Giuseppe Arcimboldo (1527-1593) was the son of an artist in Milan and worked on the design of stained-glass windows in Milan Cathedral and on frescos and tapestries for the cathedrals in Monza and Como. He moved to Prague in 1562 and for the next twenty-five years was employed by the Holy Roman Emperors Ferdinand I, Maximilian II and Rudolf II, working in both Vienna and Prague and painting portraits of them and their families. An example - Maximilian II, His Wife and Three Children – is shown below (upper). He also painted religious subjects and drew an excellent self-portrait that makes us puzzle about what he might be thinking about (below, lower).
It is not these works for which Arcimboldo became famous, but his series of portraits that ingeniously, and strangely, used fruits, vegetables and fishes to represent facial features, jewellery and clothing (The Admiral is shown at the head of this article). In Vertumnus [Emperor Leopold II] of 1591 (below, upper), that was painted two years before Arcimboldo’s death, we see that every feature is made up of vegetables, whereas the earlier portrait of a woman in Water of 1566 (below, lower), is made up of marine organisms. This was one of four paintings of the elements; the others being Air, Earth and Fire. We can assume that, as this style of painting was used by Arcimboldo for so many years, it must have been celebrated by the Court of the Holy Roman Emperors.
As Kriegeskorte writes [1]:
The documents of the time bear witness to the fact that monarchs and his contemporaries in general were quite enthusiastic about his art. We do not know why there was a sudden turning point.. ..during his time at the Imperial Court, these tendencies were undoubtedly reinforced by his acquaintance with pictures by Bosch, Brueghel, Cranach, [Hans Baldung] Grien and Altdorfer.”
Many fishes
in Water are easily identified and beautifully, and accurately, painted,
although there is no consistency of scale between them, and we can assume that they were available in
fish markets, were known to Arcimboldo from visits to coastal regions, or
brought to Prague as curiosities [1]:
Prague had now become a major European cultural centre. But Rudolph II’s
interest lay mainly in his Art and Wonder Chambers.. ..[that] contained
everything that was regarded as exotic at that time, all sorts of unusual
objects and animals:.. ..stuffed birds (from the world as it was known then),
gigantic mussels, sword- and saw-fish, precious stones, demons imprisoned in
blocks of glass, mummies, objects from the newly discovered continent of
America, precious things from India and a whole zoo of exotic animals
If we look closely at Water, there are two animals that capture our attention, a walrus and a spouting fish (below, upper). These are very unlikely to have been seen by Arcimboldo and his inspiration must have come illustrations that he had come across, but what were these? The walrus may have been influenced by Dürer’s (1521) illustration (below, mid), especially in the prominence of the nostrils and the eyes. The jets coming from the partially-hidden spouting fish are very similar to those in the representation of a whale in Olaus Magnus’ (1539) Carta Marina (below, lower). Arcimboldo probably saw copies of both, as they are likely to have been talking points in artistic circles in the decades before he produced Water in 1566. This is my speculation, of course.
There is nothing quite like Arcimboldo’s “still life portraits” in the history of art and their strangeness, and skill of execution, had an influence on Surrealist painters centuries later, Salvador Dali basing his Le grand paranoïaque (below, upper) on paintings by Arcimboldo, after conversations about the artist with Josep Maria Sert, who designed sets for Diaghilev’s Ballet Russe [2]. Perhaps Dali was especially inspired by Eve and the Apple (below, lower)?
[1] Werner
Kriegeskorte (2000) Arcimboldo Taschen, Köln
[2] Marijke
Peyser: https://www.boijmans.nl/en/collection/artworks/4293/le-grand-paranoiaque
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