Arcimboldo: Visual Jokes, Natural History, and Still-Life Painting 9780226426884

Citation preview

Arci mbo ld o

Thomas DaCosta Kaufma nn

Arcimboldo

Visual Jokes, Natural History, and Still-Life Painting

The University of Chicago Press  Chicago & London

Thomas DaCosta Kaufmann is the Frederick Marquand Professor of Art and Archaeology at Princeton University. His many books include Toward a Geography of Art, also published by the University of Chicago Press.

The University of Chicago Press, Chicago 60637 The University of Chicago Press, Ltd., London © 2009 by The University of Chicago All rights reserved. Published 2009 Printed in the United States of America

The University of Chicago Press gratefully acknowledges a subvention from the Publications Fund of the Department of Art and Archaeology, Princeton University.

18  17  16  15  14  13  12  11  10  09   1  2  3  4  5 isbn-13: 978-0-226-42686-0 isbn-10: 0-226- 42686-6

(cloth) (cloth)

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Kaufmann, Thomas DeCosta. Arcimboldo : visual jokes, natural history, and still-life painting / Thomas DaCosta Kaufmann. p. cm. Includes bibliographical references and index. isbn-13: 978-0-226-42686-0 (cloth : alk. paper) isbn-10: 0-226-42686-6 (cloth : alk. paper) 1. Arcimboldi, Giuseppe, 1527–1593. I. Title ND623.A7K38 2009 759.5—dc22 200902600 ∞ The paper used in this publication meets the minimum requirements of the American National Standard for Information Sciences—Permanence of Paper for Printed Library Materials, ANSI Z39.48-1992.

Iulio dilectissimo filio

contents

Table of Illustrations Preface and Acknowledgments

ix



1 Introduction



219



223



233

Notes Bibliography Index

xiii

17

1

Arcimboldo’s Lombard Origins 43 2 Arcimboldo from 1562: The Creation of Composite Heads 71 3 Learning, Poetry, and Art 91 4 Serious Jokes 115 5 Natural Philosophy, Natural History, and Nature Painting 149 6 Nature Studies 167 7 Arcimboldo and the Origins of Still Life 191 8 Arcimboldo’s Paradoxical Paintings and the Origins of Still Life 213 Conclusion: Arcimboldo in the History of Art

226

291 307

Appendix 1. Arcimboldo, the Facchini, and Popular Culture Appendix 2. Arcimboldo and Meda at Monza Appendix 3. Concordance of Arcimboldo Images from the Aldrovandi Letter, Bologna, Biblioteca Universitaria, Dresden Kupferstich-Kabinett CA 213, Vienna (cod. min. 42) and the “Museum” of Rudolf II (Österreichische Nationalbibliothek, cod. min. 129 and 130)

illustrations

Figure 0.1 Figure 0.2 Figure 0.3 Figure 0.4 Figure 0.5

Giuseppe Arcimboldo, Summer, 1563  2 Giuseppe Arcimboldo, Flora, 1589  3 Giuseppe Arcimboldo, Vertumnus (Emperor Rudolf II), 1590  4 Giuseppe Arcimboldo, The Vegetable Gardener(?) (invertible), c. 1590 or earlier  5 Arcimboldo Restaurant, Asterix Theme Park, France  7

Figure 1.5 Figure 1.6 Figure 1.7 Figure 1.8 Figure 1.9 Figure 1.10

Giuseppe Arcimboldo, Fire, 1566  18 Giuseppe Arcimboldo, Self-portrait as a Man of Papers, 1587  19 Giuseppe Arcimboldo, stained glass window, detail, from The Story of Saint Catherine, 1551(–56?)  20 Giuseppe Arcimboldo, stained glass window, detail, The Daughters of Lot, 1551(–56?)  20 Giuseppe (and Biagio?) Arcimboldo, Naming of Saint John the Baptist, c. 1545  21 Giuseppe Arcimboldo and Juseppe Meda, Tree of Jesse, 1556–59  23 Giuseppe Arcimboldo, Preaching of John the Baptist, 1550(–59?)  24 Johann Karcher after Arcimboldo, Transit of the Virgin, 1561–62  25 Giuseppe Arcimboldo, Winter, 1563  28 Francesco Melzi, Rhea Sylvia, c. 1525  32 Giuseppe Arcimboldo, lizard, chameleon, and salamander, 1553  35

Figure 2.1 Figure 2.2 Figure 2.3

Giuseppe Arcimboldo, Self-portrait, c. 1570?  47 Giuseppe Arcimboldo, Self-portrait, 1575?  47 Giuseppe Arcimboldo, Rudolf II at his Coronation as Roman King, 1575  48

Figure 1.1 Figure 1.2 Figure 1.3a Figure 1.3b Figure 1.4

ix

Figure 2.4 Giuseppe Arcimboldo, Autumn, 1573  51 Figure 2.5 Copy after Arcimboldo, Air, c. 1566 or c. 1580?  52 Figure 2.6 Giuseppe Arcimboldo, Spring, 1563  53 Figure 2.7 Cloak of Maximilian II  55 Figure 2.8 Giuseppe Arcimboldo, Spring, 1573  57 Figure 2.9 Giuseppe Arcimboldo, Summer, 1573  58 Figure 2.10 Giuseppe Arcimboldo, Winter, 1573  59 Figure 2.11 Giuseppe Arcimboldo, The Cook (invertible), 1570  62 Figure 2.12 Giuseppe Arcimboldo, The Librarian, c. 1566?  63 Figure 2.13 Giuseppe Arcimboldo, design for costume, 1585 or before  64 Figure 2.14 Giuseppe Arcimboldo, design for costume, 1585 or before  65 Figure 3.1 Figure 3.2 Figure 3.3

Jacopo Strada, elephant with trapping, 1571  79 Giovanni Baptista Fonteo, tournament drawing (detail), c. 1570  82 Giuseppe Arcimboldo, drawing of sericulture, c. 1587  87

Figure 4.1 Figure 4.2 Figure 4.3

Giuseppe Arcimboldo, Water, 1566  95 Giuseppe Arcimboldo, The Jurist, 1566  98 Giuseppe Arcimboldo, Earth, 1566  99

Giuseppe Arcimboldo, Companion of Astronomy, 1571  117 Lilium persicum from Carolus Clusius, Rarorum aliquot stirpium per Pannoniam, Austriam. etc. historia, Antwerp, 1583  123 Figure 5.3 Giuseppe Arcimboldo, blackbuck antelope and hartebeest, c. 1584  124 Figure 5.4 Giuseppe Arcimboldo, moose, c. 1566?  126 Figure 5.5 Giuseppe Arcimboldo, goat’s hooves, Vienna, c. 1563?  127 Figure 5.6 Giuseppe Arcimboldo, blue-headed quail dove (“colombo d’India”), 1577  128 Figure 5.7 Giuseppe Arcimboldo, aplomado falcon, 1575  129 Figure 5.8 Giuseppe Arcimboldo, helmeted curassow (stone hocco), 1571  129 Figure 5.9 Giuseppe Arcimboldo, quail with extra leg, 1571  130 Figure 5.10 Giuseppe Arcimboldo, dead bee eater  131 Figure 5.11 Giuseppe Arcimboldo, goose with extra leg, 1577  131 Figure 5.12 Giuseppe Arcimboldo, moose, 1566  132 Figure 5.13 Giuseppe Arcimboldo, duiker, 1569  133 Figure 5.14 Giuseppe Arcimboldo, coati, 1577  134 Figure 5.15 Giuseppe Arcimboldo, stag, 1564  134 Figure 5.16 Giuseppe Arcimboldo, black-headed sheep, 1577  136 Figure 5.17 Giuseppe Arcimboldo, angora cat, 1578  136 Figure 5.18 Giuseppe Arcimboldo, chamois  137 Figure 5.19 Giuseppe Arcimboldo, lynx  137 Figure 5.20 Giuseppe Arcimboldo, stag with violets  139 Figure 5.21 Giuseppe Arcimboldo, narcissus  140 Figure 5.1 Figure 5.2

x

I l l u s t r at i o n s

Figure 5.22 Figure 5.23 Figure 5.24 Figure 5.25 Figure 5.26 Figure 5.27

Giuseppe Arcimboldo, iris  141 Giuseppe Arcimboldo, tulip  143 Giuseppe Arcimboldo, asphodel and gladiolus  143 Giuseppe Arcimboldo, Saint-John’s-wort  144 Giuseppe Arcimboldo, reindeer, 1562  145 Giuseppe Arcimboldo, jerboa, 1578  145

Figure 6.1 Figure 6.2 Figure 6.3

Giuseppe Arcimboldo, wildflowers  151 Jacopo Ligozzi, fish studies, c. 1578  152 Giuseppe Arcimboldo, antlers  159

Giovanni da Udine, Still Life and Animals, 1518–19  172 Engraving after Giovanni da Udine, still-life detail in logge, Vatican Palace  173 Figure 7.3 Joris Hoefnagel, page from Terra with copy after Dürer’s Hare, c. 1575  175 Figure 7.4 Ludger Tom Ring, Still Life, 1562  176 Figure 7.5 Giuseppe Arcimboldo, Invertible Head as Basket of Fruit, c. 1590  178 Figure 7.6 Antonio da Crevalcore(?), Fragment with still life of grapes, c. 1520  179 Figure 7.7 Dirck de Quade van Ravesteyn, Leopard and Cheetah, 1600–1610 [or c. 1605]  183 Figure 7.8 Bartholomeus Spranger, Bacchus and Venus, c. 1591  183 Figure 7.9 Joris Hoefnagel, from Mira Calligraphia Monumenta, c. 1596  184 Figure 7.10 Joris Hoefnagel, Vase with Flowers, 1594  186 Figure 7.11 Joris Hoefnagel, Venus and Cupid, 1590  187 Figure 7.12 Roeland Savery, Flower Still Life, 1603  188 Figure 7.1 Figure 7.2

Figure 8.1 Figure 8.2 Figure 8.3 Figure 8.4

After Hoefnagel(?), Hairy Family, c. 1590  195 N. Pfaff and A. Schweinberger(?), carved rhinoceros horn, 1611  197 Giuseppe Arcimboldo, albino crow, 1574  197 Hans von Aachen, Boy with Grapes, c. 1605–7  202

