Giuseppe Arcimboldo Prague court

Giuseppe Arcimboldo (1526–93) was c36 when he left Italy to be­come a court portraitist to Hapsburg emperors Ferdinand I, Max­imil­ian II in Vien­na & Rudolf II in Prague.

Examine the enigmatic, Late Renaissance world of Arcimboldo and his most famous piece The Librarian c1566. He was one of the Italian artists who changed art during the Renaissance. Born into an artistic family in Milan, he started his career by designing stained glass windows for the Milan Cathedral. But Arcimboldo was attracted to the peculiar. In Prague Court, one of the great centres of the later Renaissance, Archimboldo became a very desirable painter for Emperors Maximilian II and Rudolf II. Rudolf II gathered creative around him: scientists, astronomers, authors and artists of every kind. This strengthened the possibility that portrait was of Wolfgang Lazius, a humanist and historian who served those Holy Roman Emperors in Prague.

Arcimboldo belonged to the Mannerist movement, famous for most of the C16th. His most well-known portraits were composite heads made out of fruits, vegetables and plants. So he wasn’t just an artist; he was a creative maverick. Arcimboldo wasn’t content with painting regular portraits - he wanted something new! Arc-imboldo’s creations turned the art scene upside down. Imagine a face crafted from foods. He played this style like a virtuoso. Of course The Librarian was just one piece of Arcimboldo’s wild collection of composite heads. He started a trend that caused artists to think outside the canvas. It took genius to mix fruits, vegetables and books to create a face.

The Librarian, 

c1566, height 67cm, width 50cm 

Skokloster Castle, Sweden

Arcimboldo created something unusual. He invented a librarian, not made of flesh & bone but from books. The librarian’s face is a stack of books, arranged to form a face that was strangely calm and surprisingly wise. Arcimboldo might have been saying Knowledge is my play ground, and I’m building it with books. He wasn’t just painting a librarian; he was crafting a symbol of intellect. Those books weren’t just random; they were a nod to the intellectual feelings of the Renaissance. He meant Look at all this knowledge, neatly stacked on my librarian’s face.

Another perspective was Roland Barthes’ essay on Arcimboldo, on the visual articulation of the intersection of man and nature. The fascination with Arcimboldo’s paintings was greater, because the Italian better challenged the viewer’s own ideas about the work’s exact purpose.

 Even though Arcimboldo was doing this long before the C20th Surrealists, his work has a dreamy, surreal feel, playing with reality in the coolest way possible. The Librarian wasn’t just a portrait; it was a portal into a whimsical realm of artistic eccentricity. The C16th Hapsburgs were thrilled with this artist, but cool heads reigned in the next centuries and his fame faded. We can see why modern Surrealists were attracted to Arcimboldo: his daring ascribing of human attributes to non-humans, his morphing of the natural with the extreme and grotesque, and transformation of the everyday and the dreamlike.

Under the layers of The Librarian, Arcimboldo didn’t throw books together randomly. In the face of wisdom, the face was a meticulous set of book spines as facial features. The eyes, nose, mouth were well crafted using the varied shapes and sizes of books. Arcimboldo was guiding a symphony of literature; the librarian’s face was a masterpiece.

And appreciate the diversity of the books used. They were either thick or thin; they were either bound in dark leather or in lighter hues. Each book seemed to have a personality of its own, contributing to the librarian’s overall character, a visual feast for book and art lovers alike.

Despite the quirky construction, the librarian’s expression was composed. It was not just a stack of literature; the face exuded tranquillity and wisdom coming from the composed arrangement of books. The composition was balanced, with books carefully arranged to create a harmonious whole, a testament to Arcimboldo’s talent that he could turn books into a surreal yet strangely natural face. 

An intimate friendship developed between Arcimboldo and Emperor Rudolf's son. In this work, the painter depicted the Emperor as the ancient god Vertumnus, the god of seasons, of inexhaustible change and agriculture. To realise this, he composed the face of the ruler from all kinds of plants, flowers and fruits. These were from different seasons and thus symbolised the eternal cycle of life. But the painting was not meant to hang alone but to be flanked by many other allegory paintings that Rudolf commissioned.

Arcimboldo, Rudolf II of Habsburg as Vertumnus, 1590 

Skokloster Castle, Sweden

Skokloster Castle, Sweden invites visitors to stroll through the halls and stumble upon a librarian made entirely of books, a historical and artistic jackpot! A Renaissance aristocrat’s worth was determined by the number of books he had read, OR by the quantity of books in his library. Arcimboldo was ridiculing the widespread theory then, by arguing that knowledge was not solely derived from book ownership but that real knowledge was more important. And in this exploration, unravel the layers of Arcimboldo’s genius, break down the eccentricities of The Librarian, and serve an important section of art history unexpectedly.

