Giuseppe Arcimboldo was born in Milan and lived in the 16th century. He is known for his feverishly grotesque portraits of humans made entirely out of non-human material. Paintings of people as books, vegetables, fish, plants, birds, the elements, and what ever fantasy he could think of dominated his canvases. The further into his career the stranger and more unreal his hallucinations seem. One may argue whether these works were due to strange apparitions in his mind from insanity, a sick sense of twisted humor or the imaginative output of a genius. Perhaps it was all three.
Ahead of His Time
Known in some circles as the Father of Surrealism, he actually predates the movement by about four centuries. In a time when other painters were careful to paint everything exactly as seen in reality, being sure to show no sign of craftsmanship or brushstrokes on their canvases, Arcimboldo boldly paints people in a fantastically unreal way. Was this perhaps the way he saw people? His subjects didn't mind being portrayed as fruits and twigs, however, even receiving such high society commissions as the Holy Roman Emperor Maximilian II and later Rudolph II.
Rudolph II would be depicted as "Vertumnus," the god of the seasons, in part of his "Four Seasons" series. He would look like vegetables, fruit, nuts, berries, and some flowers. "Winter" can be seen above at the top of this article as a man made of the twisty stump of an old tree with a broken branch stump for a nose, moss for a beard, and tree mushrooms for lips. What imagination!
"You Are What You Eat"
The first time I ever heard of Giuseppe Arcimboldo was when I was probably about eight or nine years old when my parents got me a picture medical book for kids. This was a great book with all kinds of neat illustrations about human anatomy, bodily systems, and nutrition among many other things.
The funny thing was the chapter involving nutrition with a section titled "You Are What You Eat" or something along those lines. I remember it showed a cow drawn entirely out of grass and the portrait of a boy made from vegetables and fruit. I guess it made sense to me. The picture was probably "Summer," in Arcimboldo's Four Seasons.
A Very Thin Line
What started out as simple variations of reality, such as a self portrait in the likeness of sheets of paper, would eventually lead to what appeared to be downright derangement. What could be categorized as his "Professions" paintings, the subjects could barely be classified as humanoid. An interesting example here is the "Lawyer." Something tells me he didn't intend this as a gift for an attorney friend. Also take the "Librarian," which is basically just a stack of books. Here the humans have almost completely transformed.
It takes a genius to be able to shatter perceptions of reality like this. No one can argue against his innovative genius, being so ahead of his time it would take the world centuries to catch up in terms of artistic expression.
One may never know now what was really going on in the mind of Giuseppe Arcimboldo. Art historians are kept busy pondering the idea that his genius led to madness or vise versa. Take a look at some of these Arcimboldo paintings, and decide for yourself.
autumn.jpgarcimboldo_air.jpgarcimboldowater.jpgspring.jpgfire.jpg
[tags] arcimboldo, surrealism, surrealist, painting, artist, art [/tags]
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