GIUSEPPE ARCIMBOLDO'S YOUTH

Giuseppe Arcimboldo was born in Milan in the year 1527. Arcimboldo was part of a rich and important family, including a number of archbishops. His career started in the glass workshops of Milan Cathedral.


GIUSEPPES ARCIMBOLDO AS AN ARTIST

From 1562 on, Giuseppe Arcimboldo started working at the Hapsburg imperial court of Ferdinand I. It was here that Arcimboldo created the paintings that he is so well known for. Almost immediately his original and grotesque fantasy was unleashed. He invented a portrait type consisting of painted animals, flowers, fruit, and objects composed to form a human likeness. Some are satiric portraits of court personages, and others are allegorical personifications.

Arcimboldo's style has been so often imitated over the centuries that it is sometimes difficult to make exact attributions. He has been seen by some as the forerunner of Surrealism in the 20th century, but, more to the point, he should be seen in his own context at the end of the Renaissance. This was a time when people (collectors and scientists alike) were beginning to pay more attention to nature. Arcimboldo really created the fantastic image of the court in Prague, creating costumes, set designs, and decorations. Emperor Rudolf II set him the task of researching and buying works of art and natural curiosities, as well as giving him countless commissions for paintings. In 1587 Arcimboldo went back to Milan but stayed in contact with the Emperor. Towards the end of his life, he sent the Emperor the idiosyncratic portrait of him in the guise of the Greek god Vertemnus.


GIUSEPPE ARCIMBOLDO'S DEATH

Giuseppe Arcimboldo died July 11, 1593 in Milan. Although Giuseppe Arcimboldo was extremely famous during his lifetime, he was soon forgotten after his death. We do not know why people ever lost interest in his art. Perhaps he was misunderstood by the generations that followed. The interest to his abstruse and fantastic pictures, of which we only have a very few originals, nowadays, revived only at the end of the 19th century. Apart from the fantastic pictures, he probably painted quite a few more traditional ones. But many of these, too, seem to have disappeared.