ARCIMBOLDO, GIUSEPPE

ARCIMBOLDO, GIUSEPPE. Giuseppe Arcimboldo (also spelled Arcimboldi), was an Italian artist in Milan, Italy, between 1527 or 1530 and 1593. A painter, he also designed the stained glass windows for Milan's duomo. Arcimboldo's artwork, especially famous for its fragments of landscapes, flowers, herbs, vegetables, noodles, and cookware, was fashionable during the sixteenth century. His work became especially well known throughout Europe after the Austrian Holy Roman Emperor Rudolf II exhibited Arcimboldo's paintings in the many residences of the Habsburg imperial family. In fact Arcimboldo's bizarre pieces and grotesque portraits pleased the Habsburg emperor so much that he appointed the Italian painter Habsburg court painter at Vienna and Prague and also made him a count palatine. Arcimboldo also created the illusionistic sceneries for the Habsburg court theater.

Arcimboldo's most famous paintings had contemporary allegorical meanings and were unique compositions of edibles and culinary objects placed together in such a way as to represent the contours or heads of cooks, innkeepers, fishmongers, and symbolic figures related to the world of arts and sciences. He was not prolific, but his paintings of fantastic heads and social satirical subjects were popular. Many surrealists, including the Spanish artist Salvador Dalí, claim Arcimboldo as a surrealistic ancestor.

Arcimboldo's paintings and drawings in Austria are in Vienna's Kunsthistorisches Museum, in Graz, and in Innsbruck's Habsburg Schloss Amras. In Italy his works are preserved in Cremona, in Brescia, and in Florence's Uffizi Gallery. In the United States the Wadsworth Atheneum in Hartford, Connecticut, houses some of Arcimboldo's work.

See also Art, Food in: Painting and the Visual Arts ; Italy .

Elisabeth Giacon Castleman

Arcimboldo, Giuseppe (b ?Milan, c.1527; d Milan, 11 July 1593). Milanese painter, famous for his allegorical or symbolical compositions in which he arranged objects such as fruits and vegetables into the form of the human face. He began his career as a designer of stained-glass windows for Milan Cathedral, but from 1562 to 1587 he worked successively for the Emperors Ferdinand I, Maximilian II, and Rudolf II (see Habsburg), first in Vienna and then in Prague. A typical work is Rudolf II as Vertumnus (c.1590, Skokloster Castle, near Stockholm), showing the emperor as the Roman god of orchards, his head composed of fruit, flowers, and so on. Arcimboldo returned to Milan in 1587. His paintings, though much imitated, were generally regarded merely as curiosities until the Surrealists revived interest in ‘visual punning’.

Arcimboldo, Giuseppe (1527–93). Milanese painter, famous for his allegorical or symbolical compositions in which he arranged objects such as fruits and vegetables into the form of the human face. He began his career as a designer of stained-glass windows for Milan Cathedral, but from 1562 to 1587 he worked successively for the emperors Ferdinand I, Maximilian II, and Rudolf II (see Habsburg), first in Vienna and then in Prague. A typical work is Rudolf II as Vertumnus (c.1590, Skoklosters Castle, Sweden), showing the emperor as the Roman god of orchards, his head composed of fruit, flowers, and so on. Arcimboldo returned to Milan in 1587. His paintings, though much imitated, were generally regarded merely as curiosities until the Surrealists revived interest in ‘visual punning’.

Giuseppe Arcimboldo , 1527-93, Italian painter. The son of an artist, he began as a traditional portrait painter. Later, as court painter to Hapsburg kings Maximilian II and Rudolf II, Arcimboldo became celebrated for his grotesque, realistically rendered, symbolic portraits constructed from fruits, vegetables, animals, fishes, and the like, works that reflected mannerism 's taste for the strange and exotic. His paintings are included in major museum collections, e.g. Winter (1563) in the Vienna Kunsthistorische Museum. Arcimboldo's fanciful mannerist works were frequently imitated and found particular favor among the surrealists (see surrealism ).