425 years ago – Giuseppe Arcimboldo



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"The museum of his imperial majesty Maximilian II is worthy of an extremely excellent and lasting memory.To magnify him and nobilize him, he called the great painter Giuseppe Arcimboldo to describe it with the greatness of his talent and above all with his capricious ideas, in which he is unique in the world, enrich himself enrich. "

wrote Gian Paolo Lomazzo 1590 about his friend Giuseppe Arcimboldo, who served as emperor Maximilian II and then Rudolf II as a court painter. Born in Milan in 1527, he studied in his father's studio. But how Arcimboldo reached the court of the German emperor in Vienna is not known. Perhaps because of his "capricious ideas" to which Lomazzo refers. This meant his famous series of images, heads shaped from the forms of various fruits and vegetables, plant or animal species. The art historian Andreas Beyer on the so-called composite images of Arcimboldo.

"So, first of all, rest on empiricism, which means studying nature in a very special way, if one thinks of the composite heads plants, flora, but also the fauna very meticulously, in detail in the picture, and then in a composite painting again to find a new unique figure. "

Emblem, still life and figure in a

peaches like cheeks, a cucumber as a nose, a cherry as an eye.A split pea pod becomes a row of teeth, a corncob at l 39; The "Summer" image is made of fruits that produce the season, so it's emblematic, still life and figure in one, but what does it mean? And why did Maximilian II he hung these eccentric images in his private rooms?

"We must not forget that it is a time, this time, which we also call Mannerism, the end of the Renaissance, in which the very enigmatic Mystery is something that can also articulate a claim of domination. "The leader holds the secret."

 The visitor of the museum pbades a painting of Arcimboldo (imago) Peaches as cheeks, a cucumber as a nose, a cherry as an eye – or just flowers: The incursions capricious Arcimboldo (imago)

The emperor exaggerated his claim to power Arcimboldo also designed parades that took place on special occasions such as weddings or the restoration of peace, the design of imaginative wagons, costumes and decorations, leaving dragons, unicorns and goddesses walking. The staging of the miraculous seed had to clear up the supernatural power of the emperor. Arcimboldo was part of a sort of public relations machine, which he obviously liked. Thus, he placed Kaiser Rudolf II in a composite image as Vertumnus, God of Change and Fertility

"In the case of the Vertumnu, we can badume that Rodolph II appears as God of eternal fruitfulness. flowers of all the plants of the Hapsburg countries, so that this figure adds up, the appearance, ie the head, the portrait, boils down to the sum of the plants of the The flourishing landscapes of the Habsburgs. "

Even though Arcimboldo had reached the center of power, his fame was not guaranteed, and his contemporaries Vasari and Karel van Mander did not mention it in their biographies. After his liberation from court service in 1587, the aging painter in Milan gathered disciples like Lomazzo around him.Six years later, on July 11, 1593, Giuseppe Arcimboldo dies in his hometown. in the forgetfulness and has not been rediscovered only by the surrealists in the 1930s.

"I believe that since then he has remained an indispensable figure in the history of European art … There were always exhibitions on Arcimboldo .. There are also paintings that are reversed, and that still show something else, as if you see them in the other direction, for which he is famous, because he is ingenious , in the invention say that he is not a painter in the sense of an incomparable brush, a brushstroke, … he is a painter of spiritual combination. "

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