Giuseppe Arcimboldo

(click to enlarge)
"Summer," painting on canvas by Giuseppe Arcimboldo, 1563; in the Kunsthistorisches … (credit: Courtesy of the Kunsthistorisches Museum, Vienna; photograph, Erwin Meyer)

(born c. 1527, Milan — died 1593, Milan) Italian painter. He began his career as a painter and designer of stained-glass windows for Milan Cathedral. In 1562 he moved to Prague and became court painter to the emperors Ferdinand I and Rudolf II. He also painted scenery for the court theatre and became skillful at illusionistic imagery containing allegorical meanings, puns, and jokes. He is known for his eccentric and grotesque Mannerist compositions of fruits, vegetables, animals, landscapes, and implements arranged to resemble human forms. The style was regarded as being in poor taste until the Surrealists revived the art of visual punning in the 1920s.

For more information on Giuseppe Arcimboldo, visit Britannica.com.

(b ?Milan, ?1527; d Milan, 11 July 1593). Italian painter, draughtsman and tapestry designer, active also in Austria and Bohemia. He came from a distinguished Milanese family that included a number of archbishops of the city; his father was the painter Biagio Arcimboldo. Giuseppe is first documented in 1549, working with his father for Milan Cathedral; he received payments until 1558 for supplying paintings, designs for an altar baldacchino and stained-glass windows for the cathedral: the Story of Lot and the Life of St Catherine in the south transept windows are usually attributed to him. He collaborated with Giuseppe Meda in designing the gonfalone of St Ambrose in Milan, probably sometime soon after 1558. In 1556 he received a commission to paint the south wall and vault of the south transept of Monza Cathedral, also in Lombardy, a work that must have been completed by 1562. Portions of a fresco of the Tree of Jesse on the south wall there can be attributed to him. In 1558 he was paid for designing tapestries for Como Cathedral (in situ). On the basis of stylistic comparison with the windows in Milan and the frescoes in Monza, the design of a tapestry representing St John the Baptist Preaching and Baptizing (Monza, Mus. Duomo) can be attributed to Arcimboldo. The Archbishop of Milan, Carlo Borromeo, probably paid for this tapestry.

See the Abbreviations for further details.

Giuseppe Arcimboldo (also spelled Arcimboldi), was an Italian artist in Milan, Italy, between 1527 or 1530 and 1593. A painter, he also designed the stained glass windows for Milan's duomo. Arcimboldo's artwork, especially famous for its fragments of landscapes, flowers, herbs, vegetables, noodles, and cookware, was fashionable during the sixteenth century. His work became especially well known throughout Europe after the Austrian Holy Roman Emperor Rudolf II exhibited Arcimboldo's paintings in the many residences of the Habsburg imperial family. In fact Arcimboldo's bizarre pieces and grotesque portraits pleased the Habsburg emperor so much that he appointed the Italian painter Habsburg court painter at Vienna and Prague and also made him a count palatine. Arcimboldo also created the illusionistic sceneries for the Habsburg court theater.

Arcimboldo's most famous paintings had contemporary allegorical meanings and were unique compositions of edibles and culinary objects placed together in such a way as to represent the contours or heads of cooks, innkeepers, fishmongers, and symbolic figures related to the world of arts and sciences. He was not prolific, but his paintings of fantastic heads and social satirical subjects were popular. Many surrealists, including the Spanish artist Salvador Dalí, claim Arcimboldo as a surrealistic ancestor.

Arcimboldo's paintings and drawings in Austria are in Vienna's Kunsthistorisches Museum, in Graz, and in Innsbruck's Habsburg Schloss Amras. In Italy his works are preserved in Cremona, in Brescia, and in Florence's Uffizi Gallery. In the United States the Wadsworth Atheneum in Hartford, Connecticut, houses some of Arcimboldo's work.

—Elisabeth Giacon Castleman

Giuseppe Arcimboldo
Self-portrait
Birth name	Giuseppe Arcimboldo
Born	1527 Milan
Died	July 11, 1593 (age 66) Milan
Nationality	Italian
Field	Painting
Works	The Librarian, 1566 Vertumnus, 1590-1591 Flora, c. 1591

Giuseppe Arcimboldo (also spelled Arcimboldi; 1527 - July 11, 1593) was an Italian painter best known for creating imaginative portrait heads made entirely of such objects as fruits, vegetables, flowers, fish, and books — that is, he painted representations of these objects on the canvas arranged in such a way that the whole collection of objects formed a recognizable likeness of the portrait subject.

Contents 1 Biography 2 Legacy 3 See also 4 References 5 Gallery 6 External links

Biography

Vertumnus, a portrait of Rudolf II. Now at Skokloster Castle, Sweden.

