One
of the most bizarre and distinctive painters in the whole
of art history, Giuseppe Arcimboldo (1527-1593) owes his
reputation to the series of composite portraits of heads
made up of a variety of objects, both natural and man-made.
Most of these paintings were created at the court of Rudolf
II, who hired Arcimboldo as his court painter, placing
him at the centre of Rudolf's eccentric menagerie of artists,
scientists and charlatans. In 1591 he produced his masterpiece,
Vertumnus, an allegorical portrait of his master Rudolf
II as the Roman god of metamorphoses in nature and life,
with Rudolf's face made up of fruit and flowers, symbolising
the perfect balance between nature and harmony that his
reign allegedly represented. Arcimboldo died in 1593.
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