Whimsical Allegorical Heads

Thursday Challenge: "SOMETHING DIFFERENT" (Unusual, Strange, Rare, Different, One of a Kind, Weird,...)

Giuseppe Arcimboldo, follower of Italian, c. 1527-1593, active in Milan, Prague, and Vienna.

An Allegorical Head Representing Summer,
c. 1600-1620
Oil on canvas

Museum purchase, 1954, SN 673

An Allegorical Head Representing Autumn
c. 1600-1620
Oil on canvas

Museum Purchase, 1954, SN 672

The 16th-century Milanese artist, Giuseppe Arcimboldo, spent most of his career in Vienna and Prague. It was there that Arcimboldo first imagined his trademark composite images. Using fruits, vegetables, and other objects, the artist created portraits, usually of fictional subjects. These whimsical paintings became a popular amusement at the Bohemian court, and this method of composing a face of vegetables and other objects spread throughout Europe. This work and its pendant, Summer, are copies after the original paintings by Arcimboldo.

Taken at The John and Mable Ringling Museum of Art in Sarasota, FL. 29.Sep.2010.


“Every artist dips his brush in his own soul,
and paints his own nature into his pictures.”
~Henry Ward Beecher

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