I l l u s t r at i o n s

xi

preface & acknowledgments

This book pays off a debt. Although it might seem that I have spent much of my scholarly career on Arcimboldo, to date I have not yet written a volume devoted solely to him. While I have studied many different subjects other than Arcimboldo, for more than three decades I have been involved on and off with this intriguing artist. That is because I have continued to find out things about him over the years, and other discoveries have remained to be interpreted. Some of my previous results have been published in articles and in catalogue essays, which are reflected here. This book is, however, not a conventional monograph; that has in a way already been provided by the recent exhibition held in 2007 and 2008 in Paris and Vienna, and its collaborative catalogue. (In addition to ten entries, I contributed “Arcimboldo’s Composite Heads: Origins and Invention” and “Giuseppe Arcimboldo: Learning, Letters and Art,” to Arcimboldo 1526–1593, ed. S. Ferino-Pagden, Milan, Paris, and Vienna, 2007, pp. 97–101 and 273–81; the former appears revised as the excursus to chapter 1, while the latter is based on materials in chapters 3 and 4.) Although I have provided a full if relatively brief biographical account of Arcimboldo, the present book concentrates more on certain aspects of the milieus in which he worked, and in particular on some but not all of his most famous and influential works: his composite heads. The most important new additions to the artist’s oeuvre, his nature studies, also loom large here. These circumstances have led to a different line of interpretation, to considerations of humanism, poetry, natural history, still life, and paradox. Other issues, including Arcimboldo, the comic, and satire, remain to be elaborated. This book therefore takes an approach different from that found in some of my earlier publications on Arcimboldo, which it complements. However, my dissertation, Variations on the Imperial Theme in the Age of Maximilian II and Rudolf II, New York and London, 1978, and several subsequent articles considered the allegorical xiii

aspects of some of Arcimboldo’s paintings and their relation to his tournament designs and collecting. It has sometimes been misunderstood that the emphases of these publications excluded other interpretations: they do not, but add to the more comprehensive approach now represented here. One basic idea of the present book was already adumbrated almost two decades ago in “Arcimboldo’s Serious Jokes: ‘Mysterious but Long Meaning,’” in The Verbal and the Visual: Essays in Honor of William Heckscher, New York, 1990, pp. 57–86. More recently I have also addressed aspects of the more fantastic side of Arcimboldo in “Caprices of Art and Nature: Arcimboldo and the Monstrous,” in Kunstform Capriccio: Von der Groteske zur Spieltheorie der Moderne, ed. Ekkehard Mai and Joachim Rees, Cologne, 1997, pp. 33–51; its ideas are incorporated into a section of chapter 8. Since 2001, beginning with a lecture published in essay form six years later (“The Artificial and the Natural: Arcimboldo and the Origins of Still Life,” in The Artificial and the Natural. An Evolving Polarity, ed. Bernadette Bensaude-Vincent and William Newman, Cambridge, Massachusetts, and London, 2007, pp. 149–84), in which a preliminary version of some of the ideas in chapter 8 are also presented, I have returned more intensively to the study of Arcimboldo—especially to the naturalistic side of his art. This book is the result of that work. Since 2001 I have presented ideas related to the topics of this book, especially chapter 8, in numerous lectures. Venues have included, more or less in chronological order, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology; the New England Renaissance Society meeting held at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst, Massachusetts; the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences, Stockholm; the Bibliotheca Hertziana and British School in Rome; the Fondazione Roberto Longhi, Florence; the American Academy in Rome; the Institute of Art History, Prague; Radboud University, Nijmegen, Netherlands; Power Institute, University of Sydney, Australia; the Institute of Fine Arts, New York University; the University of Southern California; Florida State University; the Zentralinstitut für Kunstgeschichte, Munich; a symposium (“Scherz und Ironie in Kunst und Literatur zur Zeit Arcimboldos”) held in conjunction with the Arcimboldo exhibition at the Kunsthistorisches Museum, Vienna; and last but certainly not least, several Renaissance colloquia at Princeton University. I am grateful to members of the audiences at these occasions for their attentiveness, questions, and comments. I am also grateful to all those institutions, including archives and libraries, as well as individuals too numerous to enumerate after all these years, who have facilitated my research and offered me suggestions. In particular I would nevertheless like to single out some people who in more recent times have been particularly helpful in contributing one way or another to the completion of research on this project, or who have made useful suggestions for the ideas contained in it: Brian Coopenhaver, Walter Cupperi, Sibylle Ebert-Schifferer, Joel Goldfrank, Anthony Grafton, Annemarie Jordan Gschwendt, Marilyn Lavin, Silvio Leydi, William Newman, Laura Mattioli Rossi, Almudena Pérez de Tudela, and especially Elizabeth Pilliod. My loyal research assistants Omer Zihel and Vera Keller helped in many ways, particularly in the identification of naturalia. I am grateful to Susan Bielstein, Anthony Burton, and Renaldo Migaldi for the preparation of this book. x iv

Preface and Acknowledgments

My research has been aided over the years by the Spears Fund of the Department of Art and Archaeology, Princeton University. Publication has been assisted by subventions from the Publication Funds of the Department. A National Endowment for the Humanities Rome Prize Fellowship enabled me to spend a memorable academic year, 2003–04, at the American Academy in Rome, whence I could carry out sustained research in Europe. To all I am grateful.

Princeton, March 2009

Preface and Acknowledgments

xv

Introduction

A

cucumber forms a bulbous nose; the open maul of a wolf simulates an eye; a striking iron is an ear; a shark is a mouth; a pile of books composes a torso. These are some of the startling details in the composite paintings by Giuseppe Arcimboldo (1526–1593) that are made up of disparate but related elements. The figures in Arcimboldo’s Four Seasons are, for instance, composed of fruits and vegetables that grow in each of those seasons. Vegetables and fruits constitute the head and hair of Summer (Figure 0.1), while ears of grain form its torso and a straw fillet crowns its top. His series the Four Elements, based on the elements of traditional cosmology, likewise employ birds, animals, and aquatic creatures to constitute Air, Earth, and Water respectively while Fire flares forth with features fashioned from flames and objects that produce fire or were forged in it. Figures of a cook and a wine steward are similarly made of objects pertaining to their activities: pots, pans, and a wine barrel. Paintings of a man made of books, and a head of meat with books attached, may represent a librarian and a jurist.1 Flora (Figure 0.2) is made of flowers, Vertumnus (Figure 0.3) is composed of fruits and flowers from all seasons, and one recently discovered painting shows signs of all four seasons within a single head.2 Several paintings by Arcimboldo work not only as composite heads, like mosaics formed from different objects,3 but also as coherent images when they are turned upside down. Viewed one way, these pictures resemble other composite heads made of fruits, meat, or vegetables (Figure 0.4). Turned upside down, they can be apprehended as a basket of fruit, a platter of meat, or a bowl of root vegetables and nuts. Though Arcimboldo’s composites are relatively few in number—only some twenty by the artist himself have survived—they have recently gained him celebrity status. A large color illustration of Summer has adorned page one of the New York Times arts 1

figure 0.1  Giuseppe Arcimboldo, Summer, 1563. Kunsthistorisches Museum, Vienna. Photo: Eric Lessing / Art Resource, NY.

figure 0.2  Giuseppe Arcimboldo, Flora, 1589. Private collection.

figure 0.3  Giuseppe Arcimboldo, Vertumnus (Emperor Rudolf II), 1590. Skokloster Castle, Sweden. Photo: Eric Lessing / Art Resource, NY.

figure 0.4  Giuseppe Arcimboldo, The Vegetable Gardener(?), c. 1590 or earlier. Invertible. Museo Civico a la Ponzone, Cremona. Photo: Eric Lessing / Art Resource, NY.

section, and a small color reproduction of Vertumnus has been on the newspaper’s front page.4 Crowds clamored to see the first monographic exhibition devoted to this artist who lived from 1526 to 1593; it received outstanding reviews.5 Pamphlets, children’s books, and bric à brac of all kinds related to Arcimboldo do a brisk business at exhibition shops and on the Web. The recent interest in Arcimboldo results, no doubt, primarily from responses to pictures like those published in the Times. His images, particularly those of the former non-invertible sort, have become almost ubiquitous in contemporary visual culture. His paintings of composites are illustrated, copied, and knocked off in photographs, sculptures, films, and advertisements.6 They inspire brands of food: Arcimboldo’s painting Summer now serves as a logo for a brand of tomatoes sold in Italy that bears his name (“Arcimboldo Pachino”). Restaurants in New York, Oslo, Prague, Barcelona, Milan, Turin, Venice, and Buenos Aires are named after him. The soup genie Boldo in the animated film The Tale of Despereaux (2008), an Arcimboldesque head of fruits and vegetables, pays tribute to the artist’s inventions. Most striking of all is a large three-dimensional composite head that forms the entrance to a restaurant at the theme park which is named after the comic book character Asterix, located thirty kilometers north of Paris (Figure 0.5).7 This is also not the first time in recent memory that Arcimboldo’s pictures have sparked broader interest; the history of the artist’s reception is revealing. Arcimboldo’s imagery had already entered the world of capitalism by the 1930s when his painting Vertumnus (then identified as “The Gardener”), with its prominent grapes and fruits, served as an emblem for the Bertuzzi juice company.8 The commercialization of Arcimboldo’s imagery followed closely upon his “rediscovery” earlier in the twentieth century when, after years of neglect by artists and art historians, he came to be regarded as the grandfather of surrealism and fantastic art. The Museum of Modern Art in New York exhibited him accordingly. In any case, even though the role of Arcimboldo’s composite heads as the inspiration for artists like Dali and other modernist masters of the double image may subsequently have been challenged, the surrealists and Picasso certainly knew his work. A 1987 exhibition in Venice carried this line of interpretation even further. In presenting most of Arcimboldo’s paintings and drawings along with copies after them and works inspired by his inventions, it placed Arcimboldo in the history of artistic exploration of the “hidden” image, emphasizing his relation to many aspects of twentieth-century art.9 Although this approach received a good deal of criticism, Arcimboldo’s impact on art of the twentieth century seems undeniable. Several contemporary artists have explicitly acknowledged his influence on their work.10 His paintings have, needless to say, also continued to be shown in many more exhibitions.11 The reception of Arcimboldo resonates with certain aspects of contemporary culture. The popular revival of his art seems almost emblematic of an age in which images are universally commercialized, rapidly disseminated, and even disaggregated; their digital reproductions can be morphed and recombined by cutting and pasting. Arcimboldo’s personifications may even seem to epitomize a line of contemporary 6

Introduction

figure 0.5  Arcimboldo Restaurant, Asterix Theme Park, France. Photo: Joshua Weiner.

cultural criticism that has described how images are disjoined from their natural origins and become their virtual or visual simulacra. Yet while Arcimboldo images have gained contemporary celebrity, their place in the history of European art—and, more broadly, the history of the culture of the artist’s own time—remains unsettled. Before the past two decades, if most historians of Renaissance art paid any attention at all to Arcimboldo, he was regarded as a minor if amusing curiosity.12 Growing attention has only slowly led to his paintings finding a place on the walls of major museums where the art of the Renaissance is displayed; this change in fortune did not really begin to occur until the 1980s.13 And even though the 1987 exhibition brought the artist to the notice of a broader public, one critic could still respond by dismissing Arcimboldo as little more than a “competent journeyman” whose fame was due to the single activity of popularizing composite images.14 While Arcimboldo’s composites may now have gained him notoriety, his fame may have come at the cost of the disconnection of his oeuvre from its own time. Much of the twentieth- and twenty-first-century reception of Arcimboldo has related him to modernist painting, especially in tendencies toward fantasy and surrealism. Efforts to understand the original context in which his composite heads were painted, and the audience that would first have received and appreciated them, have thus been overshadowed. What Arcimboldo’s pictures might have meant to his contemIntroduction