Arcimboldo was born in Milan in 1527, the son of Biagio, a painter who did work for the office of the Fabbrica in the Duomo.^[1] Arcimboldo was commissioned to do stained glass window designs beginning in 1549, including the Stories of St. Catherine of Alexandria vitrage at the Duomo. In 1556 he worked with Giuseppe Meda on frescoes for the Cathedral of Monza. In 1558, he drew the cartoon for a large tapestry of the Dormition of the Virgin Mary, which still hangs in the Como Cathedral today.^[1]

In 1562 he became court portraitist to Ferdinand I at the Habsburg court in Vienna, and later, to Maximilian II and his son Rudolf II at the court in Prague. He was also the court decorator and costume designer. King Augustus of Saxony, who visited Vienna in 1570 and 1573, saw Arcimboldo's work and commissioned a copy of his "The Four Seasons" which incorporates his own monarchic symbols.

Arcimboldo's conventional work, on traditional religious subjects, has fallen into oblivion, but his portraits of human heads made up of vegetables, fruit, sea creatures and tree roots, were greatly admired by his contemporaries and remain a source of fascination today. Art critics debate whether these paintings were whimsical or the product of a deranged mind.^[1]. A majority of scholars hold to the view, however, that given the Renaissance fascination with riddles, puzzles, and the bizarre (see, for example, the grotesque heads of Leonardo da Vinci), Arcimboldo, far from being mentally imbalanced, catered to the taste of his times.

Arcimboldo died in Milan, to which he retired after leaving the Habsburg service. It was during this last phase of his career that he produced the composite portrait of Rudolph II (see above), as well as his self-portrait as the Four Seasons. His Italian contemporaries honored him with poetry and manuscripts celebrating his illustrious career.

When the Swedish army invaded Prague in 1648, during the Thirty Years' War, many of Arcimboldo's paintings were taken from Rudolf II's collection.

His works can be found in Vienna's Kunsthistorisches Museum and the Habsburg Schloss Ambras in Innsbruck, the Louvre in Paris, as well as numerous museums in Sweden. In Italy, his work is in Cremona, Brescia, and the Uffizi Gallery in Florence. The Wadsworth Atheneum in Hartford, Connecticut, the Denver Art Museum in Denver, Colorado, the Menil Foundation in Houston, Texas, and the Candie Museum in Guernsey also own paintings by Arcimboldo.

Legacy

The bizarre works of Arcimboldo, especially his multiple images, were rediscovered in the early 20th century by Surrealist artists like Salvador Dalí. The “The Arcimboldo Effect” exhibition at the Palazzo Grassi in Venice (1987) included numerous 'double meaning' paintings. Arcimboldo's influence can also be seen in the work of Shigeo Fukuda, István Orosz, Octavio Ocampo, and Sandro del Prete, as well as the films of Jan Švankmajer. His painting, Water, was used as the cover of the album Masque by the progressive rock band Kansas. The 'soup genie' character Boldo in the 2008 animated film The Tale of Despereaux, is composed of vegetables.

Arcimboldo's surrealist imagination is visible also in fiction. The first and last sections of 2666, Roberto Bolaño's last novel, concern a fictional German writer named Archimboldi, who takes his pseudonym from Arcimboldo.^{[citation needed]} The 1994 novel The Coming of Vertumnus by Ian Watson likens the innate surrealism of the eponymous work to a drug-induced trance.

See also

• Hidden faces

References

1. ^ ^{a b c} Giuseppe Arcimboldo's hallucinations: Fantasy or insanity? - International Herald Tribune

Gallery

The Jurist, 1566, Nationalmuseum, Sweden	The Librarian, 1566, oil on canvas, Skokloster Castle, Sweden	Winter, 1573, oil on canvas, Louvre Museum, Paris	Spring, 1573, oil on canvas, Louvre Museum, Paris
Summer, 1573, oil on canvas, Louvre Museum, Paris	Autumn, 1573, oil on canvas, Louvre Museum, Paris	An earlier version of Summer, 1563, Kunsthistorisches Museum Vienna, Austria

External links

Wikimedia Commons has media related to: Giuseppe Arcimboldo

• www.Giuseppe-Arcimboldo.org 32 works by Giuseppe Arcimboldo
• Giuseppe Arcimboldo at Olga's Gallery
• Arcimboldo at TVM
• Arcimboldo in the "A World History of Art"
• Web Gallery of Art
• Arcimboldo at MuseumSyndicate
• Arcimboldo at Panopticon Virtual Art Gallery
• Skokloster Castle, Sweden
• Arcimboldo, from Milan's cathedral to european courts

This entry is from Wikipedia, the leading user-contributed encyclopedia. It may not have been reviewed by professional editors (see full disclaimer)