Conclusion In the grand stream of art history, Arcimboldo’s Librarian stood out as a bold stroke of creative genius. It was a journey into the surreal, a celebration of intellect and a testament to the endless possibilit-ies of artistic expression. Gaze upon the librarian’s face crafted from books, knowing it was not just witnessing a portrait; it was stepping into the great realm of a Renaissance rebel who dared to re-imagine the boundaries of art. Next time the reader is inside a good book, think of Arcimboldo i.e a reminder that knowledge was/is a masterpiece waiting to be unveiled.

In Rudolfine Prague, life was surrounded by the 30 Years’ War. Many of Arcimboldo’s paintings were lost, destroyed or stolen by the invading Swedish Army. Thus Archimboldo’s work is NOT in the great gallery in Prague’s Hradcany Castle

Credit to Philip Harvey and to Roland Barthes. 

Pope Benedict IX: very young, often enthroned

Theophyl­ac­t­us of Tusculum (c1020–c1056) became the youngest pope ever as Pope Benedict IX. The date of his birth was uncer­t­ain but his first papacy definitely started in 1032. Benedict was great-grandson of Marozia, a powerful Roman polit­ician who ?was mist­ress of Pope Sergius III. Via Mar­ozia, Sergius possibly sired Pope John IX. Several of Mar­ozia's descendants became popes, and Ben­edict's immediate predecessors were his loved unc­les Popes Bened­ict VIII and John XIX.  His father was Holy Roman Emperor Alberic. This was arguably the most power­ful Italian family, enabling the family to control the papacy for a century! 

                                          

Pope Benedict IX, c1030 

Hulton Archive

The Catholic Encyclopaedia said Benedict was c20 years old when he became pontiff. But the closest source to the pope himself was the monk-historian Rod­ulfus Glaber (985-1047). He was a critic of Benedict, but still he was one of the few contemp­or­ary sources available. He said the pope was 12 in 1032, the time of his accession! As did med­ieval scholar F Donald Logan, who wrote about Benedict IX in A History of the Church in the Middle Ages.

In terms of theology and activities of the Church, he was entirely orthodox. But Benedict was accused of sodomy, best­ial­ity and homo­sexuality; he was said to have held orgies inside Lat­eran Palace. Clois­tered monk St Peter Dam­ian was horrified and wrote a treat­ise ag­ain­st all sex, especially homosex­ual­ity. Damian’s Book of Gom­orrah said it had been ramp­ant within the Catholic Church for centuries.

Benedict was also accused by Bishop Benno of Piacenza of many ad­ul­t­eries and murders. As did Pope Victor III in his Book of Dial­og­ues. But Benedict came up with one sin that no one before or since has repl­icated: selling the papacy!

The first trouble came in 1036 when political oppon­ents tried to murder Bene­dict in St Peter's Basilica Rome during mass. But Ger­man Emp­eror Conrad II restored him to power before long, and Benedict stay­ed in Rome until 1045. In those years, he continued to steal and murd­er; fed up with him, the people of Rome again drove him out.

When Ben­edict was ousted, his enemies replaced him with the Bishop of Sabina, Pope Sylvester III. But it took only 2 months for Bened­ict IX to re-invade Rome with force, depose Sylvester and re­turn to pow­er again. Amaz­ing­ly Bened­ict allowed Sylvester to return safely to his old diocese, but Sylvester was later declared an anti-pope.

Benedict IX enjoyed his second papacy for c2 months, and then abdic­ated because his godfather arch­priest John Gratian gave him heaps of money. Bened­ict IX had really wanted to marry his cousin and decided he would finan­ce his new life by selling his pontificate to Gratian.

Benedict's tomb in the monastery, died at 35.
All That's Interesting

Grat­ian was a better choice for pope than his god­son. After sealing the deal, Gratian became Pope Greg­ory VI in May 1045. This deal annoyed Syl­vester III who imm­ediately sought to reinstate his own papacy. Gregory had bank­rupt­ed the church in buying out Benedict, so he couldn’t fight off a new claimant. His papacy lasted about as long as Sylv­ester's, but this time it took longer for Benedict to return to power.

Rome’s clergy broke into 3 factions, each supporting 1 claimant (Pope Gregory, Benedict, ex-Pope Sy­l­vester). So Henry III King of Germany & Burgundy invaded Rome and intervened. He met the candid­ates outside Rome in Dec 1046. King Henry wanted to resolve the crisis, so that the legit­im­ate new pope could quickly crown him as the Holy Roman Emperor.

