ATTIRET, JEAN-DENIS. - Painter and Jesuit missionary, b. at Dôle on 31 July 1702, d. at Peking on 8 Dec. 1768. Trained in the family art of painting and further perfected in Rome, he entered the Society of Jesus in 1735 as a lay brother and two years later set out for Peking, where artists were in great demand to maintain the emperor’s goodwill toward Christianity and the tolerance of missionary work, and where his Italian confrere G. Castiglione (q.v.) was already active. His first work, an Adoration of the Magi, so pleased Emperor Kien-lung that he summoned A. to the palace to exercise his art there. A. did so with great patience, renouncing his own taste to adapt to the Chinese preference for delicate brushwork and meticulous landscapes and decorations; yet he so fully won the esteem and affection of the sovereign that the emperor wished to keep him always at his side during travels, had him paint portraits of Tartar princes, and even considered appointing him a mandarin. A., however, managed to deflect this honor from himself. His funeral was paid for by the imperial treasury.
Almost all of his works, preserved in the former imperial palaces, are known only from descriptions; however, the series of sixteen battles of the Chinese against the Tartars was later engraved in France by Cochin in 1774. An Angel Guardian, preserved in the church at Peking, is also known. A long letter by him, describing his journey and the imperial palaces, was published in Lettres édifiantes et curieuses, ed. Aimé Martin, III (Paris 1843), pp. 786–95.