(Written by Nathanael Roesch, History of Art Graduate Student)
Making food his subject, or perhaps more accurately, making his subjects
out of the raw ingredients that might have otherwise contributed to an
elaborate feast, Giuseppe Arcimboldo in the 16th century created a
series of humorous and engaging portraits at the court of the Austrian
Habsburgs. Alternately seen as a pile of precariously stacked,
naturalistically painted fruits and vegetables or as an inventive and
playful portrait, these so-called “composite heads” have received not
only the encomiums of his imperial patrons but the admiration of modern
viewers, including the accolades of the Surrealists in the first half of
the 20th century and a devoted study by the French theorist Roland
Barthes in the second.
When creating a work such as Summer
(1563), from his portrait series of the four seasons, Arcimboldo relied
entirely on the produce and vegetation associated with that season to
personify his sitter—thus, the figure has a pickle for a nose, a cherry
for an eye, and a pod of peas for teeth. In the case of Water (1566),
from the artist’s series of the four elements, Arcimboldo humorously
painted an arrangement of 62 different species of marine life that, when
seen from a distance, cohere into a what can only be described as a
rather unflattering portrait of a Renaissance lady. Never simply a
grouping of plant or animal life and yet never completely mistaken for
the portrait of an actual sitter, Arcimboldo’s composite head portraits
confront viewers with a visual game, employing foodstuffs as visual
metaphors that, to this day, entice and intrigue viewers hungry for an
explanation of their meaning.
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WINTER
WATER