Rhapsody Blues

18. Giuseppe Arcimboldo

About it:

You've seen art right? Have you ever seen a pun related art? Giuseppe Arcimboldo was an artist that incorporated puns into his art. He drew people, but not drawing their eyes, nose, ears and limbs. What? He used daily objects to mold them as humans. (See picture on the right.) He belonged in the Baroque time period. The Baroque time period was a time when artists used exaggerated motion to easily interpret the details. This is a research paper.

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Giuseppe Arcimboldo

Giuseppe Arcimboldo was a well-known artist of the Baroque era. He was born into a large family of four brothers and sisters, on the year 1527 at Milan, Italy. The exact date of his birth and his early life still remains as an unsolved mystery. But we do know that he was born into a family of rich archbishops, jurists and artists. His father, Biagio Arcimboldo, worked at the Milan Cathedral making stained glass windows. Giuseppe Arcimboldo received his early influence when he was an apprentice making stained glass windows and was exposed to a number of optical illusions in his paintings. Then Arcimboldo got inspired to paint artwork like that. He learned to paint excellently because he was a student of Leonardo Da Vinci. In the year 1549 at the age 22, he made his first debut as an artist. His first job was at the Milan Cathedral making stained glass windows with his father. Even after his father’s death, he continued to work at the cathedral until the year 1558. During his lifetime, he was given a position in court as an artist. Soon, he was one of the most famous court painters of the Habsburg rulers: Maximillien II and Rudolf II. He died on July 11, 1593 in Milan, at age 66 because of  cancer. Although his paintings were well-known, he was soon forgotten after his death.

He began his career as a cartoonist and painted stained glass windows and frescoes at local cathedrals. He became a court portraitist to Ferdinand I at Habsburg Court. Later in his career, he began to paint scenery for the court theatre and developed to be an expert for drawing illusionistic trickery. Eventually, he was extremely skillful for drawing imagery.

Arcimboldo was also a royal painter who painted mannerist pieces of artwork. He is known for almost all of his work. His paintings often had metaphorical meanings, puns, and jokes that were appreciated by people later in his generation but had lost interest upon audiences later in history. He is partially known for one of his painting called, The Librarian.The Librarian (see figure 1) is completely formed from books of all sizes. For example, his body is made of books carefully stacked on top of each other. Arcimboldo painted the piece of artwork by only showing the librarian’s nose as the binding of the book. Arcimboldo created the librarian’s fingers by 5 bookmarks hanging from two books that are part of his body. He simply arranged the book to represent his arm with many bookmarks hanging from it, which is depicting his fingers. Also, another painting that I find fascinating is his painting called, Portrait With Vegetables (See figure 2). On the man’s head is a black bowl while his cheeks are giant onions. His lips are thinly sliced tomatoes pieces and his facial hair is made out of carrots and leaves. But, if you flip the painting upside-down, you will find many vegetables (which is mainly his face) in a bowl. But his most famous masterpiece is called, TheFourSeasons. The Four Seasons was given by Maximillien II as a gift to Augustus I, Elector of Saxony. His masterpiece of the The Four Seasons is separated into four different paintings: Summer, Winter, Autumn, and Spring. His painting, Spring, (See figure 3) has many symbolic features. The flowers symbolize that all earthly achievements--even the most beautiful flower--must wither and die. The woman’s hair or perhaps her hat is made up of a variety of flowers. The flowers are more delicately painted than the flowers on the enclosing frame surrounding the woman. The shoulder of the woman is made up of various vegetables. They have less reverberation than the flowers.  She is holding an Iris which shows Earth’s renewal after a harsh winter. Her shoulders are made of various vegetables which represents nature’s abundance rather than specific qualities. The entire painting symbolizes that Spring is a season when all plants bloom and eventually wither and die. He has used oil paints on canvas for all his artwork. He mostly focused painting on canvas but he did do his most famous masterpiece as a sculpture. His well-known masterpiece, The Four Seasons, are sculpted into real life based on his artwork. When you stand in front of it, you usually experience two kinds of feelings: Fascination or being frightened. Especially Winter, because Arcimboldo has made the man look very grouchy. But if you stood in front of Summer or Spring, you would probably stand there in amazement and examine the details.

