Description
Giuseppe Arcimboldo – The Librarian
| Year created: | ok. 1566 | |
| Original size: | 97 x 71 cm | |
| Paint style: |
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| Original technique: | Oil on canvas | |
| Located: | Gripsholm Slott, Statens Konstsamlingar, Stockholm, Sweden |
In the oil on canvas Librarian , Arcimboldo depicted the profession of a librarian. Arcimboldo always tended to paint individual objects as realistically as possible and in the classical painting tradition of imitating nature, while assigning them human images.
The books here do not illustrate the occupation, they constitute it: opened covers for the face, closed spines for the torso, keys on a ribbon at the hip, and for a beard the small brush used to dust the edges of pages. Up close it is a shelf; from a distance, a man who has just looked round. The original is held by the Statens Konstsamlingar at Gripsholm in Sweden.
Technique: an oil painting reproduction on canvas, painted by hand in oils, one copy at a time.
