This life-sized portrait of Duo-lo was probably painted on the occasion of the prince's 60th year. That age denoted a full cycle to the Chinese, and to reach it was particularly auspicious. Duo-lo was a second-rank prince and a member of one of the eight great Manchurian families who acted as retainers to the Ch'ing court. He is shown clad in his symbolic dragon gown, formally seated on a red lacquer throne in front of an imperial nine-dragon screen. Virtually every element in this painting symbolically represents Prince Duo-lo's position within the Imperial hierarchy of the Chinese court. Portraits of this scale, painted in exceptional detail with the finest mineral pigments on the most expensive silk, typically were hung in the great halls of the Forbidden City, the Imperial Palace in Peking. The largest group of such portraits remains in the imperial collection itself, now in Taiwan.