The earliest extant court painting by the legendary Jesuit painter Giuseppe Castiglione sold for nearly HK$180 million (US$22.9 million) with fees today (5 May) at Sotheby’s Hong Kong, becoming both the most valuable object sold at auction in Asia so far this year and the most expensive work by the artist ever to appear at auction.
Painted in the first year of the Yongzheng reign, when rumours swirled around the legitimacy of his succession, Gathering of Two Auspicious Signs records two rare natural phenomena that were read as legitimising the new emperor’s rule: paired bingdi lotuses and double-eared grain stalks.
Offered in a single-lot sale, the work was hammered at HK$152 million and bought by a telephone bidder represented by Nicolas Chow, Sotheby’s Asia chairman. The result overtook the HK$174.9 million (US$22 million) achieved last week at Christie’s Hong Kong for a 14th-century Yuan dynasty blue-and-white Jinxiang Ting narrative jar, which had briefly held the year’s top auction price in Asia.
Only two companion paintings titled Gathering of Auspicious Signs are known: one painted in the same year, now in the Palace Museum in Taipei, and another painted two years later, now in the Shanghai Museum. The painting sold in Hong Kong is the earliest of the three and carries an illustrious provenance, passing from the imperial collection to Puyi, the last emperor, and later to Soong Mei-ling.
Lot 9601 | Lang Shining (Giuseppe Castiglione, 1688-1766) | Gathering of Two Auspicious Signs, ink and colour on silk | The earliest extant work by Giuseppe Castiglione at the Chinese court
Completed in the eighth month of the first year of the Yongzheng reign (1723)
158 x 85
Provenance:
- Completed by Lang Shining (Giuseppe Castiglione) in the eighth month of the first year of the Yongzheng reign (1723); presented shortly thereafter to the newly enthroned Emperor Yongzheng (1678-1735, r. 1723-35)
- Subsequently preserved in the Qing court collection; housed in the Ningshou Gong (Palace of Tranquil Longevity), Forbidden City, from the Qianlong reign through the Guangxu reign, until 1924
- With Puyi (1906-67), the last emperor of China, from 1924
- Collection of Zhang Xueliang (張學良, 1901–2001); presented by Puyi prior to 1935 (published 1935)
- Collection of the Soong family: Tse An “T.A.” Soong (宋子安, 1906-69; gifted from above likely prior to 1936, with seal); Soong Mei-ling (宋美齡, 1898-2003), Madame Chiang Kai-shek (published 1971); and Ji Ing Woo Soong (胡其瑛, 1920-2012), Mrs T.A. Soong (published 1988)
- Acquired from the above circa 2013
Estimate Upon Request (Expected to Fetch in Excess of HK$150 million)
Hammer Price: HK$152,000,000
Sold: HK$179,900,000 (US$22.9 million)
Auction House: Sotheby’s Hong Kong
Sale: Heaven’s Mandate: Giuseppe Castiglione’s Auspicious Lotus for the Yongzheng Emperor
Date: 5 May 2026
Giuseppe Castiglione was an Italian Jesuit who became one of the most important court painters in Chinese history. Arriving in China in 1715 and taking the Chinese name Lang Shining, he spent more than five decades at the Qing court, serving under three powerful emperors: Kangxi, Yongzheng, and Qianlong.
Trained in Renaissance and Baroque painting, Castiglione brought techniques like chiaroscuro, perspective, and realism to the imperial workshops, forging a new style that blended Western methods with Chinese materials and themes. He became the court’s favoured painter for major state occasions and worked across a wide range of subjects, from intimate portraits of emperors and empresses to imperial horses and landscapes.
Very few of these paintings are available to private collectors today. Most are held by museums in Beijing and Taipei, and works from his early years under the Kangxi Emperor are no longer known to survive. When paintings associated with him do appear on the market, they attract intense interest. In 2015, Sotheby’s Hong Kong sold Portrait of Consort Chunhui for HK$137.4 million, setting an auction record for a Chinese imperial portrait, and last year The Blue Goats fetched HK$78.9 million. Both bear Castiglione’s hand alongside other painters.
Giuseppe Castiglione and others | Portrait of Consort Chunhui | Qianlong period | Sold: HK$137,400,000, Sotheby's Hong Kong, 2015
Giuseppe Castiglione | Gathering of Auspicious Signs (1723) | Collection of the Taipei Palace Museum
Giuseppe Castiglione | Gathering of Auspicious Signs (1725) | Collection of the Shanghai Museum
Painted in 1723, Gathering of Two Auspicious Signs was made at a moment when the new emperor urgently needed to affirm his legitimacy. His accession followed years of internal strife among the Kangxi Emperor’s sons, and rumours soon circulated that the succession edict naming him heir had been manipulated.
