Πέμπτη 16 Ιανουαρίου 2014

A unique and weird painter

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:






Δεν υπάρχουν σχόλια:

Δημοσίευση σχολίου