Giuseppe Arcimboldo

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 ).

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’.