Arcimboldo Giuseppe: paintings and fictions

Italian artist Arcimboldo Giuseppe (1528-1593), re-opened to the general public only in 1885, is considered a forgotten genius of the Renaissance. He is compared to Leonardo da Vinci. The circle of interests of both was incredibly wide: they were encyclopedists, both left descendants masterpieces of painting and both were forgotten by descendants. About Da Vinci remembered much earlier. There are other parallels - both geniuses of recognition and money achieved by themselves and in life. You can add that their fathers were artists.

The darling of fate

Arcimboldo Giuseppe, whose paintings aroused the interest of royalty, for a long time (about 25 years) was a court painter of the Habsburgs. With Rudolph II, he was bound by personal friendship. Engineer, naturalist, astrologer, organizer of the Kunstkamera, he personally engaged in replenishing the royal collections. The high honor rendered to him by the court is evidenced by the fact that in 1592 Giuseppe Archibaldo was granted a noble title with the right to his own coat of arms and the position of the palatine, ruling the royal palace in the absence of the master.

First among equals

Only three artists in the Holy Roman Empire were awarded this rank - Vercelli Sodom, Vecellio Titian and Arcimboldo Giuseppe. Paintings during his lifetime caused controversy. Someone said that this is the fruit of his sick imagination, inspired by the Kunstkammer, someone liked the paintings and the artist was considered an experimenter. In any case, his late canvases represented something new, completely unfamiliar. Contemporaries included him, like Sodom, to the Mannerist. What it is? This literary and artistic direction of the late Renaissance, characterized by the loss of high ideals of the Renaissance. There is no harmony between the spiritual and bodily nature of man. Mannerism is inherent pretentiousness.

Unique heritage

The artist drew canvases in the classical style, but many of the works were lost, there were preserved three painted on all the canons of painting - with the image of the adoring magi, the portrait of the princess and the family portrait of the first patron of the artist Maximilian II. It's also bad that Arcimboldo Giuseppe, whose paintings are now counted in the amount of 20 pieces, did not leave after his departure any personal testimonies about himself or his canvases. Interest to him broke out after the publication of a monograph by art critic K. Kasati in 1885.

The uniqueness of each picture

Among the small heritage, the mysterious and unique breast portraits drew attention to themselves. People on them were sort of collected from various things, which is why they are often called the bacchanalia of nature. But the fact is that there are no random objects on the canvases. The portrait of the librarian consists only of the things that are available in the reading room. Cloth enters the cycle of "Professions". There are three more pictures-a flip-flop, the cycle "Four Elements", "Seasons" and paintings of the "Seasons" that have survived in the greatest amount in all of Arcimboldo Giuseppe's heritage, all the seasons being painted in several versions. The largest number of paintings called "Spring". These works are so unusual that we can fully explain the interest that flared up to them.

Deserved demand

What only the definitions did not deserve these paintings, with which they were not compared. In the first half of the XX century, in 1920 arose in painting such as surrealism, depicting a deformed reality, original dreams in reality. Arcimboldo began to be considered the forerunner of this current. Although in his portraits there is more natural philosophy than dreams, and the forerunner of surrealism was more likely Hieronymus Bosch - that's who deformed reality and dreams! Arcimboldo Giuseppe, whose paintings are simply executed in a very interesting manner, is the founder of a direction not yet indicated. His style acquires followers and supporters more and more. As noted above, portraits are made up of items that are characteristic of the declared topic - only the dates in nature at that time correspond to each season of the year. And if the picture is called a "flip-flop", then the portraits are visible from one side and the other. Everything is chosen clearly and in accordance with each other. Very original and wonderful master!