The article covers attribution problems of one of the most mysterious works of Italian artist Giuseppe Castiglione (Lang Shining; 1688–1766) – “Spring’s Peaceful Message”, painted for the Manchu Emperor Qianlong. The author weighs several versions of the identity of the second person portrayed and discusses when this double “portrait-walk” could have been executed. The article also discusses changes, occurring in the general principles of imperial portraiture during the times of Emperors Yongzheng and Qianlong, and looks at factors that allowed to represent the Jesuit painter’s crowned Qing-Dynasty patrons within the imagery of Chinese shenshi – scholars. While confronting previous attributions of the painting, the author proposes the time frame of its execution in the period, when future Qianlong emperor had still been prince Hongli, and argues that the scroll, being the draft for the big wall-panel, hanging in the office of the Emperor in the Forbidden City, features young Hongli himself, and his father – emperor Yongzheng, rather than some obscure elderly court official or even himself, but in his older age. The meaning of the painting is also addressed, being a highly symbolical fusion of important state and dynastic matters: Passing the Mandate of Heaven in the form of a blossoming sprig; special esteem to Confucianism and traditional Chinese scholarship; peculiar combination of subtle “polyconfessionalism”, characteristic for the three main Manchu emperors of the 17<sup>th</sup>–18<sup>th</sup> centuries, combining Buddhist, Confucian, and even hidden Christian artistic connotations in the form of using European methods of perspective and tromp-l’œil