he also taught his Chinese counterparts the illusionistic devices of Western oil painting, such as linear perspective and chiaroscuro.
Paintings by Castiglione and his students appear more three-dimensional and more realistic than any traditional Chinese painting, although, to cater to the taste of the Qianlong Emperor, who disliked strong light and shadow contrasts and thought of shadows as dirt, Castiglione softened his use of chiaroscuro, especially when it came to the rendering of faces.
Although it is a well-known fact that Castiglione was commissioned to produce reverse glass paintings, no surviving sample can be attributed to him beyond doubt, to the effect that no reverse glass painting has been included in his catalogue raisonné.