On a recent trip to the National Gallery of Art, I stopped in to see the Arcimboldo exhibit, which we feature in the magazine this month. When I saw the images in print, I had been fascinated by their weirdness—the artist made faces and heads out of compilations of images of fruit, flowers, books or other items on some theme. The paintings seemed out of place, too surreal for an artist to have created in the late 1500s. But when I saw the exhibit I realized that Arcimboldo was really something of a scientist during a time when studying flora and fauna often meant illustrating them. Arcimboldo’s works include numerous studies (drawings) of plants, animals and birds. And these studies made it possible for Arcimboldo to later create his fantastic faces.

Arcimboldo was the court painter for the Holy Roman Emperors Maximilian II and Rudolph II. Maximilian’s court was full of artists and scientists, and he established zoological and botanical gardens full of rare plants and animals, including elephants and tigers. Arcimboldo was just one of many artists who studied and painted these creatures, though he was likely the only one to think of making portraits using them. Rudolph followed in his father’s footsteps—he was a patron to the astronomers Tycho de Brahe and Kepler, for example—and was even more of an eccentric. He had Europe’s most extensive “cabinet of curiosities,” full of oddities such as stuffed birds, precious stones and mummies, and it was so large he had an entire wing built to house it. Arcimboldo and his odd paintings, no doubt, fit right in.

Η συνέχεια εδώ.