The opening months of the reign brought further strain. A severe drought hit the nation, while the emperor’s mother died in the fifth month, shortly after the death in infancy of one of his sons. In traditional thought, such misfortunes could be read as signs that Heaven was displeased. Imperial authority rested on the idea of the Mandate of Heaven – that Heaven grants the right to rule and signals its judgement through events in the natural world.
The court’s opportunity came through two reported omens later that year. In Shandong, officials presented stalks of “auspicious grain” bearing twin ears on a single stem after a strong wheat harvest. Soon after, in the imperial gardens, lotuses in the Taiye Pond were found with paired blossoms on a single stem.
In Chinese agrarian symbolism, the ear of grain stood for the “imperial seed” and a secure line of succession, while the twin lotus heads suggested unity – “two hearts united as one” within the ruling house. These two rare phenomena, appearing in close succession, were quickly interpreted as proof that Heaven endorsed the new emperor as the legitimate ruler of the Manchu‑led Qing dynasty.
Portrait of the Yongzheng Emperor in Court Dress | Collection of the Beijing Palace Museum
Close-up of the present lot
Other court painters also recorded these omens, including Jiang Tingxi, a Grand Secretary under Yongzheng, whose depiction is now in the Palace Museum in Taipei. In Gathering of Two Auspicious Signs, Castiglione treats the same theme as a still life: Bingdi lotuses, grain stalks, seed pods, and arrowhead arranged in a Song‑style Guan‑kiln vase on a sandalwood stand.
The plants are rendered with striking naturalism. Lotus stems bend and lean at different angles; leaves remain partly curled or droop over the rim; rice stalks sink into the foliage; arrowhead flowers appear unevenly among the green. Castiglione even notes minor decay and damage, such as yellowing leaf edges and small insect‑bored holes – details that would have been highly unusual within the polished conventions of court painting.
Gathering of Two Auspicious Signs was received with such favour that, within days of its completion, an imperial decree assigned six students to study painting under Castiglione’s tutelage. Together with its companion piece, Gathering of Auspicious Signs, now in the Palace Museum in Taipei, the work secured Yongzheng’s trust and established Castiglione’s position at court.
Castiglione would later be elevated by Qianlong to official court painter in 1736, and in 1748 to administrator of the imperial parks and vice‑president of the Six Boards – the highest rank ever attained by a Jesuit. So highly was he regarded that when he died in Beijing in 1766, the Qianlong Emperor granted him a state funeral, a rare honour for a foreigner.
The present lot
Rachel Ruysch | Flowers in a Vase | circa 1685 | Collection of the National Gallery, London
Jiang Tingxi | Four Auspicious Symbols Celebrating the Ascension (1723) | Collection of the Taipei Palace Museum
Gathering of Two Auspicious Signs was first kept in the Qing imperial collection, recorded in the third compilation of the Shiqu Baoji, the court’s authoritative catalogue of painting and calligraphy. The painting was evidently treasured by the Qianlong Emperor. After his death, his successor, the Jiaqing Emperor, ordered Qianlong’s most prized works – including this one – to be sealed in storerooms around the Jianfu Palace, where it remained for more than a century.
The painting left the Forbidden City in 1924, when Puyi, China’s last emperor, was expelled from the palace and carried a number of imperial treasures with him to Tianjin. Still trying to wield influence in Republican politics, he gave Gathering of Two Auspicious Signs as a strategic gift to the powerful warlord Zhang Xueliang, known as the “Young Marshal”, who controlled much of northeast China at the time.
From Zhang, it passed into modern China’s most influential political dynasty, the Soong family. Zhang was especially close to the financier and statesman T.V. Soong, and T.V.’s younger brother T.A. Soong became engaged to Zhang’s sister. The work most likely entered the Soong collection as a token of that bond, probably before 1936, and stayed with them through decades of war, revolution, and regime change.
By the 1970s, Gathering of Two Auspicious Signs was recognised as part of the collection of Soong Mei‑ling, Madame Chiang Kai‑shek – T.V. Soong’s illustrious sister and one of wartime China’s most recognisable international representatives. It remained with the extended Soong family until it was acquired by the present consignor around 2013.
Puyi, the last emperor of China
Soong Mei‑ling in front of the White House with Eleanor Roosevelt in 1943
French author Cécile Beurdeley's 1971 publication on Giuseppe Castiglione, illustrating the present painting from the collection of Mme Chiang Kai‑shek