Guiseppe Arcimboldo was born around 1530 in Milan and, although little is known about his youth, let alone his birth, we do know that the age of 22, he received his first fees as an artist, working along with his father on decorating the Milan Cathedral. In 1551, he painted the five coats of arms that were given to the Cathedral by the king of Bohemia, Ferdinand I. He also executed drawings for the stained glass windows in that Cathedral as well as sketches for tapestries in the Como Cathedral.
In 1562, Ferdinand I became the emperor of Bohemia, and Arcimboldo was asked by him to come to Vienna and serve as the court portraitist and copyist. The artist also served in the Hapsburg court in Vienna and Prague under Maximilian II and Rudolf II, but none of the portrait work that survives from these reigns can be attributed to Arcimboldo with any degree of certainty.
But a key to what became Arcimboldo's famous style perhaps lies in the fact that he arranged the Wunderkammern - the collection of art and curiosities - for Maximilian II and Rudolf II. These collections included objects from all over the world that were chosen for their unusual or exotic appearence, and it is thought that from arranging these items, Arcimblodo arrived at the idea of the "composite head" - paintings where human heads were composed of onjects like vegetables, flowers or animals, in a kind of mosiac. Arcimboldo composed intricate heads based on the four seasons in 1563 - "Spring" was a woman's head composed of flowers, "Summer" and "Autumn" were men's heads compsed of vegetables, "Winter" a man's head composed of trees. He also executed paintings for the four elements, "Water" being a head carefully constructed of fish and sea life.
Arcimblodo also executed "The Librarian," a head composed of books in 1562, "The Jurist" (a head made of chickens in 1566), "The Cook" (a head made of cooked meats) and the Gardener, a still-life of vegetables that, when inverted, make up a man's head.
But Arcimblodo's most famous work may be "Vertumnus," which is a portrait of Rudolf II composed entirely of fruits and vegetables that he completed in around 1590. Arcimboldo dies in 1593 in his native Milan.
On the Net, check out an excellent site that features much of the work discussed here at http://filament.illumin.co.uk/svank/biog... .
-Nick Burton
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