Artikons.com

A
rcimboldo was born in Milan in 1527, the son of Biagio, a painter who did work for the office of the Fabbrica in the Duomo. [1]Arcimboldo was commissioned to do stained glass window designs beginning in 1549, including the Stories of St. Catherine of Alexandria vitrage at the Duomo. In 1556 he worked with Giuseppe Meda on frescoes for the Cathedral of Monza. In 1558, he drew the cartoon for a large tapestry of the Dormition of the Virgin Mary, which hangs in the Como Cathedral until today.[2]

Although he won support from John Ruskin, criticism of his paintings caused him to withdraw from public exhibitions and turn to watercolours, which could be sold privately.

In 1861, Rossetti published The Early Italian Poets, a set of English translations of Italian poetry including Dante Alighieri’s La Vita Nuova. These, and Sir Thomas Malory’s Morte d’Arthur, inspired his art in the 1850s. His visions of Arthurian romance and medieval design also inspired his new friends of this time, William Morris and Edward Burne-Jones. Rossetti also typically wrote sonnets for his pictures, such as “Astarte Syraica”. As a designer, he worked with William Morris to produce images for stained glass and other decorative devices.

“Winter” can be dated to 1563, the year that can be read on the matching rendition of “Summer.” Intended to convey alacrity, “Summer” is every bit as terrifying as “Winter.” The gherkin that stands for a human nose, the pear that is a chin and the shiny red cherries rendering the eye are even more disturbing than the desiccated bits of wood in “Winter.” Was it solely the artist’s inclination that drove him into the borderlands of artistic insanity? Or could this have been prompted by superior authority? A capital M, the initial of Emperor Maximilian II; and lighters, which were the symbols of the Order of the Golden Fleece and are woven into the pattern of the straw tunic worn by this apparition from the Nether World, certainly prove that the genre met with the emperor’s full approval.

The bizarre works of Arcimboldo, especially his multiple images, were rediscovered in the early 20th century by Surrealist artists like Salvador Dalí. The “The Arcimboldo Effect” exhibition at the Palazzo Grassi in Venice (1987) included numerous ‘double meaning’ paintings. Arcimboldo’s influence can also be seen in the work of Shigeo Fukuda, István Orosz, Octavio Ocampo, and Sandro del Prete, as well as the films of Jan Svankmajer.