But the Emperor had Sutri Council dismiss all 3 of them. Syl­vester tried to fight for his claim so he was sentenced to life imprisonment. Pope Gregory admitted he was in above his skill-level and resign­ed. Even though Benedict was assured of the support of the libert­ine fact­ion, the young man didn’t show up for the pro­c­eedings and was deposed. So King Henry's selected Bishop Sugier of Bam­berg to become Pope Clement II at Christmas 1046. In return Clement quickly crowned King Henry III as Holy Roman Emperor.

Pope Clement II died mysteriously in Oct 1047, af­ter serving only 11 months as Pope. So Benedict seized the Lateran Palace in Nov 1047, and again installed him­self on the papal throne. But Benedict was driven away by Henry III's German troops in July 1048 who installed Pope Damasus II (July-Aug 1048) instead. Damasus died a month later from ?malaria.

Even after one of the shortest pap­ac­ies in history, Benedict IX did NOT go for a fourth papal term. Emperor Henry III returned to Rome and made Leo IX pope (1049-54), the man who ruled for 6 years and brought stability to the pap­acy. Leo finally put an end to Bened­ict's aspir­at­ions! Benedict retired to a monastery near Rome where he repented and soon died, at only c36 years old.

Emperor Henry III at the Synod of Sutri, 
rejecting all three contenders for pope. 
Hulton Archive 

Conclusion 
What a story! Benedict’s father got the Papal chair for him in Oct 1032. Benedict had three terms as pope: 1] from his election to his expul­sion for Sylvester III (Oct 1032–Sept 1044); 2] from his return to his sel­ling the papacy to Gregory VI (Apr–May 1045); and 3] from his return post-Clement II to Damasus II (Nov 1047–July 1048)'s start. He ruled during a tumultuous church era with 7 diff­erent, rapid papacies, the only man to have been Pope more than once.

Note the close subordination of pope to German emperor. In fact the ful­filment of the emperor’s supreme duty was to watch over the welfare of the ch­urch; the emperor was the representative of St Peter on earth. Thus the 962-1046 era saw the empire at its zenith and the papacy much weaker.

Thank you to Luciano Anastasi for The Tale of Benedict IX: A Papacy for Sale.

I am a great grandmother !!!

My maternal grandmother had 3 daughters, the oldest being my mother. My mother had 3 children, with me being the oldest. I knew that having a baby was more important to my family than having the most elaborate wedding in Melbourne or earning a Nobel Prize for Medicine, so they were delighted when I delivered two handsome and intelligent sons. 

Between the two boys, I have 5 handsome and intelligent grandchildren, very easy for me. No dirty nappies but I had the grandchildren one day a week and their parents looked after them during the rest of week. Plus grandma (me) was responsible for music events at school, walks though art galleries, and selection of history and travel journals.

Great grandson, born Ap 2026

Now a surprise! We are great grandparents! The baby was born last week, of average weight (3.2 ks) and reddish eyebrows and eyelashes like his father, grandfather and great grandfather. He is so handsome! My husband will take him to cricket and football matches, as long as I take the little one to the beach house and teach him to swim.

We understand that every family has to lose their grand parents, aunts and uncles, parents, siblings and cousins, and that eventually there is no choice but to get on with life as best as possible. We go to the cemetery every year on each anniversary but surround ourselves with photos in between time. Below is a photo of our 52 year old son who closed his business after the October War broke out in 2023 and volunteered to pick fruit on kibbutz while the young men went into the army. We are very proud of him for volunteering, but we miss him still.

Son volunteering on a kibbutz

just before he passed away at 52

Wallis Simpson: Britain's royal drama.

Duke and Duchess of Windsor, 
wedding day June 1937 
photograph by Cecil Beaton. 
Britannica

A familiar story was that handsome, popular Prince Edward was expected to marry an aristocratic virgin who’d become Queen when he became King. But at 37, Edward fell in love with divor­ced American, Wal­l­is Simp­son. No one thought the affair would last, especially after his coronation.

The 2019 book, Untitled: The Real Wallis Simpson, Duchess of Windsor was the first to see Wal­lis as a warm, loyal, intelligent woman ad­or­ed by her friends; a woman written off by cunning, in­fl­uential es­tab­lishment men seeking to destroy her rep­utation. Author Anna Pasternak arg­ued that, far from being the villain of the British drama, Wallis was actually the vic­t­im. 

So in reviewing this book, I asked if there any legitimate, altern­ative views about Wallis Simpson, the woman whose relationship with Ed­ward VIII “precipitated” his abdication in Dec 1936. But was the real Wallis an opportunistic American social-climbing man­ipulator who nick­ed the British king? OR the true love of Edward’s life?

Or mere­­ly an unfortunate femme fatale who unwittingly laun­ched the greatest British royal crisis of the C20th? Edward’s dark nature was no sec­ret to the royal family, the church or the Parliament; everyone cl­ose to Edward knew that beyond his charming façade, he was imm­at­ure, self-centred and unfit to rule. Wallis begged Edward to stay on the throne and let her go.