7

poraries, and what the impact of those pictures might have been in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries beyond being copied or directly imitated, remains at issue. A large recent exhibition of Arcimboldo attempted to redress some of these problems by concentrating on the artist as a historical figure. Eschewing the treatment of his paintings as forerunners of some currents in modern art, it focused instead on the artist’s historical position and emphasized multiple facets of his oeuvre. Following some other tendencies in scholarship, it sought to portray Arcimboldo much more as an organizer of pageants and an observer of nature, for whom painting composite heads was just one of many tasks. Yet the exhibition catalogue also reveals that considerable differences of opinion continue to exist concerning the painter and his work. Rival and contradictory views of the artist confront each other in the catalogue essays. Interpretations of the composite heads thus remain to be disentangled, rectified, and reconciled. While some sources of Arcimboldo’s paintings have been adduced and focus has been redirected to them, the paintings themselves have not been fully elucidated. A more complete understanding of the origins, character, and impact of Arcimboldo’s composite paintings in relation to the artist’s life, oeuvre, and situation in the history of art and culture is still needed. That is the primary goal of this book. What then may be said about the historical figure of Arcimboldo, and what are some major lines of interpretation of his work? Looked at more closely in the light of his biography, even as it has been reconstructed recently, his current celebrity may appear quite surprising. Arcimboldo was born in Milan in 1526; his early career hardly seems to foretell his subsequent fame, nor does it offer many overt clues to the origin of the inventions on which his reputation is based. No easel paintings seem to survive from his early years, and nothing he made during his first days in Lombardy really prepares us for the invention of his composite heads in any case. Arcimboldo’s early activities might consequently appear to give some license for calling him a competent journeyman. Like many other Italian artists of his time, he at first carried out multiple tasks in a variety of places in order to earn his bread. He designed stainedglass windows, tapestries, and frescoes in Milan, Monza, and Como. Things changed, however, when Arcimboldo went to the Habsburg court in Central Europe in 1562. For more than a quarter century Arcimboldo served the Habsburgs as imperial painter, during the reigns of Ferdinand I (ruled as emperor 1558–64), Maximilian II (ruled 1564–76), and finally Rudolf II (ruled 1576–1612). At the imperial court he was renowned for much more than his composite heads; he painted and drew portraits, designed festivals, helped make acquisitions for the imperial collections, and also did drawings for silk manufacture. Nevertheless, many of his activities for the court may still be related to his striking inventions of composites.15 Despite some scholarly disagreement, it can also now definitely be determined that Arcimboldo painted his first composite heads at the imperial court, not in Italy. This determination contradicts some recent attempts to situate the original execution of these intriguing pictures in Italy and to connect them with popular culture there. Arcimboldo painted his first composite heads while in the service of Maximil8

Introduction

ian II—indeed, even before Maximilian was raised to the imperial throne, although he gave the heads to Maximilian along with a second set of related paintings a few years after he had completed both sets. Arcimboldo also made other pictures of this type for this emperor, and then later for his successors and for other princes. He was ennobled by Emperor Rudolf II for his many services and accomplishments,16 and also received the exceedingly rare honor of being raised to the status of count palatine. These honors hardly mark him as someone who was appreciated merely as a competent journeyman. Arcimboldo then returned home to Milan, probably during the year 1587. From there he continued to work for Rudolf II, sending his pictures Vertumnus and Flora, among other objects, back to Prague where the imperial residence had been established. His Lombard contemporaries lionized him in poems, biographies, and artistic treatises. Renowned at the end of his life in his city of birth, he died in Milan in 1593. Early signs exist for the reception of Arcimboldo’s inventions: other artists began imitating his pictures during his lifetime. In 1592 Paolo Morigia (Morigi), a contemporary biographer, attributes the invention of composite images to Arcimboldo and also says they are found in many prints of the time.17 G.P. Comanini, another important contemporary commentator and associate, says that Arcimboldo’s painted inventions were being stolen (semplici ruberie di sue cose, in Comanini’s words) by many workshops.18 In fact Arcimboldo’s paintings have often been crudely replicated; Comanini speaks of contemporaneous examples as assai rudamente composte.19 They may have inspired other contemporaneous artists to make similar works—if indeed pictures that seem similar to his were not, as has been said, simply thefts of his ideas. For example, the painter and writer Giovanni Paolo Lomazzo, another Milanese contemporary of Arcimboldo, mentions in his Trattato of 1584 that Carlo Urbino da Crema had painted a picture of cookery (cucina) made out of kitchen utensils, which must have resembled Arcimboldo’s compositions.20 Composite heads resembling Arcimboldo’s were also made soon after his death by other accomplished artists. Some such works have been attributed to his near contemporary Francesco Zucchi, brother of the better known Florentine painter Jacopo Zucchi.21 Anthropomorphic landscapes, composite heads, and various sorts of creatures also appear in paintings, prints, and drawings from the seventeenth century, in works attributed to Joost de Momper and to other artists.22 Later copies and imitations are known to have been made in paint and ink down through the nineteenth century.23 The proliferation of Arcimboldesque images, as distinct from Arcimboldo’s own work, may have been one of the factors contributing to the historical eclipse of the artist himself. At any rate, it remained until the mid-twentieth century for art historians to notice him favorably. But the recovery of Arcimboldo also picked up many of the themes found in earlier literature on the artist, which have consequently continued to color much writing on him. Arcimboldo’s composite paintings have most often been regarded as humorous or playful jokes. Even some of his contemporaries called his heads “ridiculous.” CoIntroduction

9

manini called one of them a joke. In the eighteenth century Luigi Lanzi, historian of Italian painting, said Arcimboldo made jokes with his brush. And with the revival of interest in Arcimboldo in the twentieth century, this view returned. Some of the first art-historical studies of the 1950s also called his pictures jokes; and one of them found his work “parodistic.” It was thus under the banner of visual jokester that Arcimboldo entered the mainstream of Renaissance art history: in the 1970s the authoritative Pelican History of Art series called his pictures scherzi—jokes.24 An emphasis on the fantastic, capricious, whimsical, and bizarre in Arcimboldo has long accompanied the view that his pictures are simply jokes. This view also goes back to Arcimboldo’s own time, when several writers who knew his work well— including Lomazzo, Comanini, and Morigia—called his creations capricci and bizzarrie. Comanini specifically described Arcimboldo as a “most ingenious fantastic painter,” invoking him in his discussion of fantastic imitation. Eighteenth-century critics like Lanzi and P.A. Orlandi also called Arcimboldo’s paintings bizzarrie. In a similar spirit, one of the first monographs to be published on the artist called his works capricious, whimsical paintings (dipinti ghiribizzosi).25 Twenty-first-century viewers may still find Arcimboldo’s pictures amusing and fantastic in ways similar to those expressed in the past. For example, one review of the recent exhibition devoted to the artist ends on the note that his painting Vertumnus contains a hint of mockery (it is a portrait of Rudolf II in the guise of that ancient god of the seasons).26 However, the meaning of humor, jokes, and various definitions of the fantastic or capricious may also now be understood differently, as well as more historically, than they often have been in the past. To begin with, the presence of the playful, the capricious, or the humorous does not exclude the possibility that there may be more to Arcimboldo’s composite paintings.27 Their very method of composition makes this clear. The separate objects in the paintings are rendered in careful detail so that they may be recognized individually.28 But it is impossible to focus on the separate parts and on the whole at the same time, because concentration on the individual components impedes recognition of the head and torso as a whole. The two impressions cannot be grasped simultaneously.29 One either pays attention to the individual fruits and vegetables or notices that they compose a head; the viewer shifts from one impression to the other. Resolution of the impressions is uncertain; oscillation between two perspectives results.30 Arcimboldo’s composites thus present a visual paradox similar to the rabbit/duck image discussed in the literature of psychology and by the philosopher Ludwig Wittgenstein: the rabbit/duck, while not closely resembling either creature itself, can be read either as a rabbit or as a duck but not as both simultaneously.31 Arcimboldo’s pictures can also be compared to some other types of images which create acute illusions, including anamorphic pictures32 and certain forms of trompe l’oeil paintings, which are comparable to Arcimboldo’s efforts in their careful replication of natural details but employ a further trick of pictorial illusion. As exemplified by the depiction of a letter rack on the verso of Vittore Carpaccio’s two-sided panel Hunting in the Lagoon (Los Angeles, J. Paul Getty Museum), the term trompe l’oeil is used to denote “paintings that represent things in an especially deceptive way, so 10

Introduction

that the representation of a thing seems to be the thing itself.” 33 Some such images represent flies landing on the surfaces of paintings or frames: these also share an affinity with a detail in a painting by Arcimboldo which depicts a fly having alighted on a flower (which is at the same time part of a breast).34 Like Arcimboldo’s paintings, and also like anamorphoses, trompe l’oeil demonstrates that the spectator plays a role in construing an image,35 although its ambiguity and that of anamophoses are of a different kind from what one meets in Arcimboldo. Arcimboldo’s paintings involve the play of the mind not just in games of perception, but also with concepts. His pictures work at first or second glance from their play with illusion yet they also employ wit to express their subjects, as is demonstrated by his paintings of the four elements, described above, and of the four seasons, which depict the fruits appropriate to each season. While notions of the ambiguous, the joking, the capricious, and the paradoxical thus pertain to Arcimboldo’s paintings, one of the many paradoxes the pictures reveal is that something can be playful and serious at the same time. Sigmund Freud, whose ideas had an impact on the earlier twentieth-century reception of Arcimboldo, suggested how this combination could work. Freud characterized the techniques of a joke as condensation, displacement, and indirect representation. All might be said to occur, for example, in the composition of Summer, where a currant is an eye, a peach is a cheek, and a pear is a chin. Freud also said that jokes involve a social process related to play, and that this differentiates them from the comic. This social dimension of jokes was also emphasized by Jacques Lacan. Similarly the anthropologist Mary Douglas demonstrated that the social dimension enters at all levels into the perception of a joke, and that the congruence of the “joke structure with the social structure” is one of its sources of pleasure.36 Ted Cohen’s recent philosophical disquisition on jokes has also revealed their social aspect.37 Some whose recent approaches to the problem of meaning have been informed by semiotics would also agree that meaning can be approached by treating it in relation to the audience or community of interpreters. To be sure, Arcimboldo’s audiences have varied through the centuries, and consequently so have the ways in which his pictures have been interpreted. Nevertheless, interpretations may be aided by an effort to determine the possibilities of understanding that were established by the expectations of the social and intellectual world in which his works originated. One important way in which the initial series of seasons and elements were immediately regarded was as imperial allegories. Poems presented with the paintings by Arcimboldo and his associates demonstrate that the paintings were read as such, and the paintings’ manifest symbolism also supports a reading of them as having pertained to the prince.38 Yet this argument, which I first presented more than thirty years ago, has occasionally been greeted with some skepticism by those who still want to interpret Arcimboldo’s paintings as predominantly humorous or comic, and who lump them either with the grotesque or with popular imagery, not recognizing the importance of the serious joke. The concept of the serious joke to be developed here was, however, quite familiar in Arcimboldo’s time—for example, in the writings of Erasmus. Erasmianism has Introduction

