Giuseppe Arcimboldo: Art as Allegory by Sharon Himes

Giuseppe Arcimboldo of Milan (1527-93) created still life paintings that were also portraits. The composition of fruit or tables was arranged into human forms. The cycle of Four Seasons paintings he repeated many times with each season depicted as a person.

These paintings were called ‘fantasy’ or ‘invention’ paintings and were popular at the Imperial court at Vienna and Prague. The artist created his representation of a season by combining individual, and realistically depicted fruits or flowers in an unusual way.

In the sixteenth and seventeenth century there was much attention to scientific and religious theory and the flowers and fruits in the paintings are sometimes arranged to reflect the current ideas.

Still life paintings of the period often are meant to express a moral lesson. The fruit or plants are not painted as perfect specimens. The fruit often have brown spots or mold and the flowers are sometimes shown wilted or full of insects. This was meant to remind the viewer that life is short and man had best attend to the state of his soul.

Many artists in Northern Europe painted still life paintings in the sixteenth and seventeenth century but few manipulated the subjects the way Giuseppe Arcimboldo did. A few generations later the art was dismissed as ‘grotesque’ and in bad taste. The peculiar paintings were generally forgotten until the Surrealists rediscovered the visual pun in the twentieth century.