[PDF] Living with Art (Bb Art) by Mark Getlein in Arts-Photography

Description

Giuseppe Arcimboldo (1526 ndash; 1593) was an Italian painter best known for creating imaginative portrait heads made entirely of objects such as fruits; vegetables; flowers; fish; and books.Giuseppes father; Biagio Arcimboldo; was an artist of Milan. Like his father; Giuseppe Arcimboldo started his career as a designer for stained glass and frescoes at local cathedrals when he was 21 years old.In 1562; he became court portraitist to Ferdinand I at the Habsburg court in Vienna; and later; to Maximilian II and his son Rudolf II at the court in Prague. He was also the court decorator and costume designer. Augustus; Elector of Saxony; who visited Vienna in 1570 and 1573; saw Arcimboldos work and commissioned a copy of his "The Four Seasons" which incorporates his own monarchic symbols.Arcimboldos conventional work; on traditional religious subjects; has fallen into oblivion; but his portraits of human heads made up of vegetables; plants; fruits; sea creatures and tree roots; were greatly admired by his contemporaries and remain a source of fascination today.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. By using everyday objects; the portraits were decoration and still-life paintings at the same time. His works showed not only nature and human beings; but also how closely they were related.Arcimboldo died in Milan; where he had retired after leaving the Prague service. It was during this last phase of his career that he produced the composite portrait of Rudolph II; as well as his self-portrait as the Four Seasons. His Italian contemporaries honoured him with poetry and manuscripts celebrating his illustrious career.When the Swedish army invaded Prague in 1648; during the Thirty Years War; many of Arcimboldos paintings were taken from Rudolfs II collection.Arcimboldo is known as a 16th-century Mannerist. A transitional period from 1520 to 1590; Mannerism adopted some artistic elements from the High Renaissance and influenced other elements in the Baroque period. A Mannerist tended to show close relationships between human and nature. His works can be found in Viennas Kunsthistorisches Museum and the Habsburg Schloss Ambras in Innsbruck; the Louvre in Paris; as well as in numerous museums in Sweden. In Italy; his work is in Cremona; Brescia; and the Uffizi Gallery in Florence.