Giuseppe arcimboldo artwork

16th-century Italian painter of the late renaissance period

Giuseppe Arcimboldo, also spelled Arcimboldi (Italian:[dʒuˈzɛppeartʃimˈbɔldo];^[1] 5 April 1527 – 11 July 1593), was an Italian Renaissance painter best known for creating imaginative portrait heads made entirely of objects such as fruits, vegetables, flowers, fish and books.^[2]

These works form a distinct category from his other productions.

He was a conventional court painter of portraits for three Holy Roman Emperors in Vienna and Prague; also producing religious subjects and, among other things, a series of coloured drawings of exotic animals in the imperial menagerie.

He specialized in grotesque symbolical compositions of fruits, animals, landscapes, or various inanimate objects arranged into human forms.^[3]

The still life portraits were clearly partly intended as curiosities to amuse the court, but critics have speculated as to how seriously they engag