{"id":84152,"date":"2021-09-02T18:10:43","date_gmt":"2021-09-02T16:10:43","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/svetslik.si\/uncategorized\/air\/"},"modified":"2026-09-24T09:47:10","modified_gmt":"2026-09-24T07:47:10","slug":"air","status":"publish","type":"product","link":"https:\/\/svetslik.si\/en\/giuseppe-arcimboldo\/air\/","title":{"rendered":"Giuseppe Arcimboldo \u2013 Air"},"content":{"rendered":"

Air is a head that Giuseppe Arcimboldo assembled entirely from birds: dozens of small bird heads, many with their beaks pointing outwards, make up the mass of the head, a white goose, an owl, a cockerel and a red parrot can be picked out among them, and the chest and shoulders are mostly the spread fan of a peacock. We make it as a hand-painted reproduction in oil on canvas, in five sizes or a size of your own, and you receive a photograph of the finished painting for approval before dispatch.<\/p>\n\n\n\n\n\n\n
Title:<\/strong><\/td>\nAir<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n
Painter:<\/strong><\/td>\nGiuseppe Arcimboldo<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n
Original technique:<\/strong><\/td>\nnot confirmed \u2013 without an institution\u2019s record we make no claim about the original\u2019s technique<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n
Our reproduction:<\/strong><\/td>\nhand-painted oil on canvas, five sizes from 30 x 40 to 70 x 90 cm, custom size on request<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<\/tbody>\n<\/table>\n

We could not verify a published record of this painting at any institution, so we have no measured dimensions and no inventory number to rely on. That is why you will not find a year of execution, a collection name or an accession number on this page. We say what can be checked against an institution or on the painting itself, and nothing else.<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

Air \u2013 Giuseppe Arcimboldo<\/h2>\n

What does the painting show?<\/h3>\n

A head and shoulders built from birds, set against a plain dark brown ground. Here the figure is not a person with a name but an element: air, made from the creatures that live in it. The head is crowded to its edges: most birds are shown only as a head and a beak, packed so closely against one another that together they read as a thick mass of hair or plumage. Below the head, the shoulders and chest are formed mainly by one large bird, a peacock with its tail spread wide. The painting names no sitter, and we do not give the figure a name.<\/p>\n

What is the head made of?<\/h3>\n

Dozens of bird heads, most of them brown and black, many with long, sharp beaks pointing outwards at the left, where they make a jagged outline against the dark ground. Among them a few birds stand out by their colour or size. Near the top centre is the round, flat face of an owl. In the middle sits a white goose, and just below and to the right a cockerel with a dark tail curving up. A large, pale yellow bird fills much of the right side, and at the right edge are a pinkish bird\u2019s head and, below it, the head of a turkey with a red wattle. At the lower left a red parrot\u2019s head looks out, and at the lower right is a dark bird\u2019s head with a hooked beak, while long reddish tail feathers fall towards the lower right. The peacock\u2019s tail below is painted feather by feather, each with its golden eye, and the peacock\u2019s green neck and small head rise at the bottom in the middle. Almost every bird has its own clearly painted eye, so that close up the head seems to look back at the viewer from dozens of eyes at once.<\/p>\n

Why is this painting remarkable?<\/h3>\n

Because it is made from a single kind of creature: birds, from the smallest head to the peacock that carries the whole figure. That makes the painting almost an inventory: domestic birds such as the goose, the cockerel and the turkey sit beside wild ones such as the owl, and exotic ones such as the parrot and the peacock. From a distance the crowd closes into a single calm head; close up it becomes a gathering of individual birds. How the painter built his heads is the subject of our article about Arcimboldo<\/a>.<\/p>\n

What does the painting mean?<\/h3>\n

The simplest reading is the one the series gives it: air is shown through the animals that fill it, as water is shown through the animals that live in it. A further reading sees in the peacock, a bird long associated with splendour, a sign of rank placed at the chest like an order. That second reading is ours, not a sourced statement; we offer it only as an interpretation.<\/p>\n

The motif among the painter\u2019s works<\/h3>\n

Air belongs to the four elements. The Kunsthistorisches Museum in Vienna holds two paintings from that series and publishes their records: Fire<\/a> and Water<\/a>. The museum reads the elements together with Arcimboldo\u2019s earlier series of the seasons and pairs them: Spring corresponds to Air, Summer to Fire, Winter to Water and Autumn to Earth. The painting on this page is not one of the two held in Vienna, and we could not verify where it is.<\/p>\n

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The Four Elements<\/strong><\/p>\n

This painting belongs to a cycle. All four are available here:<\/p>\n