I think that Arcimboldo’s style and design of his artwork is fascinating. I like how he is always steadily painting the specific details of a certain fruit or vegetable, such as his painting, Spring or The Librarian. In Spring, after he finishes the drawing of the flowers, it seems to me as if it would come to life. In The Librarian, Giuseppe Arcimboldo carefully paints the pages of each book and the bookmarks that are inside the pages of the book. Also, in all of his artwork, his paintings are well thought out because in The Librarian, the nose of the librarian is the binding of the book or the hair is just simply a book that has been left open and all the pages are scattered. Finally, he can arrange the fruits or vegetables to make it resemble a man or a woman. Although some may not like his artwork, his artwork has optical illusions within them.

The artwork that I’ve created to go along with my paper is called, Afro Circus. The man that I depicted has puffy pink and blue cotton candy as his hair. The bananas are representing his ears. The wheat are his eyebrows while the edamames are his eyelids. His eyes are purple because they are grapes. Then his cheeks are rosy red because they are apples and there is a “tear” which in reality is a leaf of the apple. The man’s nose is made from a green pear. He may appear to have horrible hygiene because his teeth are yellow which represents ears of corn. His lips are as red as a girl that put on lipstick because it is the skin of a bright red apple. His mustache are two carrots placed in a way that the two tips are facing towards each other. He has an apple core that represents his head while the collar of his shirt is made from one pea in a pod. His arms are formed out of two separate Milk Chocolate Hershey Bars. His shirt is made from two oranges, McDonalds fries, a hamburger, cherries, two radishes, three distinctive fish, and two vines of grapes. It is related to Arcimboldo’s type of artwork because his paintings include symbols and puns from his humor. I made this painting by using oil pastels on a sheet of construction paper, while Giuseppe used oil paints on canvas. My artwork, Afro Circus shows how it is related to the type of artwork that Giuseppe Arcimboldo made during his lifetime.

Although Arcimboldo is a famous painter, he had very few interesting facts. Even though people nowadays call him by “Giuseppe Arcimboldo” he was also known as Joseph or Josephus because that was how he signed some of his artwork. Most people recognize him as an artist. During his lifetime, he was a first class engineer and scientist but didn’t make any well-known discoveries that were recorded. His friends made him known as the man with the “sharpest intelligence” from his artwork which included puns, jokes and illusions. His artworks fit with the other artworks of the 16th century. Finally, his work were mainly favored among many Surrealist painters, including Salvador Dali.   

Giuseppe Arcimboldo was a well-known Italian painter of the 16th century. He was best known for creating imaginative portraits using nature made objects such as animals, fruits, vegetables, flowers and books. He painted the representations of those objects on canvas by arranging them in a way to form a recognizable likeness of a human being. I have enjoyed researching and learning more about the artist, Giuseppe Arcimboldo.

 Sources Used

http://www.giuseppe-arcimboldo.org/

http://www.thefamouspeople.com/profiles/giuseppe-arcimboldo-369.php

http://www.all-art.org/early_renaissance/arcimboldo01biography.html

http://rhetoricaldevice.com/articles/GiuseppeArcimboldo.html

http://www.abcgallery.com/A/arcimboldo/arcimboldobio.html

http://www.smithsonianmag.com/arts-culture/Arcimboldos-Feast-for-the-Eyes.html

http://www.all-art.org/early_renaissance/arcimboldo04.html

http://www.britannica.com/EBchecked/topic/33078/Giuseppe-Arcimboldo

(Book) Great Paintings: The World’s Masterpieces Explored and Explained

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