Giuseppe Arcimboldo | |
|---|---|
 Self-portrait, now in National Gallery Prague | |
| Born | 5 April 1526 Milan, Duchy of Milan, Holy Roman Empire |
| Died | 11 July 1593 (aged 67) Milan, Duchy of Milan, Habsburg Spain |
| Known for | Painting |
| Notable work | The Librarian, 1566 Vertumnus, 1590–1591 |
Giuseppe Arcimboldo, also spelled Arcimboldi (Italian: [dʒuˈzɛppe artʃimˈbɔldo];[1] 5 April 1527 – 11 July 1593), was an Italian Renaissance painter best known for creating imaginative portrait heads made entirely of objects such as fruits, vegetables, flowers, fish and books.[2]
These works form a distinct category from his other productions. He was a conventional court painter of portraits for three Holy Roman Emperors in Vienna and Prague; also producing religious subjects and, among other things, a series of coloured drawings of exotic animals in the imperial menagerie. He specialized in grotesque symbolical compositions of fruits, animals, landscapes, or various inanimate objects arranged into human forms.[3]
The still life portraits were clearly partly intended as curiosities to amuse the court, but critics have speculated as to how seriously they engaged with Renaissance Neo-Platonism or other intellectual currents of the day.
- ^ Luciano Canepari. "Arcimboldo". DiPI Online (in Italian). Retrieved 5 February 2021.
- ^ Thomas DaCosta Kaufmann (2009). Arcimboldo: Visual Jokes, Natural History, and Still-Life Painting. University of Chicago Press. pp. 1, 93, 96. ISBN 9780226426860.
- ^ Oxford illustrated encyclopedia. Judge, Harry George., Toyne, Anthony. Oxford [England]: Oxford University Press. 1985–1993. p. 21. ISBN 0-19-869129-7. OCLC 11814265.
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