Description
Giuseppe Arcimboldo – Adam
This painting shows an old bearded man in full profile, turned to the left. Step close and it becomes clear what he is made of: his forehead, cheek, hair and beard are not skin and hair at all but a crowd of small naked infant bodies, climbing over one another and fitting knees, backs and shoulders together into a face.
That double reading is the whole point of the work. Near to, the head falls apart into separate limbs; two paces back, it closes again into a single face looking straight ahead. A painting by Arcimboldo never settles on either reading, and keeps moving between them for as long as you look.
The one part of the head that is genuinely human and whole is the eye. It is dark, alert and level, and it is what holds everything else together: however restless the material around it, the gaze stays still.
In his raised hand the man holds a rolled sheet, pale against the left edge, with a few letters written near its top that are now barely legible. Below lies an open book with writing on the page, and a second hand resting on it. The scroll and the book are the only objects in the scene, and both speak of reading and study.
The colour is restrained. The ground is close to black and gives no depth, and out of it come the warm pink flesh of the composite head and a deep red garment with a white collar open at the neck. A dense web of cracks runs across the whole surface, the age of the original, kept as part of the image in our version.
- Technique: a hand-painted oil painting reproduction – painted by hand in oil on canvas, stroke by stroke and to order, and never reproduced by machine. The ridge of the paint and the mark of the brush stay visible close up, and no two copies are ever quite identical.
- Format: upright. The scene is dark and concentrated, so it sits well in a study, a library, an office or a hallway, somewhere it can be looked at from close range.
- Sizes: from 36 x 43 cm to 120 x 150 cm, framed or unframed; custom measurements on request.
- Difficulty: the head is the demanding passage, where each small body must stay readable without breaking the face apart.
More of the artist’s work can be found in the Giuseppe Arcimboldo gallery, and we write about his life and painting on the Arcimboldo blog.
An old man in profile holds a raised scroll, an open book below him. Up close it becomes clear what he is made of: the brow, the hair and the beard are not skin but small infant bodies, locked one into the next. From a distance a serious reader’s face remains. There is no verifiable record of who painted it or where it is, so we claim neither.
Technique: oils on canvas, painted by hand; the oil painting reproduction is made to order.