11

a special resonance for Arcimboldo’s immediate milieu, and for his patrons at the imperial court. In this spirit, the humor found in Arcimboldo’s paintings does not exclude the possibility that they may convey more serious meanings. This interpretation also does not exclude other possible readings of the pictures, such as that proposed by Roland Barthes shortly after this author first presented his interpretation of the paintings as imperial allegories.39 Barthes saw Arcimboldo as a worker of languages who changed and permutated various rhetorical forms. Paradox can of course also be regarded as a rhetorical figure, and certainly it has been recognized as one of the paintings’ characteristic aspects, as is acknowledged in the many poems on those paintings which are to be discussed in this book. Barthes’s arguments have recently been expanded into a far-reaching critique. While the idea that Arcimboldo’s pictures are grotesques—or grotesque, as they have also been called—has been rejected, the pictures nonetheless are seen to have a relationship to this form, which is regarded as being characterized by discordant elements, since they present visual paradoxes and rhetorical paradoxes. The importance of the allegorical element is however downplayed, and the primary importance of applying Erasmian (and Socratic) ideas of the serious joke to Arcimboldo rejected. In a parallel to those critics who downplay the thesis that Arcimboldo’s paintings are imperial allegories and who argue instead that they challenge the social order, Arcimboldo’s paradoxes are instead seen as gratuitous displays of virtuosity revealing a culture in crisis. Consequently their deployment of paradox is said to shake the epistemic foundations of Renaissance thinking about similitude, which had been the ground of allegory.40 But this interpretation appears to be yet another restatement of an anachronistic modernist view of the artist, informed by belief in the possibility of the mise en abime, the eternal recurrence of circularity, which it invokes. This approach seems however to be more inspired by Parisian thought of the late twentieth century (including Foucault’s ideas of episteme), than by recognition of what was possible or likely in Arcimboldo’s own lifetime and milieu.41 Notably, this argument does not take into account several important recent discoveries, much new research on Arcimboldo, and the resulting shift in emphases which are proposed in the present book. New data have revealed much about Arcimboldo’s associations and patronage that makes the argument for a sophistic, parodistic, criticial view of Arcimboldo’s painting implausible. One of the most important shifts in emphasis offered by the present book is indeed a reconstruction of the artist’s personality and activity that emphasizes his deep and continuing engagement with painting nature, and with natural history. In these regards Arcimboldo was an heir of the Leonardesque tradition, as has long been recognized. Beyond that, however, he was deeply involved with other traditions of natural history as represented at the imperial court and elsewhere. The recovery of many nature studies by Arcimboldo ranks among the most important recent discoveries concerning the artist. Arcimboldo made numerous depictions of animals, flowers, and birds, many of which he repeated several times; these images recur in his paintings of composite 12

Introduction

heads. While many such studies have been identified in the past two decades, many more are presented here for the first time, along with newly identified studies of plants and flowers. The existence of such a large stock of nature studies by Arcimboldo should cause major rethinking of his artistic interests in general and of his composite heads in particular. Nature studies are, however, taken into account neither by recent critiques nor by most other previous views of Arcimboldo, which, even when they reflect upon the continuing resonance of his composite paintings, do not recognize his role in the origination of several other new genres. Yet the recovery of Arcimboldo’s nature studies highlights the fact that fantastic and humorous elements are inextricably intertwined with a naturalistic thrust in his art. This has indeed recently reemphasized not only how caricature and laughter have profound implications, but also how they are connected with naturalism.42 Arcimboldo must thus be regarded as much more than the inventor or perfecter of a peculiar or playful form of visual paradox. His paintings of composites, especially his invertible heads, can now be established as having had an important place in the development of the genre of independent still life in Italy, as some recent scholarship has also suggested. His role in the invention of still life, in turn, has broader implication—most obviously for our knowledge of the development of pictorial genres (Arcimboldo was also involved in the origin of independent painting of animals)— and recognition of his role in these developments has a bearing not only on understanding of the history of art in Italy, where there has been some acknowledgment of his accomplishment in this respect, but also of art north of the Alps. Through his work for the Habsburgs, Arcimboldo’s inventions had repercussions for art both in Central Europe and in the Low Countries. Another emphasis of the present book is upon Arcimboldo’s humanistic and literary interests. Arcimboldo can be related to the antiquarian, collecting, and scientific activities of the imperial court: his interests were comparable to those of poets and humanists (who may of course have been the same people) both at the imperial court and also in his native Lombardy, with which he remained in contact throughout his career. Not only did he write poetry but, most significantly, he chose to portray himself quite directly as a man of letters. Hence he emerges in these pages even more clearly than before as a figure with broad aspirations and connections to the world of learning and literature. This also provides a foundation for a different view of Arcimboldo as an artist who brought the naturalistic together with poetic, humanistic, and philosophical sources and interests in the making of his pictures. In this light, even the reading of Arcimboldo as creator of rhetorical and poetic permutation may be taken as being complementary to the allegorical reading, not as antithetical to it. Arcimboldo had humanistic and literary aspirations that were unknown to earlier interpreters. He wrote poems that add to a more complete reading of his paintings, upon which they were in fact composed. This reading is based on renewed study of archives and objects, including recently discovered information. The initial chapters of this book accordingly reconsider Arcimboldo’s biography in relation to the origins of his oeuvre. First, documentary Introduction

13

sources and material evidence will be reassessed for his activity in Milan, Monza, and Como in the years before he entered imperial service. Reconsideration of some aspects of his personal connections, biography, and style allow him to be linked with artistic milieus in Lombardy, and also establish a relationship between his beginnings as an artist and some central questions regarding his composite heads. The second chapter reexamines Arcimboldo’s career at court and provides firm evidence for the dating of his composite heads and their origins in a court milieu. The third chapter lays out Arcimboldo’s connections with humanists and poets, and his own role as a humanist and poet. In chapter 4 the literary, poetic, and philosophical implications of Arcimboldo’s works are discussed, including the reasons for considering his paintings of composites as serious jokes. Chapter 5 deals with his involvement with natural history and nature painting; it presents much new evidence for his nature studies, whose analysis is the subject of chapter 6. Chapter 7 then takes up Arcimboldo’s nature studies and composite images, his invertible paintings in particular, to reassess his role in the invention of still life and animal paintings as independent genres. It traces his sources and impact, and briefly discusses how the themes he presented resonate in an understanding of the development of still life. This sequence of chapters culminates in the interpretation of Arcimboldo’s invertible heads that is offered in chapter 8, which relates the pictures to issues of imitation, fantasy, and naturalism, to sources in Renaissance and classical literature, and to their own significance as serious jokes, as well as demonstrating the personal connections that establish the paramount importance of Erasmianism for Arcimboldo’s art. This book consequently proposes a different perspective on the apparent paradoxes in Arcimboldo’s pictures. I hope to show how Arcimboldo’s approach to serio-ludere, serious play, serves not just to produce imperial allegories in a seemingly joking form, but to conjoin inventive fantasy with naturalistic observation. His pictures are caprices of art and caprices of nature; they unite antiquarian inspiration with scientific concerns, notably those of natural history. They reveal an artist whose inventions are consonant with Renaissance thought, not one who, as some recent critics have suggested, parodies, shakes, or challenges established notions—which would, after all, be highly unlikely for an imperial court artist, much of whose activity was involved in shoring up and expressing imperial majesty. Arcimboldo does have a philosophical stake in his art, but it is not of the negative or even existentialist kind proposed by some critics. In the end, I hope not just to present another interpretation of this fascinating artist, but to suggest how a better understanding of his seemingly singular productions may have broader import for the consideration of some basic issues in the history of European art and culture.

14

Introduction

Arcimboldo’s Lombard Origins

I

f, like Mozart, Giuseppe Arcimboldo had died at the age of thirty-five, he would have little interest for us today. What he had accomplished by 1561 would probably have remained merely a footnote in the history of painting in Lombardy. His composite heads earned him the acclaim of his Italian contemporaries, and they have gained him the attention of artists, scholars, and lay people in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries.1 But it was only at the imperial court, where he went in 1562, that he began painting these pictures—the earliest of which is dated 1563.2 Little in Arcimboldo’s earlier career anticipates these inventions. During his early years he appears on the scene as a peripatetic but minor, if multitalented, master. Like many other artists of the cinquecento, he earned his living with a wide variety of jobs. In this regard he can be said to have been prepared to take on numerous tasks at the imperial court. Prior to his coming north, however, little trace can be discovered of those specific visual elements—either the naturalistic details or their aggregation— that are found his composite paintings, not to mention their more general characteristics: their complex and witty mixture of erudition, naturalism, and entertainment, or their presentation of serious content in a seemingly joking form. While it is thus hard to imagine from the specific details of his early career how Arcimboldo arrived at his most famous inventions, some clues to their origins can be found in the milieus in which Arcimboldo worked, as well as in a consideration of his personal contacts. Many sources for the composite heads, both conceptual and visual, may lie in Lombardy even though the pictures were not first painted there, and other key elements and catalysts can be found in Central Europe. This chapter offers an abbreviated account of the life and work of Arcimboldo before he went to Central Europe. It discusses how some of his early experiences and contacts in 17

Italy, and some of his possible visual sources, may have eventually contributed to the conception of his composite heads, which he was to realize soon after his arrival in Central Europe. A r c i m b o l d o ’ s E a r l y Ca r ee r

It is emblematic of Arcimboldo that his composite heads provide key sources for some basic biographical data about him. While the date of 11 July 1593 for his death in Milan has long been established by documents of the time,3 neither his place nor date of birth are directly recorded. His father was the painter Biagio Arcimboldo, but archival information about Giuseppe’s early years is otherwise fragmentary. His earliest depiction of Fire (Vienna, Kunsthistorisches Museum, Figure 1.1), dated 1566, bears the signature Josephus Arcimboldus Mlnensis f. Similar inscriptions appear on other works in which the artist thereby designates himself as Milanese (Milanensis). A drawing (Genoa, Palazzo Bianco, Figure 1.2) which portrays him as a composite head made of different kinds of of paper displays the date 1587 on the collar, while the numbers 6 1 can be read on the forehead. These numerals suggest that his birth year was 1526.4

figure 1.1 Giuseppe Arcimboldo, Fire, 1566. Kunsthistorisches Museum, Vienna. Photo: Eric Lessing / Art Resource, NY. figure 1.2 Giuseppe Arcimboldo, Self-portrait as a Man of Papers, 1587. Palazzo Rosso, Genoa.

