In 1715, Giuseppe Castiglione, a young man from Milan, Italy, arrived in Macao. His ultimate destination was the imperial court of the Qing Dynasty (1644-1911) in Beijing, where he was to serve the emperor as a painter.

At that time, Castiglione didn't expect that his service at the court would last for decades until he died in 1766. As one of Emperor Qianlong's favorite artists, he left paintings depicting the ruler, his activities and imperial life. Meanwhile, he helped train several Chinese pupils to master Western painting techniques.

Better known by the Chinese name he took after arriving in Beijing, Lang Shining, Castiglione is recognized as a cultural envoy between China and Italy.

Now, not far from the Palace Museum where Castiglione's art is housed, a dozen artists from Castiglione's home country have assumed the role as envoys bridging the two cultures by showing their works to the Chinese public.

The National Art Museum of China exhibition, Thoughts in the Heart, running until Sunday, gathers several paintings, sculptures and installations of 13 academic artists at the Accademia delle Arti del Disegno in Florence, of which the establishment in 1563 was proposed by Renaissance painter and writer Giorgio Vasari and the artloving Benedictine priest Don Vincenzio Borghini.

The first academic of the Accademia delle Arti del Disegno was Michelangelo, the artist whose best-known works include the frescoes on the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel, according to Cristina Acidini, president of the institution.

She says their work reveals solid training under a group of mature artists against the background of feverish art movements following World War II.

"Many of them started from a figurative style but later deviated to blaze their own paths, venturing into areas quite personal and experimental, where they found opportunities and confronted challenges."

She says the artists sought inspiration by investigating the relationship between man and nature and found freedom in exploring abstract forms.

The results of their endeavors, the works, give audiences "a sense of assurance, stability and delicate balance", according to Giuseppe Calonaci, one of the artists showing at the exhibition at the National Art Museum of China.

Calonaci's Form illustrates his belief that a piece of art is the unity of form and color and to achieve perfection, the proportions of the work should be appropriate.

Granted such freedom in the creation process, the artists have built a bridge to connect the past and future, the figurative and abstract, their native culture and Eastern aesthetics.

"While people coming to the National Art Museum of China exhibition will see Western abstract art, they will also find fine works showing the semiabstract xieyi ("drawing the spirit") of traditional Chinese ink paintings," says Wu Weishan, director of the museum and a sculptor.

Xieyi is a unique, highly expressive style of classic Chinese painting in which a decrease of details and rather loose brushstrokes jointly render a mood of spirituality.

"It is an interesting dialogue," says Wu, also an academic of the Accademia delle Arti del Disegno, who shows at the exhibition the statues of Italian Renaissance legend Leonardo da Vinci and modern Chinese artist Qi Baishi to create a spiritual dialogue across time and space.

The two institutions have been at the forefront of cultural exchanges between China and Italy.

In 2019, a group of two bronze sculptures titled A Dialogue Across the Time, created by Wu, was installed at the Accademia delle Arti del Disegno. The work, depicting Da Vinci and Qi, was added to the academy's permanent collection to commemorate the 500th anniversary of Da Vinci's death.

On Jan 17, 2020, a larger version of the two statues were unveiled in Da Vinci's birthplace of Vinci in Italy.

In May 2023, Antonio Di Tommaso, the head of the sculpture academy at the Accademia delle Arti del Disegno, donated one of his sculptures to the National Art Museum of China, which was shown at exhibitions to commemorate the Chinese museum's 60th anniversary.

Several of Tommaso's works, including this one, are now on display at the exhibition, Thoughts in the Heart.

Twelve works will be added to the collection of the National Art Museum of China after the exhibition ends.

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