see an amazing Arcimboldo Exhibition in France (till Nov 2021)

Giuseppe Arcimboldo (1526-93) was born in Milan, son of an artist. Dad worked for Fabbrica Office in the Milan Duomo, that oversaw the devel­op­ment of the city’s cathedral architecture and art.

Some of young Arcim­bol­do’s earliest works were 1549 com­mis­s­ions for st­ained glass windows at the Duomo. In 1556 he worked on Duomo di Monza stained glass windows and fres­coes. In 1558, he drew the cart­oon for a large tapestry of the Dorm­it­ion of the Virgin Mary, in Como Cath­edral.

Earth c1570
Private collection, Vienna
 
In the early 1560s, Arcimboldo was c36 when he left Italy to be­come a court portraitist to Hapsburg emperors Ferdinand I, Max­imil­ian II in Vien­na & Rudolf II in Prague. In 25 years in Holy Roman Emp­ire courts, he designed stained glass windows, tapest­ries and theatre cost­umes. He main­ly spent time browsing the Hapsburgs’ pri­v­ate collect­ions of artworks and natural objects in Kunstkammer/art chamber.

At first Arcimboldo's conventional work concentrated on traditional re­ligious themes. However The Hapsburgs wanted imaginative works that em­phasised their claims to great­ness and promoted an avant-garde atmosphere in their intellectual courts. So his later, redefined por­t­raits of human heads were made differently. In place of the richly det­ailed facial feat­ures typically found in port­raits, there were clev­er displays of fruits, veget­ables, plants and animals. Both psycholog­ically acute and scient­if­ic­ally accurate, his port­r­aits were celebrated by his patr­ons & cont­emp­or­aries, expanding trad­itional thinking. Although they were greatly adm­ir­ed, art crit­ics debated whether these paintings were from a whimsical or a der­anged mind. Most schol­ars be­lieved that given the Ren­ais­sance fascin­ation of the biz­arre, this Renaissance Italian painter actually cat­er­ed to contemporary taste.

Art his­tor­ian Thomas Kaufmann wrote Arcimb­ol­do: Visual Jokes, Natural History and Still-Life Painting 2009, noting the art con­­veyed the maj­esty of the rulers. The works were meant to amuse, but they also symb­olised the: majesty of the ruler and power of the ruling family. Humour yes, but hum­our resolved seriously. Maxim­il­ian so liked this imag­ery that he and his cour­tiers celebrated in a 1571 festival orchestrated by Arcimboldo.

Maximilian II was fascinated with the natural world, and this interest in biology and other fields lured scientists and phil­os­ophers to his court. No surprise, then, that Ar­cimboldo’s first proj­ects for Maxim­il­ian II the series The Four Seasons, which he start­ed in 1563, and The Elements, com­p­leted in 1566, showed that love of science. Four Sea­sons comprised four profile portraits of figures created from natural mat­er­ials like fruits, veget­ab­les, flowers and plant life specific to summer, aut­umn, winter or spring. The El­ements 1566 (Earth, Water, Fire and Air) featured haunt­ing depict­ions of sea creatures, pearls and birds.

Spring, 1563

The alleg­or­ical paintings were full of visual Haps­burgs puns. The nose and ear of Fire were made of fire strikers, one of the imper­ial fam­il­y’s sym­b­ols. Winter wore a cloak monogrammed with an M for Maxim­il­ian like a garment the emperor did own. Earth had a lion skin a la Hercules, to whom the Hapsb­urgs always tr­aced their lin­eage.

This was the era of botany and zoology, when artists included Leonardo da Vinci (1452–1519), Arcimboldo’s pred­ec­essor in Milan, pursued natur­al stud­ies. Arcimboldo sug­gested a scientific fluency that highlight­ed his patron’s learnedness. Every plant, every flower was recog­nis­able!

Even the botany carried the theme of empire. Arc­im­boldo’s composites in­corporated exotic specimens eg corn and egg­plant, which sophisticated viewers knew were rare cultivars from the New World; where many European rulers hoped to extend their influence!

Arcimboldo’s subjects grow more varied over the years when he created portraits of specific prof­essions and bibl­ical figures while continuing to further his interest in nat­ur­­al phen­omena. Among his most idio­syn­cr­atic paintings are The Librar­ian c1566; The Cook c1570 had a serv­ing dish atop a wooden table that, when turned upside down, revealed a menacing face; and Adam and Eve 1578 showed the faces of a woman and a man composed of group­ings of human bodies. King Aug­ustus of Sax­ony vis­ited Vienna in 1570 and 1573, and saw Arcim­bol­do's work; he quickly com­missioned a copy of Four Seasons with his own monarchic symbols.

The Librar­ian c1566  

Skokloster Castle, Sweden

A renaissance court artist had to produce flattering portraits of his sovereigns, to display at the palace and give to foreign dignit­aries or brides. Arc­im­boldo rem­ain­ed with the Hapsb­urgs till 1587 and continued to paint for them af­ter returning to Milan. It was in this last phase of Arc­im­boldo’s car­eer, 1590, that he pro­duced the composite por­­­t­rait of his royal pat­ron Holy Roman Emperor Rudolph II. Arcimboldo chose peapod eyelids and a gourd forehead, looking less royal and more vegetable.

In Milan in 1587, Arcimboldo contin­ued painting met­iculous groupings of lush fruits and vegetables, & dist­in­ctive plants. Four Seasons in One Head c1590, which some art his­torians considered a self-portrait, feat­ured an angular face cut from a withered tree trunk and adorned with a pair of cherries on its ear; apples, grapes, and leaves atop its head; and fl­owers on its bust. Was it an earnest contemplation of mortality? Arcimboldo died in Milan in 1593.

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The Kunstkammer was looted late in the Thirty Years’ War (1618-48), and some Arcim­boldo’s paintings were carried from Rudolf II's coll­ection to Sweden. A hand­ful of his famous works, incl­ud­ing Vortum­nus c1590 and The Cook, are still part of Swed­ish col­l­ections today. Vortumnus was  the Roman god of the seas­ons. The Prague Picture Gallery has some of his art from Prague Castle. Despite the years damage to the Prague Castle Gallery caused by war and fires, the gallery is very impressive.

Rudolf as Vortum­nus, c1590
Skokloster Castle, Sweden.

The legacy of Arcimboldo’s multiple im­ag­es were only redis­cov­ered in the early C20th by Surrealist art­ists, Arcimboldo art appeared in the works of Pablo Picasso, George Grosz, Rene Magritte and especially Salvador Dalí. The 1987 Arcim­boldo Effect Exhibition at Venice’s Palazzo Grassi high­lighted the meanings of the Grandfather of Surrealism’s art. And Arc­imboldo shows have recently been at the Nat­ional Gal­lery of Art in Washington DC 2010-11; Palazzo Barber­ini in Rome 2017; and now Exhibition Arcimboldo Face to Face, Centre Pompidou-Metz, May-Nov 2021.

Four Seasons in One Head, c1590

National Gallery of Art, U.S.

Photo credits: Art News