The Sino – French relations initiated during the Yuan Dynasty (1271- 1378). Well-known reasons meant the interruption of stable relations between Europe and China until the Jesuits arrived on the scene. Kangxi, who had been educated by Jesuits, was very much interested in europeana (physical products such as objects d’art produced in Europe). As an answer to Verbiest’s plead for missionaries, the French missionaries come to China in 1688 to collect scientific and cultural data for “the perfection of science and the arts” (Catherine Jami, 2008). This paper will accordingly consider the role played by the French Jesuits in the circulation of European artistic objects and such objects such as maps or clocks, that have a practical function, but were often conceived and circulated as objects d’art. Moreover, it will analyze the role of the French Jesuits as purveyors of porcelain and of a taste for Chinese art in Europe and beyond. At arm’s length, their activity as concerns art, namely their appetence for sinica, their activity as middlemen in art supply channels, or the painting by Jesuit painters of certainly non sacred subjects, such as portraits of women at the Court, may indeed be seen as non-adequate to their religious condition.