Arcimboldo’s Lombard Origins

19

Giuseppe Arcimboldo probably received his first training from his father. The first known document pertaining to him, a record of an authorization for payment made on 24 December 1549, finds him working on the same project that already was occupying Biagio, namely supplying designs for stained-glass windows.5 However, payment records for 1549 and subsequent years list Giuseppe separately from Biagio, suggesting perhaps that by the time Giuseppe had begun to work for the cathedral in Milan he was, as the title used for him implies, a master. The main task for the cathedral that occupied Giuseppe in Biagio’s suite was the supply of drawings that are variously described in the documents as quadri or disegni and were intended for the use of glaziers of the cathedral (pro usu invedriatarum). These were most likely cartoons, full-scale studies to be transferred to glass paintings, as use of the term quadro (picture) may also suggest.6 These designs were to be used in a campaign that had been renewed in 1539 to supply stained-glass windows for the cathedral, and which from 1544 to 1559 was being directed by the glazier Corrado de Mochis of Cologne.7 Payments to Giuseppe for window designs are recorded for the years 1549 to 1557.8 On the basis of these documents some existing windows may be assigned to Giuseppe, with decorative patterns and human figures in scenes representing the story of Saint Catherine placed over the present south entrance of the cathedral. (Figure 1.3a) From them some other, undocumented windows in the

20

Chapter One

south side of the nave with stories from the Biblical book of Genesis may also be attributed to him (Figure 1.3b).9 Throughout the time he was designing windows, Giuseppe Arcimboldo also carried out many other tasks for the cathedral. These included painting murals and making banners, a tabernacle, a map, insignias, coats of arms, designs for stools, and a canopy.10 Neither Biagio’s nor Giuseppe’s work for the fabbrica survive, however, other than the windows that were made after their designs. Nevertheless, the style seen in the windows executed by the Arcimboldi in the Milan cathedral makes it possible to support the attribution of another early painting. This is a fresco in the church of San Maurizio in Milan, located in the Monastero Maggiore, whose walls are covered with paintings of the later fifteenth and chiefly the sixteenth century, including works by members of the Luini family and by Simone Peterzano. The third chapel on the north side of the public church, dated 1545 by an inscription, contains two murals that can be reasonably attributed to Evangelista Luini.11 But the Naming of John the Baptist on the left or west wall of the third chapel can be attributed, by stylistic comparison to the stained glass windows, to Giuseppe Arcimboldo (Figure 1.4).12

figure 1.3a Giuseppe Arcimboldo, stained glass window. Detail from The Story of Saint Catherine, 1551–(56?). Duomo, Milan. figure 1.3b Giuseppe Arcimboldo, stained glass window. Detail from The Daughters of Lot, 1551–(56?). Duomo, Milan. figure 1.4 Giuseppe (and Biagio?) Arcimboldo, Naming of Saint John the Baptist, fresco, c. 1545. Chapel Carretto San Maurizio al Monastero Maggiore, Milan.

Arcimboldo’s Lombard Origins

21

Arcimboldo was also engaged in some other activities in conjunction with the Milan cathedral. These have attracted attention because it has been argued that they are to be associated with the sodality of facchini (porters). This connection has been used to support the thesis that Arcimboldo’s art contains a strong, local popular element linked with the world of the carnival. But evidence from the Milan cathedral, and from documents for practices elsewhere, does not support the argument for a special connection between Arcimboldo and the facchini, or for that matter between Arcimboldo and carnival.13 Arcimboldo’s last appearance in the documents of the Milan cathedral’s archives also places him in a context much different from that of popular culture or the carnival. On 6 November 1564 Jusepe Meda, another Milanese artist, whose dates can now be established as 1532–1599,14 appeared before the cathedral chapter and complained that Bernardino Campi was claiming that he had been given the task of painting the shutters of the cathedral organ. Campi was a well known Cremonese painter who had also been Meda’s master and had begun designing windows for the cathedral in 1559, the same year that Arcimboldo had ceased doing so.15 In 1564 Meda says that Campi had been defeated previously in competition with Meda’s compagno (companion) Giuseppe Arcimboldo, and adduces as an example the making of the new gonfalone, or standard, of Saint Ambrose, patron saint of Milan. Since Arcimboldo had already been paid for painting organ shutters ten years earlier, that may have provided a basis for his involvement with this similar project. In any case, in 1567 Arcimboldo received payment for drawings for the gonfalone, supporting Meda’s assertion that he had been involved in making it.16 The standard of Saint Ambrose still survives in the civic collections of Milan at the Castello Sforzesco.17 There is a further context for the commission for the gonfalone, which Meda and Arcimboldo won in competition against the team of Campi and Carlo Urbino da Crema.18 The standard has been seen as a triumphalist expression of the new atmosphere sparked by the course of action initiated by Carlo Borromeo, the future saint who was a nephew of the Milanese Pope Pius IV (pope from 1560), uncle of Federico Borromeo, and who was named archbishop of Milan in the year 1560. The manufacture of the standard was a complicated procedure that was ultimately finished by other artists. It has been suggested that while Arcimboldo designed the initial composition and Meda modified those designs, Carlo Urbino was also involved in the process, since a drawing by him for the standard also exists; the whole process has thus been described as one of accumulation. However, the attribution of a drawing for the gonfalone to Arcimboldo is incorrect.19 In the mid-1550s Arcimboldo also accomplished some minor tasks for other churches in Milan20 and, more important, also worked in other cities. A document of 28 May 1556 indicates that Meda (called Juseppe Lomazzo in the relevant documents) and Arcimboldo received a commission to paint the ceiling and wall of the south transept of the cathedral of Monza. This commission was ratified on 10 June in Monza, in the presence of Arcimboldo and Meda, supporting Meda’s later claim that he was Arcimboldo’s compagno. The artists contracted to paint the four evangelists and eight angels on the ceiling, as well as the tree of Jesus Christ (Tree of Jesse) with 22

Chapter One

fifteen prophets, Mary, and John the Evangelist on the wall of the transept. According to inferences drawn from a document of 10 December 1558 all but four figures had been completed by that date, and another document of 5 May 1559 authorized payment to the painters. The frescoes are still visible in the south transept and can be attributed with certainty to Arcimboldo and Meda (Figure 1.5).21 Comparisons to the Milan windows and the frescoes in the south transept in Monza lead to the attribution to Arcimboldo of yet another work, a tapestry representing the Preaching of John the Baptist, now in the treasury of the Monza cathedral; this tapestry may

figure 1.5 Giuseppe Arcimboldo and Juseppe Meda, Tree of Jesse, fresco, 1556–59. South transept, Duomo, Monza.

Arcimboldo’s Lombard Origins

23

have been designed by the artist around the same time he was painting the frescoes there, or even earlier (Figure 1.6).22 The various contributions of the artists involved in these projects may also be distinguished from each other, with Arcimboldo, for instance, doing much of the Tree of Jesse, including probably its prominent citrus fruits: this is one of the few signs of his early interest in naturalistic depiction.23 There are no continuing records of payments to Arcimboldo by the fabbrica of the Milan cathedral after 1558. By December of this year Arcimboldo and Meda had largely completed the frescoes in the south transept of the cathedral in Monza. It seems more than coincidental that only a few days after a payment for them had been made in Monza, Arcimboldo also received payment for tapestry designs in Como, which city is of course not so far away from Milan or Monza. Payments for the Como tapestry designs continued until 1560. A tapestry dated 1562 depicting the Death of the Virgin also exists that is usually displayed in the nave of Como’s cathedral (Figure 1.7).24 Arcimboldo supplied the first design for the gonfalone of Saint Ambrose also most likely around 1560. His presence in Monza and Como indicates that at the same time he was seeking work outside Milan. Monza is quite near Milan, and Como may have seemed a good place to turn because, as in Milan, another member of the Arcimboldo family had already been active there. This was Ambrogio Arcimboldo, brother of Biagio and thus Giuseppe’s uncle, who had been resident in Como from 1534 to 1537. An artist himself, Ambrogio had been responsible for painting altarpieces in San Giorgio a Cremeno.25 24

Chapter One

figure 1.6 Giuseppe Arcimboldo (design), Preaching of John the Baptist, tapestry, 1550(–59?) Duomo Treasury, Monza. figure 1.7  Johann Karcher after Arcimboldo, Transit of the Virgin, 1561–62. Duomo, Como.

Soon even more favorable opportunities opened up elsewhere. Paolo Morigia (Morigi)26 says that after many entreaties, Arcimboldo left Milan in 1562 to enter the service of Maximilian II. He traveled north probably toward the end of that year, and was not to return to Milan for good until 1587. There is thus surviving documentary evidence for Arcimboldo’s continuing activity in Lombardy until at least 1560. In contrast, there is no evidence of any kind that he was in direct contact with the Bohemian, Hungarian, and Roman King, later Emperor, Maximilian II, or with any other Habsburg archduke, or their servants, before 1562 at the earliest.27 No trace exists for Arcimboldo having done work for the Habsburgs until 1563. Yet great opportunities no doubt beckoned Arcimboldo north of the Alps in 1562. An artist was needed at the imperial Habsburg court just at the same time that the atmosphere for artists was becoming unfavorable in Milan. Arcimboldo was evidently well prepared as a figure painter to take up the job that immediately awaited him— court portraitist.28 He had already also demonstrated his ability to perform numerous sorts of other tasks. These multiple talents he would put to use when he entered imperial service in Central Europe, where his art was to take an unexpected turn and he was soon to paint his first composite heads. Arcimboldo’s Lombard Origins

25

A r c i m b o l d o , t h e L o m b a r d Milie u , a n d the Leonardesque Legacy

