Focus of the week : Arcimboldo’s portraits (1527–1593)
Painting, similarly to photography, is best appreciated at different levels of perspectives. How does it translate for your own pictures?
*This week we chose to focus on a famous late Renaissance Italian painter: Giuseppe Arcimboldo, mainly known for its vegetable, fruits, flowers head portraits. *
Arcimboldo, a modern painter
Arcimboldo is known as a 16th-century Mannerist which was quite modern at this time. A Mannerist tended to show close relationships between human and nature while Rennaissance purpose was to imitate the nature skillfully.
Arcimboldo’s curious portraits were greatly admired by his contemporaries and remain a source of fascination today. At first sight, head portraits, but go closer and discover that those people are made of vegetables, fruits, plants and even animals. He closely worked for the Habsburg royal family as court painter. His masterpiece is without any doubt Vertumne (1590), the portrait of Rudolf II, in which you can see the power of the emperor.
Vegetables from all seasons are depicted which represents not only the superiority and the reign of the emperor on his subjects but also on nature itself; which is quite smart and modern.
Legacy
After the deaths of Arcimboldo, the heritage of the artist was quickly forgotten, and many of his works were lost…
The allegorical series of Arcimboldo, like the Four Seasons (1569) were rediscovered in the XXth century by Surrealist artists such as Salvador Dali or Max Ernst that were inspired by the painter’s work.
Today we still admire the imagination of the painter in representing so many details and creating such intelligent head portraits.
In The Summer (1569), the farmer portrait was composed of only various summer fruits, vegetables, and plants. From the hat to the neck, every part of the painting, even the lips, and nose, was composed of fruits and vegetables, while the body consisted of corn, representing the abundance of the harvest during the reign of Hapsburgs.
Ps: did you see the signature of the painter on some of these portraits?
What about you? Do you think that being able to zoom on your own pictures to discover different perspectives brings value to your photos?
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Originally published at mag.prodibi.com on January 20, 2017.
