Giuseppe Arcimboldo (also spelled Arcimboldi) (1526 or 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.
At
a distance, his portraits looked like normal human portraits. However,
individual objects in each portrait were actually overlapped together to make
various anatomical shapes of a human. They were carefully constructed by his
imagination. Besides, when he assembled objects in one portrait, he never used
random objects. Each object was related by characterization. In the portrait called The Librarian, Arcimboldo used
objects that signified the book culture at that time, such as the curtain that
created individual study rooms in a library. The animal tails, which became the
beard of the portrait, were used as dusters. By using everyday objects, the portraits
were decoration and still-life paintings at the same time.
His
portraits were greatly admired by his contemporaries and still remain a source
of fascination today..
The "Four seasons" and the "Four elements" are among his best known paintings.
Here you can watch a short
video about Arcimboldo and his unique style of portraiture:
