Giussepe Arcimboldo: The Four Seasons

SPRING

Giussepe Arcimboldo was born in 1527. He was an Italian painter best known for creating imaginative portrait heads made entirely of such objects as fruits, vegetables, flowers, fish, and books.

 SUMMER

AUTUMN

WINTER

At a distance, his portraits looked like normal human portraits. However, individual objects in each portrait were actually overlapped together to make various anatomical shapes of a human being. They were carefully constructed by his imagination.

Arcimboldo is known as a mannerist in the 16th century. The Mannerism was a transitional period from 1520 to 1590. The Mannerist tended to show close relationship between human and nature. Arcimboldo also tried to show his appreciation of nature through his portraits. In The Spring, the human portrait was composed only of various spring flowers and plants. From the hat to the neck, every part of the portrait, even lips and nose, was composed of the flowers while the body was composed of the plants. On the other hand, in The Winter, the human was composed mostly by the roots of the trees. Some leaves from evergreen trees and the branches of other trees became the hair.

As you can see, they are very funny pictures!! Now it's time for you to make original portraits using different food and other symbols of nature!!