Although no convincing evidence exists to date the execution of Arcimboldo’s first composite heads earlier than 1563, his experiences in Lombardy before that date do seem to have contributed to the genesis of their conception. Scholars have long stressed the significance of Arcimboldo’s Lombard roots; a somewhat different line of interpretation is offered here. Inferences from his contacts and friendships, from his style, and from other circumstantial evidence lead to an understanding of the background for Arcimboldo’s composites. Key to these inventions are their naturalistic component and their combination of different elements. The first feature, an interest in nature that anticipates characteristics of the composite paintings, has long been sought in Arcimboldo’s earliest works. Naturalism in painting, the pictorial expression of such interest, is a long-flowing current in the art of Lombardy which may be traced back at least to the animal studies of Giovannino de’ Grassi and other artists of the international Gothic.29 They too depicted animals and plants, and these depictions have been seen as formative for Lombard painting. Numerous exhibitions have accordingly linked Arcimboldo with this long-lasting tendency in Lombard art.30 A concern with definition of vegetation has also been noticed in early works by Arcimboldo. This has been seen in the Monza tapestry representing Saint John the Baptist preaching.31 Fruits and flowers may be noted in the borders of the Monza and Como tapestries, and festoons of fruits mixed with angel heads are also noticeable in the Saint Catherine window of the Milan cathedral. Cedri, large citrus fruits familiar in Italy, are displayed prominently in the Tree of Jesse fresco in Monza. These may be related to details in Arcimboldo’s composite heads, for similar cedri appear growing out of the trunk of Winter. However, the ubiquity of festoons in Italian sixteenth-century art has long been noted, and so it may not be from such details alone that Arcimboldo’s composite heads originated.32 While festoons may indicate interest in the depiction of naturalistic details, other elements also found in contemporaneous art in Lombardy equally seem to deserve attention. For example, Arcimboldo’s early designs for windows in Milan derive from the standard sacred iconography of the time, and were taken primarily from Gaudenzio Ferrari.33 Among the artists active in Milan during Arcimboldo’s youth Gaudenzio, active there from 1537 until his death in 1546, seems to have been important for several aspects of Arcimboldo’s art. His blocky forms and broad handling of draperies could be attributed to one of the major local painterly traditions of the cinquecento, that of Bramantino, while as the juxtaposition of paintings by Gaudenzio and Bernardino Luini in the Como cathedral suggests, they also contrast with paintings of the Luini, who represent the direct line from Leonardo. On a younger painter active in the 1540s in Milan, Gaudenzio’s formal vocabulary would have made a fresh impression: Arcimboldo could easily have seen his major works, such as the Flagellation and Crucifixion, painted in 1542 in Santa Maria delle Gra26

Chapter One

zie, where Arcimboldo also worked. These observations also serve to remind us that Arcimboldo’s origins as an artist must be sought in the realm of figure painting. The line in Lombardy that seems to lead to Arcimboldo is, however, not the same line that leads from Gaudenzio or even from those more general tendencies toward naturalism that are found in Lombard painting. Both the naturalistic component and any other features of Arcimboldo’s art are, rather, to be related to another more definable source. It is the legacy of Leonardo that looms longest and largest among his Lombard antecedents. Arcimboldo has in fact been related to Leonardo da Vinci since the eighteenth century. An inventory of the Vienna Schatzkammer compiled in 1750 listed a composite picture by “Arcimboldoff” made out of garden fruits as being from the school of “Leonardi da Vinci.”34 At the time that Arcimboldo was rediscovered in the 1930s, his painting of Winter (Figure 1.8) was thought to originate in Leonardo’s caricatures; the treatment of bark in its neck was said to reveal the artist to be a “penetrating observer of nature trained at Leonardo’s school,” and it was said that Leonardo’s “tragically merciless spirit becomes a macabre joke in the work of the extravagant Arcimboldo.”35 Another of the first monographs on Arcimboldo suggested that Leonardo’s manuscripts might have been available to Arcimboldo in Milan, and that they had inspired his composite heads.36 More recent views that derive Winter from Leonardo’s caricatures, or argue that the intense naturalism of Leonardo’s followers like Cesare da Sesto and Bernazzano has been “assimilated into Milanese painting in the more capricious context of the work of Arcimboldi,”37 thus belong to a long line of interpretation. Arcimboldo’s early demonstration of versatility also recalls Leonardo, who was the towering figure active in Milan in the late fifteenth and early sixteenth century. It may even be that Arcimboldo’s ability to adapt himself to various tasks was related to the ideal provided by Leonardo. The connections leading from Leonardo to Arcimboldo may nevertheless still be clarified and elaborated. Although it is not possible for Arcimboldo to have known Leonardo personally, since Leonardo left Milan for good in 1512 and died in France before Arcimboldo was born in 1526, Arcimboldo was probably well acquainted with several aspects of his oeuvre. For example, he could easily have seen some of Leonardo’s paintings in Milan: the Last Supper is found in the refectory of Santa Maria delle Grazie. Leonardo’s legacy was being kept alive in Milan; his disciple and assistant Francesco Melzi had inherited the contents of his studio, including most of his manuscripts. Melzi returned to Milan and kept the contents there until his death near Milan in 1570.38 Bernardino Luini, another disciple and associate of Leonardo, probably also inherited some of Leonardo’s materials. Lomazzo reports that Bernardino’s son, Aurelio Luini, had a book of drawings by Leonardo, which probably consisted of his so called grotesque heads.39 Lomazzo and later sources also say that another book with Leonardo’s drawings was owned by Giovanni Ambrogio Figino. A recent study has suggested that these lost works of Leonardo are reflected in some drawings by Figino himself.40 Through these and other means, Leonardo’s heritage remained known in the artistic ambient of Milan.41 Arcimboldo’s Lombard Origins

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figure 1.8 Arcimboldo, Winter, 1563. Kunsthistorisches Museum, Vienna. Photo: Eric Lessing / Art Resource, NY.

Arcimboldo can be associated with all of these figures. For instance, he has been connected to Bernardino Luini through his father Biagio.42 A signed portrait of Biagio by Bernardino (London, British Museum) provides evidence that the two artists knew each other personally. Together with comparisons between windows attributable to Biagio and Bernardino, this observation long ago led to the hypothesis that the younger Arcimboldo could also have had access to Leonardo’s materials.43 Much more information has also been found to support this old thesis. Documents indicate that Biagio Arcimboldo was connected to the Luini family by more than a portrait drawing. Biagio was witness to an act of 9 November 1534 that involved the resolution of the inheritance of Bernardino, who had died in 1532, by his sons Tobia, Evangelista, Giovan Pietro, and Aurelio. Twenty years later Biagio was again found in close association with the Luini family: in 1554 he was selected to settle a dispute involving a division of goods belonging to the brothers, all of whom were artists.44 Some visual evidence confirms the close connection between the Arcimboldi and the Luini during the 1530s and 1540s, which were formative years for Giuseppe. Two altarpieces painted by Biagio’s brother, Giuseppe’s uncle Ambrogio, in Cremeno near Como closely adapt both the composition and figure style of works by Bernardino Luini. As noted above, the style of works in the Milan cathedral also makes it possible to confirm the attribution to Arcimboldo of a fresco in the church of San Maurizio in Milan, at the Monastero Maggiore: there Giuseppe must have worked in close proximity to, if not alongside, several members of the Luini family, who had done frescoes in the same church. Frescoes probably attributable to Evangelista Luini are found in the same chapel with those attributable to Giuseppe. The lifespan of Aurelio Luini, another son of Bernardino and brother of Evangelista, parallels that of Giuseppe Arcimboldo. Aurelio was born circa 1530, and both he and Arcimboldo died in 1593. A year before their death, they were both celebrated by Morigia as the major contemporary painters in Milan. Given Biagio Arcimboldo’s familiarity with Aurelio Luini and his father, it is likely that Giuseppe and Aurelio also knew each other. In any case, they worked in the same church in Milan, San Maurizio. Through such connections with the Luini it seems likely that Giuseppe would have gained knowledge of the Leonardesque tradition at an early point in his career, before 1550, either directly in the form of Leonardo’s manuscripts or as mediated through the art of the Luini. During the 1550s and also around 1560, Arcimboldo could also have come into contact with other major representatives of Leonardo’s legacy. These include Melzi, Girolamo (Gerolamo) Figino, and Carlo Urbino. In 1559 Meda and Arcimboldo received payment for the frescoes in the cathedral at Monza after their work had been favorably appraised by two experts, one of whom was Girolamo Figino.45 The commission for the shutters of the Milan cathedral’s organ could again have placed Arcimboldo in contact with Girolamo Figino and with Melzi as well. In 1554 Arcimboldo received payment for his work on the organ shutters , and in 1564 he was invoked by Meda in the competition to paint additional shutters. Melzi and Girolamo Figino had been the two experts who were employed by the cathedral chapter in deliberaArcimboldo’s Lombard Origins

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tions of 1559 regarding this project; this was the same year that Figino was called to Monza cathedral to assess Arcimboldo and Meda’s frescoes. Figino was also again called upon to help with deliberations in the conflict over the shutters in 1564.46 It is thus likely that Arcimboldo and he met during these years. At the same time it is also likely that Arcimboldo came into contact with Carlo Urbino, and probably that he knew works by him. Carlo Urbino was one of the competitors for the commission for the organ shutters, but more important, as mentioned above, he had also been actively involved in designing the gonfalone,47 for which Arcimboldo had also supplied drawings, and they may have encountered each other directly during the process of design and execution. Carlo Urbino is also said to have made paintings that were composites like Arcimboldo’s, and it is possible that the artists competed in this realm as well. In addition to Melzi, Carlo Urbino was deeply involved in the study of Leonardo’s manuscripts and drawings. Most of the manuscripts had remained in Melzi’s possession after Leonardo’s death, and Melzi had used them to compile a selection of Leonardo’s comments on art, which is known as the Codex Urbinas and which later generations have called Leonardo’s Treatise on Painting.48 But Carlo Urbino also used Leonardo’s manuscripts to compose an illustrated treatise based on Leonardo’s drawings and thoughts on perspective, motion, light, and proportion, known as the Codex Huygens (New York, Pierpont Morgan Library and Museum).49 Girolamo Figino had been a pupil of Melzi: various bits of evidence demonstrate that he was also engaged in the study of Leonardo’s manuscripts. He may have been involved in the production of the Codex Urbinas as well—and even if the older attribution of the Codex Huygens to him is no longer generally accepted, he certainly was familiar with it.50 Other sources indicate that Figino shared the interest evinced by the Codex Huygens in studies of human proportion. Furthermore, his drawings reveal that he had closely studied Leonardo’s drawings and had adapted his drawing techniques for working from nature.51 Lomazzo, who reports on some of these drawings, also owned sheets drawn by Leonardo himself.52 Girolamo Figino may have been a relative of the better known Ambrogio Figino. If so, it is possible that he had owned the book of Leonardo’s drawings that in the 1580s Lomazzo reports was in Ambrogio’s possession.53 In any case, like Girolamo, Ambrogio owned drawings by Leonardo, including his so-called grotesque caricatures, which he can be demonstrated to have studied closely.54 Like Leonardo, Ambrogio was much concerned with studies of physiognomy—the art or science of judging character and disposition from the features of the face or form of the body—and his studies in this area have also been seen to derive from Leonardo’s drawings.55 Ambrogio was an important figure in Arcimboldo’s milieu. He is the eponymous character in the dialogue of Gregorio Comanini, Il Figino, which supplies much information on Arcimboldo. He was linked by several other writers with Arcimboldo, who definitely knew him. Arcimboldo also tried to get him to do paintings for the imperial court.56 Whatever the conduit, Arcimboldo could therefore have received many stimuli from Leonardo and from the tradition that followed him. The parallels between 30

