Description
Giuseppe Arcimboldo – Portrait with Vegetables (The Greengrocer)
Despite the ingredients, in the background of these paintings there is a praise and glorification of the three different emperors that Arcimboldo served. The emperor is a representative of the microcosm who rules the state of the subjects, and at the same time reigns over the universal world. Arcimbold’s Mannerist allegories were always created with the idea that the whole planet, humanity, animals and plants are one. Arcimbold’s portraits of people in which the faces of the people portrayed are made up of fruits, vegetables, various plants, animals or even everyday things such as books and food , are unique.
An upturned bowl becomes a hat, an onion a cheek, root vegetables a nose, a slice of tomato the mouth; radishes fan out below into a collar. The picture is made to be read two ways up: as a still life in a bowl, and as a face. That reversal was court entertainment meant to be worked out, not merely looked at.
Technique: an oil painting reproduction on canvas, painted by hand in oils, one copy at a time.
