Chitqua was already the father of a substantial brood of children, begotten through many wives and concubines. Against the bitter opposition of his kin, far and near, he insisted on taking his newly found beloved under his protection. She bore him a son, and on this boy, as on his mother, he lavished his love as he never had on anyone before. This engendered, as you may imagine, many jealousies and also many apprehensions in regard to the disposal of the family property. Whether or not these fears had anything to do with Chitqua’s death is not known but suffice it to say that when he suddenly ceased to breathe, after a banquet, there were many who whispered that the painter had been poisoned. The outcome in any event was that his young mistress and her son were left destitute, alone in the world except for a single servant.

The son had received some instruction in painting from his father and had the circumstances of his birth been different he would, no doubt, have been absorbed into one of Canton’s many studios. But the artists of the city are a tight-knit lot, closely connected by blood, and they would not accept the boy into their midst. The lad kept himself alive by doing odd-jobs in Fanqui-town, working as an illustrator for botanists and collectors. The story goes that it was thus that his talent came to the notice of a wealthy American – a merchant who took him to Macau and helped him set up a studio of his own. It was there too that the lad adopted the name by which he would come to be known – Alantsae.

As is often the case with offspring who are born, so to speak, on the wrong side of the blanket, Alantsae proved to be more fully his father’s heir than any of Chitqua’s other sons. He quickly became the most celebrated portraitist in Macau and was much sought after by foreigners – merchants, sea-captains, and of course, the city’s Portuguese funcíonarios, many of whom commissioned portraits from him: of themselves, their children and – need it be said? – their wives. Not the least of these luminaries was a fidalgo of ancient lineage and advanced years – one of those chirruping cockchafers who flourish in the dusty cracks of old empires, using their connections to cling for ever to their posts. This fine cavalheiro had previously served a term in Goa, Portugal’s Asiatic metropolis, and while living there had lost one wife and acquired another: his first spouse having been carried away by malaria, he had married a girl of sixteen, some fifty years his junior. The bride belonged to a once-prominent mestiço family that had fallen on hard times: she was, by all accounts, a woman of exceptional loveliness, an otter-rose you might say, and her husband, overjoyed at having been able to pin such a prize upon his lapel, commissioned Alantsae to capture her likeness while she was still in the first freshness of her bloom.