The activity books for adults now in vogue could have a seam in Arcimboldo (Milan, 1527-1593). How many vegetables and fruits are we able to identify in the Summer of him (1563), which appears on this page? We have counted thirty, and that with the help of several books dedicated to the unclassifiable artist and the catalogs of a couple of museums, but we are still missing pieces, for example, that pepper-turnip-beet-parsnip between numbers 12 and 13 that doesn't quite fit with any of those vegetables. Any ideas? And of course Arcimboldo was not mistaken: in addition to being a painter he was a botanist, one of the best of the 16th century in central Europe.
It was there, at the court of Maximilian II, in Vienna, where he produced the series of teste grotteschee di carattere inspired by Leonardo da Vinci that were so successful with the emperor, to the point that Arcimboldo ended up copying them several times so that the sovereign could offer them as a gift to other princes. A work that he continued for Rudolf II, son of the previous and well-known necromancer of his time, installed in Prague with his court. Was it because of this tendency to the strange that Arcimboldo was sponsored, that when he was appointed court painter in Vienna he had hardly stood out among the other painters?
The four seasons – Spring, Summer, Autumn and Winter –, the four elements – Air, Fire, Earth and Water –, with which the previous ones were paired, portraits such as the Bookseller, the Floras, and a few others that share characteristics, are formed by an accumulation/superposition of real elements, animals, flowers, objects, which seen from a certain distance make up a human bust, sometimes even reversible: a basket with fruit, a saucepan with vegetables or a plate with a suckling pig and other meats They turn into human heads when turned upside down.
In the Spring, one of his most studied paintings from the point of view of natural sciences, 80 different types of flowers typical of that season have been counted, in the Water another 62 species of fish, shellfish and other marine beings. Arcimboldo constructed his testes compostes in such a way that they could be read as a tribute to the Habsburg dynasty, but also in strict accordance with the scientific reality of the time; for Summer he chose vegetables and fruits that ripen in those months and included two, corn and aubergines, which came from America and to which the artist had access thanks to the scholar/collector's desire of the emperor, who had specimens brought from Africa, Asia or America of the new species in a century full of discoveries and even kept the pictures in his Wunderkammer or cabinet of wonders.
Even its symbolism was seriously studied: spring is symbolized by a young woman, while winter is represented by the figure of a withered and dry old man, summer is a man (for some scholars it is a woman) in the fullness of its strength and fall also by a man, of what we would now call the third age.
This Summer is one of the two surviving paintings from the first series of the Seasons that Arcimboldo painted (later he would produce at least two more, to give them, among others, to Philip II of Spain, in the Royal Academy of San Fernando there is a Spring ) and of the few signed and dated by the artist. The Seasons symbolized the eternal character of the Habsburgs, the figure that appeared in them in profile linked Maximilian with the Roman emperors. Quite regal for his obvious games and visual works to be received at court with such good humor.
With information from THOMAS DACOSTA KAUFMANN, ‘arcball: visual jokes, natural history, and still life painting’ and ‘THE ARCOBAL EFFECT’. also denVER art MUSEUM and KUNSTHISTORISCHES MUSEUM, VIENNA.
