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.