"Untitled: The Real Wallis Simpson, Duchess of Windsor"
by Anna Pasternak

From the reviews, some readers understood the auth­or's attempt to un-demonise Wallis, and make her more sympathetic to history. Wal­lis' difficult childhood and romantic past, before she met Edward, became clear in the book. She was orphaned as a neonate and felt shame in her adolescence about being the illegit­imate, poor relat­ion of an important Baltimore family. Read of her first disastrous, abusive marriage, followed by a tragic, un­req­uited love affair with a diplomat.

Wallis was flattered by Edward’s attention, but like everyone else, she never expected his jealous passion to last. Aristocratic aff­airs were always time-limited, and in any case she never planned to divorce her second husband.

Powerful men wanted King Edward, whom they considered weak and ill-disciplined, off the throne and they used Wallis as the reason. Here was a woman written off by a cun­n­ing, powerful British est­ab­lishment who sought to destroy and dim­inish her.  PM Stanley Baldwin and Cosmo Lang, Ar­chbishop of Canterbury, both had vested interests in dehumanising Wallis, as did the palace courtiers.

Wallis was accused of entrapping the prince in a sed­uctive web in order to achieve her impossible ambition to be queen. The royal court agreed, assuming that Wallis could only have had a “sexual” hold on the prince! Yet there was no evidence that their relation­ship ever became phys­ic­al. Or with any of her other husbands/lovers for that matt­er. Who knew that Edward was left ster­ile by mumps as a child, suffering from orchitis of the testes? or that Wallis had a medical condition that made conception impossible.

Nonetheless she ended up being manipul­at­ed into a tedious mar­riage (in June 1937) to a spoiled ex-King. During their marriage, Wallis undoubtedly worked hard to make Edward happy. But Pasternak argued that the abdication had made Wallis cruel and ab­us­ive towards Edward in their marriage; she was bitter about being trapped.

It was what Pasternak did not say that was neglectful. From his youth Edward had manifested a fondness for the German language and culture. In July 1933, he said it was “no business of ours to inter­fere in Germany’s internal affairs either re Jews or re anything else. Dictators are very popular these days. We might want one in England before long.”

Edward VIII abdicating on BBC radio,
December 11, 1936. 

Britannica

In Seventeen Carnations, Andrew Morton detailed Wallis’ close rel­at­ionship with members of Hitler’s cabinet, esp foreign min­ister Joachim von Ribbentrop. The extent of the couple’s in­vol­vement with the Germans was unproven, yet both royals were enth­us­iastic supporters of the Nazi regime. They had not simply befriended the Nazis to avoid another war. Morton called Wallis “nonchalantly rac­ist and anti-Semitic”, as a product of her era and cult­ure. Clearly both royals shared a racist, anti-Semitic worldview. One of Morton’s sources claimed both Wallis and the Duke were mak­ing anti-Semitic remarks at a dinner party. "People were horrif­ied when they made it perfectly clear that the world would have been a better place if Jews were extermin­at­ed."

Who was more pro-Hitler and who fol­l­owed? Hitler had been telephoned by Lord Halif­ax reg­ard­ing Germany's expan­sion­ist pol­ic­ies, att­empting to get their 2 govern­ments to negotiate.

3 days later the Wind­sor tour to Germany ended with a meeting with Adolf Hitler in Oct 1937 at Hitler’s Bav­arian retreat, The Berg­hof. There Edward and Hit­ler had a long discussion where the Duke en­couraged his “ally” to pursue Nazi policies in the East. Then the Windsors had an amicable tea with Hitler and left. A con­tem­porary observer des­cribed how the Duchess was vis­ib­ly impressed with the Führer’s personality, and ind­ic­ated that they had become fast friends.

Edward’s family banished them from UK. They spent the rest of their days in exile, in quiet devoted love for each other. 

In conclusion, Wallis never intended to divorce her second hus­band, Ernest Simpson, with whom she had a comfortable marriage. But the King forced her into an untenable position, refusing to ever give her up. In the name of his needy love, Wallis paid the ultimate price: entrapment by a child­ish narcissist who insisted on the two things he wanted most – her and the throne. He chose Wallis.

Anna Pasternak showed that Wallis Simpson was actually an intel­l­igent wom­an, written off by cunning, powerful men and for­ced into a life she never wanted, in a tragic story of betrayal. Pasternak read Wallis and Edward’s published letters and was haunt­ed by their tragic love affair.

This book was a reworking of earlier Wallis books, although there were in­deed important facts I didn't know about before. But, apart from feeling sorry for her long and lonely life, noth­ing much about Wallis has changed in my mind … or about Edward for that matter.