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Leonardo’s varied activities and Arcimboldo’s later work for court are so manifold and so striking that Arcimboldo could be called the Habsburgs’ Leonardo. Like Leonardo, he was a court artist who seems to have made relatively little for the imperial court of what we might usually call art, in the form of paintings—but, also like Leonardo, he did many other things. Tasks set by the court may of course have determined what an artist in its employ was supposed to do, but in comparison with all other artists active at the Habsburg court, Arcimboldo was truly protean, to echo Comanini’s description of him. Like Leonardo, he was involved with projects to control water, with codes and ciphers, and with machines, festivals, music, and musical instruments.57 Leonardo himself articulated the ideal of the universal painter that corresponds to the myriad activities in which he engaged. This ideal would certainly have been current in Milan during Arcimboldo’s youth, since it is expressed in Melzi’s compilation of the Treatise on Painting from Leonardo’s manuscripts. There, under the rubric “How a painter is not worth of praise unless he is universal,” it is said: Do you not see how many different animals and trees, too, and grasses and flowers there are, the diversity of mountainous regions and plains, fountains, rivers, cities, public and private buildings, machines designed to benefit mankind, various costumes, decorations and arts? All these things have equal use and value to him whom you would call a good painter.58

The first part of this statement points to an important element in Leonardo’s work that also nurtured the strong Lombard current of interest in the study and depiction of nature. However one regards the Lombard tradition on naturalism antecedent to him, Leonardo’s masterful renditions of plants, animals, and human beings are distinctive when compared with it. His careful attention to detail and his treatment of surface, and of the way light and color modify each other and our perception of objects, is not present earlier in Lombard art. He thus may be seen to provide a specific and significant source of visual inspiration for Lombard artists who followed him in the sixteenth century. Several artists who may be linked to Arcimboldo demonstrate their attention to nature studies in the Leonardesque mode. For example, Melzi clearly used drawings from nature found in Leonardo’s manuscripts in his own paintings, especially for depictions of plants and flowers. Two examples may suffice. In a depiction of Rhea Sylvia, probably executed in the second quarter of the sixteenth century (Figure 1.9), Melzi paints the vestal virgin with a plant conspicuously held in her hand that seems to step from the pages of Leonardo’s drawings.59 In a painting of the Holy Family (Prague, Národní Galerie) he also shows plant forms that might otherwise seem extraneous to the subject, but which recall Leonardo’s studies. A number of paintings assigned to Girolamo Figino also reveal his emulation of Leonardo’s figure style and compositions and his use of Leonardesque nature studies. In several pictures, Figino places tell-tale plant studies in the foreground.60 These elements, like similar features found in Melzi’s pictures, can be closely compared to Arcimboldo’s Lombard Origins

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the sorts of plant studies that Leonardo executed, as seen for example in drawings now at Windsor Castle.61 Nature studies and an interest in naturalia resembling details in the work of Leonardo are also found in many paintings of the Luini, especially Bernardino—for example, in a picture (Ottawa, National Gallery of Canada) in which a mandrake is evident.62 Bernardino also seems to have done drawings of animals, as is suggested by his painting of a lamb held by a shepherd in his painting of the Nativity (New Orleans, Louisiana, Museum of Art). Bernardino’s son Aurelio likewise displayed an interest depicting animals and birds. While not derived directly from Leonardo’s studies, animals are evident in his frescoes of the story of Noah in the nun’s choir in San Maurizio: although the compositions may be derived in part from German prints, the attention he gives to individual details of the animals does evince an interest in painting naturalia.63 Aside from this naturalism, here meaning an interest in the study and depiction of the natural world, another side to Leonardo’s concept of the universal painter also may have affected Arcimboldo: the role of fantasy that is imbricated in the observation and representation of nature. The importance of the projective power of the imagination is suggested by another famous passage in the Codex Urbinas which is also echoed in other portions of that text: He is not universal who does not love equally all the elements in painting, as when one who does not like landscapes holds them to be a subject for cursory and straightforward investigation—just as our Botticelli said such study was of no use because be merely throwing a sponge soaked in a variety of colours at a wall there would by on the wall a stain in which could be seen a beautiful landscape. He was indeed right that in such a stain various inventions are to be seen. I say that a man may seek out in such a stain heads of men, various animals, battles, rocks, seas, clouds, woods and other similar things.64 32

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figure 1.9 Francesco Melzi, Rhea Sylvia, oil on canvas, c. 1525. Bonnefantenmuseum, Maastricht.

Leonardo says something similar in another passage where he remarks that painters can stimulate their ingégno for various inventions by studying spots on walls, or composite stones. Provided that the artist already knows how to render well all aspects of things he wishes to imitate, confuse cose can stimulate the fantasia, or imagination. 65 These passages on how fantasia can be stimulated to simulate nature belong to a continuing Renaissance discussion of the power of the imagination to create or invent forms. The description of images seen in spots is related to several commonplaces or topoi of ancient writing. One of these is the Aristotelian idea of the power of the imagination to project images into things such as clouds; another is the idea of the image made by chance. For instance, in addition to Botticelli and Leonardo, Piero di Cosimo was also said to derive compositions from spots on walls or in clouds. Cinquecento theorists such as Antonio Doni and G.B. Armenini, a contemporary of Arcimboldo who was familiar with the Lombard scene, spoke similarly about this topic. In a letter that Arcimboldo later wrote to accompany drawings he had made for the silk industry, he showed his cognizance of this discourse, used some of its vocabulary, and demonstrated its relevance to understanding how his fantastic creations were related to the natural world.66 Leonardo gave another clue about how the fantastic may be related to the natural in his discussion of how to make imaginary creatures out of confuse cose, objects that seem confused together. The Treatise on Painting talks about how if you wish to make an animal finto (a fictive creature) seem natural, take “the head of a mastiff or a hound for a head, the eyes of a cat, the ears of a porcupine, the nose of a greyhound, the brow of a lion, the temples of an old cock and the neck of a turtle.”67 In his vita (life) of Leonardo, Giorgio Vasari reports a story to which Lomazzo also alludes in his Idea of how Leonardo painted a head of Medusa on a shield by taking into a room lizards, newts, maggots, snakes, butterflies, locusts, bats, and other animals, “out of which he composed a horrible and terrible monster.”68 Significantly, this shield was eventually purchased by the duke of Milan and apparently was to be seen in Milan when Vasari was writing, circa 1550.69 The treatment of monstrous images as heads may also resonate with Leonardo’s notions. In another informative passage in the Treatise on Painting, Leonardo mentions monstrous forms in the context of a discussion about developing a repertory of faces. He advocates sketching faces as one sees them, so that one will later be able to draw a face from memory. This notion helps lead to a different understanding of Arcimboldo’s early work as a figure painter, and it brings to mind an argument made more than half a century ago by E.H. Gombrich, who suggested that although Leonardo’s so called caricatures might seem humorous, grotesque, and fantastic, they need not be distortions of reality—and thus need not be considered grotesque per se.70 Rather, as scholars before and after Gombrich have also suggested, they have to do with an interest in physiognomy.71 The ancient physiognomic tradition inherited by the Renaissance is based on the system of natural correspondences, according to which the superficial impression of a creature reveals its nature. As more recent scholarship has indicated, it was precisely Leonardo’s studies of comparative Arcimboldo’s Lombard Origins

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physiognomy that interested and were employed by Lombard artists in Arcimboldo’s ambit—notably Ambrogio Figino, as mentioned.72 Gombrich added that the physiognomics revealed in Leonardo’s character heads also had to do with the pathognomonics of beauty.73 They extended the artist’s vocabulary of forms and, like his creation of a dragon, they have the power of art to stun or shock. In all of this there is nothing necessarily comic or popular, but, as Leonardo himself suggested, there is much to do with the processes of portraiture. This physiognomic interest of Leonardo’s studies—not some comic, popular, or in this sense grotesque vein—is what is also to be related to Arcimboldo, and even the term “grotesque” is probably a misnomer. Leonardo’s so-called caricatures no doubt bear a striking resemblance to Arcimboldo’s heads. They were certainly studied in Lombardy through the sixteenth century, as the multiple copies—among them a volume containing grotesque heads (now in the Spencer Collection, New York Public Library)—now suggest.74 Most recently, copies after Leonardo’s “grotesque” heads, attributed to Melzi, have also been compared to Arcimboldo.75 In this light it is important to remember that it was as a portraitist (contrafetter) that Arcimboldo first appears on the imperial rolls in Vienna, and it is in this capacity that he is otherwise first documented in Habsburg service. A concern with portraiture may have led him to turn to the physiognomic tradition. In any case, it seems that an interest in the depiction of figure types would lead to those elements that seem to be caricatural entering into his art; they can be found in his composite heads. The Leonardesque tradition could therefore have piqued Arcimboldo’s penchant to fantasy while simultaneously encouraging a predilection for naturalism; earlier scholarship has noted the relevance of both aspects of Leonardo’s art for Arcimboldo’s inventions. It has long been remarked in reference to Arcimboldo’s Winter that what makes him a member of the “Leonardo school” is that he is a close observer of nature.76 On the other hand, in both principle and practice Arcimboldo’s composite heads are obviously products of his imagination. They rely, moreover, on the beholder’s own projective imagination for resolution. They are composed out of various objects, and they provoke a reaction. Arcimboldo may thus have drawn inspiration from Leonardesque traditions for the naturalistic and fantastic elements that are combined in the composite heads. He may, for example, have been stimulated by Leonardo or his followers to undertake his first essays in nature drawing, which also engage the fantastic. A drawing that represents his earliest surviving venture in working from nature is of a chameleon (Figure 1.10).77 This and a drawing of a lizard and salamander may have been done in Milan before he went north. Whenever they were done, they recall the story of how Leonardo made monstrous-looking creatures out of lizards and other animals.78 However, while Lombard artists of the period of Arcimboldo’s youth may often have painted rocks, flowers, and plants that could have been taken from the pages of Leonardo, this is never the case with Arcimboldo himself. Arcimboldo’s depictions of natural forms, while comparable to studies and paintings in the tradition stemming from Leonardo, are not derived directly from Leonardo himself. As we shall see, they 34

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figure 1.10 Arcimboldo, lizard, chameleon, and salamander; drawing, 1553. Österreichische Nationalbibliothek, Handschriftensammlung, Vienna.

