Scientist of the Day - Giuseppe Arcimboldo
Water (from the Four Elements series), by Giuseppe Arcimboldo, 1566, Kunsthistorisches Museum, Vienna (wga.hu)
Giuseppe Arcimboldo, an Italian painter, died July 11, 1593, at age 66. He was born in Milan on Apr. 5, 1527. Arcimboldo was 35 years old when he entered the service of Holy Roman Emperor Ferdinand I in Vienna, and he continued in the employ of the Habsburgs who succeeded him, Maximillian II and Rudolf II, both of whom kept court in Prague. As a court painter, Arcimboldo was expected to paint portraits of the imperial family, and he did so. Few of those survive, of which the most pleasing is a family portrait of Ferdinand II and his wife and children, which you can see here.
Self-portrait of Giuseppe Arcimboldo, wash and ink on paper, 1587, Palazzo Rosso, Genoa (wga.hu)
Arcimboldo is much better known for his allegorical portraits of the four seasons and four elements, and for his composite portraits of real people built up from elements drawn from nature. The most acclaimed exemplar of Arcimboldean art is surely his painting called Vertumnus, a portrait of Emperor Rudolf II, where his face and upper body is wrought from fruits, seeds, nuts, gourds, and melons (third image). It is a virtuoso work, and the fact that it has recently been cleaned makes it even more striking. The painting was looted by the Swedish in the Thirty-Years War and can be seen in Skokloster Castle outside Stockholm.
Vertumnus (portrait of Rudolph II), oil on panel, 1591 Skokloster Castle, Bålsta (Stockholm) (wga.hu)
In his allegories of the seasons and elements, Arcimboldo composed his faces out of specimens appropriate for each season or each element. We show here
Water (first image), Earth (fourth image), and Winter (fifth image), each of which is delightful. Some diligent art historian determined that there are 62 distinct species of marine animals that can be identified in Water.
Earth (from the Four Elements series), by Giuseppe Arcimboldo, 1566, private collection (wga.hu)
The original series of allegories of seasons and elements are in Vienna, but Arcimboldo made copies and variations throughout his life, so one can find versions in other museums, including at least two in the United States.
Blackbuck, watercolour and gouache, by Giuseppe Arcimboldo, 1570, Austrian National Library, Vienna (wga.hu)
Arcimboldo's paintings used to be described as bizarrie and capricci, as early examples of Mannerist art, with its fascination for the grotesque. No one paid them any attention for centuries after his death, and they they were rediscovered in the early 20th century by the likes of Salvador Dali, who saw in Arcimboldo a fellow surrealist, welcoming him to the land of melting watches.
Winter (from the Four Seasons series), oil on canvas, ca 1572, by Giuseppe Arcimboldo, The Menil Collection, Houston (wga.hu)
Modern interpretations of Arcimboldo look deeper. Recent scholars have pointed out that the elements of his allegorical heads are quite naturalistic, each stag or sunfish or daffodil being exquisitely drawn from specimens derived from nature. Many of Arcimboldo's preliminary drawings survive (sixth image), so we can see how good he was at sketching natural objects, and how interested he was in doing so. You may call them bizarre, but his paintings are in fact firmly grounded in nature.
The Vegetable Gardener, oil on wood, by Giuseppe Arcimboldo, 1587-90, Museo Civico "Ala Ponzone", Cremona (wga.hu)
In his devotion to naturalism, Arcimboldo was following in a tradition established by Albrecht Dürer. But Arcimboldo used naturalism differently. He employed it to examine the boundaries between the natural and the artificial. This was a topic of vigorous discussion at late Renaissance courts, where rulers like Rudolf II commonly amassed collections of both natural and crafted objects in their cabinets of curiosity, and there was regular debate about whether art could ever surpass nature. Arcimboldo in a sense was out to blur the lines, using natural objects to fashion works of art that were not at all natural. Or were they? Whatever his paintings were, they were far from being mere caprices. Except perhaps for his few ventures into convertible art, such as the Vegetable Gardener (seventh image), which viewed the way we show it, is a portrait like Vertumnus. But flip it over, and it is a still-life. You can see it flipped here. Each plant, however, whichever way you look at it, is quite accurately drawn, as by now we would expect of Arcimboldo.
The Librarian, oil on canvas, by Giuseppe Arcimboldo, 1566, Skokloster Castle, Bålsta (Stockholm) (wga.hu)
Our last Arcimboldo painting pays no homage to naturalism, but we have to include it, for it has always been called The Librarian, and we are a library. Recent consensus is that it depicts a book collector, not a librarian, and that it pokes fun at those who collect books but do not read them. This painting is also at Skokloster Castle, and I saw it and Vertumnus many years ago when I attended a conference in Uppsala, and we spent a morning at Skokloster. I confess I was more impressed by the library there than the art collection. The library was on the top floor, and it had never been heated, and the 400-year-old vellum bindings looked like they had been made yesterday. Keep your books cold and dry, and they will last a long time. Perhaps that is the message of Arcimboldo's Librarian.
William B. Ashworth, Jr., Consultant for the History of Science, Linda Hall Library and Associate Professor emeritus, Department of History, University of Missouri-Kansas City. Comments or corrections are welcome; please direct to ashworthw@umkc.edu.
