Description
Giuseppe Arcimboldo – Air
| Year of creation: | ok 1566 |
| Original size: | 75 cm x 56 cm |
| Painting style: | Mannerism |
| Original technique: | Oil on canvas |
| Located: | Private collection, Basel, Switzerland |
In oil on canvas Air, the author painted a large number of birds, most of which only the head can be distinguished. A more attentive observer can make out an open duck’s beak in the painting, which represents the eyelids of the person portrayed. In this painting, the Habsburg dynasty is represented by an eagle and a peacock, which Arcimboldo placed in the very foreground of the oil on canvas.
The Four Elements
This painting belongs to a cycle. All four are available here:
- Giuseppe Arcimboldo – Air
- Giuseppe Arcimboldo – Fire
- Giuseppe Arcimboldo – Earth
- Giuseppe Arcimboldo – Water
As a matched group of four there is a single shared size today: 30 × 40 cm. Larger sizes exist for individual paintings, but not across all four at once.
More on both cycles as a wall group: Arcimboldo’s Four Seasons and Four Elements as a wall group
Nearly every bird here is reduced to a head and a beak, packed against its neighbour so that the hair reads as plumage. A peacock’s fan carries the chest; a parrot sits where the ear should be. From a distance only a profile is left, facing left. The original is privately held, so we make no claim about its passage through collections.
Technique: an oil painting reproduction on canvas, painted by hand in oils, one copy at a time.