are based on different sources, including direct observation not only of lizards but of other living creatures, imported from the far reaches of Asia and the Americas, that Leonardo could never have seen. In fact, even Arcimboldo’s earliest such nature drawings that may have been inspired in part by Leonardo are done in combinations of ink and wash, or watercolor and gouache, that Leonardo rarely if ever employed. Moreover, it is open to question whether the naturalistic motifs seen in Arcimboldo’s early works are the products of his own invention, or whether such details are exclusively Lombard in origin; and even if such motifs are found in Lombardy, it is open to question whether they are all to be traced to the impact of Leonardo. To be more specific: the borders of Arcimboldo’s tapestries, which have been regarded as exemplifying his early essay in naturalistic depiction, have also been attributed to the designs of the weavers—not to the painter, who most likely would have supplied just the figural scene for the center of the tapestry and not also the more standard and repeatable surrounds. The most recent opinion on this question leaves it open:79 similar motifs were employed by painters not only in Lombardy but elsewhere in northern Italy, and they were being broadly revived all over Italy just at the time when they appeared in Arcimboldo. In any case, most of the evidence for an interest in still-life details or fantastic heads that can be adduced from Milan and related to Arcimboldo does not date from Arcimboldo’s Lombard Origins

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the period before the artist went north, but from that the time when Lomazzo and his circle were active: namely, after 1560 and even later, after Arcimboldo had returned home in the late 1580s. Most important, none of the Leonardesque painters ever painted a composite head or an invertible image. And to repeat: no real evidence exists to indicate that Arcimboldo’s composite heads were initiated or painted in Lombardy.80 While Leonardo and Lombardy provide important constituents for Arcimboldo’s composite heads, they are not the exclusive sources for his ideas. Other stimuli, including other aspects of humanism and natural history, came into play in the invention of these works, and these stimuli in several key instances were either only available at the imperial court or were reinforced there. To conclude: Arcimboldo’s early experiences in Lombardy were obviously important for his artistic formation, but Lombard preoccupations, stimuli, and cultural references do not in themselves account for the sources of his ideas, for the functions of his composite pictures, or for many of the actual components of his composite heads, especially their symbolism—nor do they explain the actual context in which these pictures were conceived and received. Although they are important, neither Leonardo nor the Lombard tradition explains fully what these pictures might have to do with portraiture. In any case, Lombardy was not where Arcimboldo’s paintings of composite heads were first created. As the indisputable evidence—the dates placed on the earliest composite heads—indicates correctly, they could not have been made in Italy. They were made at the Habsburg court, which is where Arcimboldo was called in 1562, where he is documented to have been continuously from 1563, and where, it can be demonstrated, he painted his first composite heads. E x c u r s u s : T h e V i s u al S o u r c e s o f Arcimboldo’s Composites

A plethora of visual sources has been found for Arcimboldo’s images. 81 These range from Mogul miniatures to memory images, from ancient gems to compositions made of actual food, and from Leonardesque drawings to northern European prints.82 It might even appear that the origins of Arcimboldo’s composites are overdetermined. Yet not all of the sources proposed are equally plausible; they need to be reconsidered. We may begin with one of the earliest suggestions: Indian miniatures. In 1933, even before art historians had paid much attention to Arcimboldo, these works were proposed as a possible source by Josef Strzygowski, who was always ready to find Eastern sources for Western imagery (especially if they could somehow be regarded as “Aryan”).83 Mogul paintings do represent creatures made of parts of various animals such as horses, elephants, and camels, and the resemblance with Arcimboldo might thus seem close. Nevertheless, there is no evidence that any specimens of what became a thriving genre in Mogul India could have been known to this particular European artist before the year 1563. Mogul examples generally postdate rather than antedate Arcimboldo’s creations, the earliest of which (the first series of Seasons) 36

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can be definitely set in that year.84 On the other hand, many European images were exported to the Mogul court.85 It is also known that European painters—Michael Sweerts the most famous among them—went to India: in fact one artist, Cornelis Claesz Heda, who had actually served Rudolf II in Prague, worked at an Indian court.86 Thus it is possible that the influence went in the other direction, if the inventions did not simply occur independently of each other in both places. A similar problem attends the possibility of Persian influences. Although such images have not hitherto been discussed, direct connections between Rudolfine Prague and Safavid Persia can be established.87 Heda traveled from Prague in the company of the Persian ambassador to the imperial court, and some Persian miniatures with composite creations may be contemporary with or antedate Arcimboldo.88 But since the genre of composite miniatures did not flourish in Persia, as it did in India, it is even less likely that these would have been known in Europe, especially before 1563. Again the creation of composites may have occurred independently in different places. Jurgis Baltrušaitis indeed has observed that composites were common both to eastern traditions and to the European tradition stemming from Greco-Roman antiquity. They can be found in Armenian miniatures, Pompeian wall paintings, ancient cameos, and medieval manuscript illuminations.89 Many of them have been advanced as sources for Arcimboldo.90 Nevertheless, with the exception of cameos and other ancient gems, there is a similar, recurring problem: how could Arcimboldo have been familiar with any such images?91 Connections proposed with northern European art of the sixteenth century seem more plausible.92 These include drawings by Hieronymus Bosch (the exact attribution is moot), marquetry by Lorenz Stoer, and prints by René Boyvin and Tobias Stimmer as well as by anonymous Protestant satirists. While all these images represent forms composed of various parts, only those by Boyvin after Rosso Fiorentino, those related to Bosch, and satirical or prophetic images of the Reformation are earlier than Arcimboldo. Bosch’s images were also called grilli, a term used to describe composite creations.93 However, close comparisons to Arcimboldo are lacking. While Boyvin’s images are heads, they are not made out of separate units; only Stimmer’s Gorgoneum Caput really represents a composite head made out of different pieces, but it was created long after Arcimboldo had begun making composite heads, and may thus derive its idea from his inventions rather than vice versa. These images at least bring us close in time and closer in place to Arcimboldo. Several sources have been found in Renaissance Italy, including, perhaps surprisingly, in the realm of food. In sixteenth-century Italy compositions of various sortswere made out of comestibles, including sugar sculptures.94 Artists such as Giovan Francesco Rustici, Andrea del Sarto, and Domenico Puligo made elaborate constructions using various kinds of food at banquets of the Compagnia del Paiuolo and of the Compagnia della Cazzuola in Florence, and these may evoke the ideas of Arcimboldo.95 Other comparisons with comestibles connect Arcimboldo’s images to popular sources and the carnivalesque. Eschewing humanist readings of Arcimboldo,96 Arcimboldo’s Lombard Origins

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Francesco Porzio has emphasized his popular sources in Lombardy, including the appearance in a Milanese festival of a wooden horse that disgorged various meats. Porzio relates this to prints by Ambrogio Brambilla entitled Lent and Carnival, in which meats are evident, and which he compares to Arcimboldo. Porzio relates Arcimboldo’s creations accordingly to the carnivalesque, which he compares to Rabelaisian imagery, to an image of Aretino, and also to the commedia dell’arte.97 Giacomo Berra expands this argument, connecting the Milanese festival—and thus what both he and Porzio have seen as Arcimboldo’s sources of inspiration—with actual porters, facchini, and hence with circles of artists and literati in Milan centered around the painter and theorist Gian Paolo Lomazzo, who had formed a pseudo-academy modeled on such porters (the Facchini del Val di Blenio).98 While Porzio’s critique of the many disparate sources proposed for Arcimboldo is well taken,99 his and Berra’s readings in such a vein are also problematic. First, there is no real visual similarity between constructions made of food, as they are reported (as opposed to the many later ones inspired by Arcimboldo)—especially those in which the food was contained within objects, as at the Milanese festival—and Arcimboldo’s pictures. Second, Brambilla’s images postdate Arcimboldo’s, and given the imperial painter’s reputation in Milan, they most likely derived from them; and in any case there are no real grounds for assuming that they replicate the ideation of Arcimboldo’s images.100 And although Lomazzo and other writers and artists around Brambilla knew Arcimboldo, there is no evidence that Arcimboldo himself belonged to the Facchini del Val di Blenio. The connection made with facchini misinterprets the meaning of the documents associating Arcimboldo with porters; his relationship with them was no more distinctive than those he had with any of the other groups he dealt with while raising funds for Milan cathedral.101 In any event, it can be demonstrated that his paintings of composite heads originated at the imperial court, not in Lombardy. Finally, while Arcimboldo was in fact connected with some of the first propagators of the commedia dell’arte north of the Alps, these figures appeared in a court context, not a popular one. They did not represent some sort of carnivalesque inversion of the hierarchy, but were in fact involved in a festival that had been designed by Arcimboldo where their antics as acrobats and actors helped to reinforce, not undermine, the foundations of this very hierarchy.102 Other associations with Lombard traditions seem more persuasive in contrast. The Leonardesque tradition, discussed here, is prime among them. Most pertinent is the passage in the so-called Treatise on Painting about making an animal finto or Medusa, quoted above. The evidence for Arcimboldo’s connection with the Leonardesque tradition is clear, as is the idea that his paintings were monsters: Comanini refers to his painting Vertumnus as a “new monster.” Leonardo’s method of composing fantastic creatures out of elements found in nature thus recalls a Renaissance topos that is also directly pertinent for considerations of Arcimboldo. This is the locus classicus in Horace’s Ars poetica, which mentions licentious creatures such as one with a beautiful woman’s head on a horse’s body, a fish’s tail, and limbs covered with feathers. For painters and poets, Horace’s creature

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Chapter One

became a commonplace reference for the fantastic. For us it also brings to mind the grotesque: a topic with which Arcimboldo was deeply familiar, and about which he had his own distinctive ideas.103 The literary topos of fantastic creatures and grotesques brings us to other forms of monsters: the composites known as grilli. This term appears in Pliny’s Natural History, where it describes humorous pictures, but it was applied to Arcimboldo by a contemporary to mean composites.104 In this sense the term grilli may also be applied to composite images from antiquity. These appear particularly on ancient jewels, especially cut gems and cameos bearing images comprising various human and animal forms or monsters, and at times heads. Some such grilli are invertible, so that a composition may be discerned whether the gem be seen right-side up or upside down.105 Baltrušaitis traces the appearance of grilli from antiquity through the Middle Ages.106 It is, however, most likely that ancient gems—not medieval works derived from or comparable to them—could have inspired Arcimboldo, in part because of his antiquarian interests. In fact it can now be determined that several such gems were visible in the imperial collections, where Arcimboldo could have seen them. A number of grilli in the Vienna collections can now be traced back to an early provenance: a rediscovered inventory of Emperor Maximilian II’s Schatzkammer indicates that he was a great collector of gems.107 Some of the closest antecedents to Arcimboldo’s heads are images of heads made up of phalloi (male members) which appear on Casteldurazzo plates and on the reverse of a medal of Aretino. In them the phalloi synecdochically depict a satyr’s head. These compositions have long been associated with Arcimboldo.108 More recently Raymond Waddington has called attention to another medal with a composite head of a satyr, which is thought to be a caricature of Aretino’s rival Paolo Giovio: here the satyr’s head is composed of various animals. Waddington explains that this image relies on various physiognomic relationships for the positioning of the animals within the head, and represents the principle of harmony, discordia concors, whereby the various creatures are conjoined. He also argues that the phallic portrait of Aretino evokes another satyr, Silenus, who from the discussion in Plato’s Symposium was taken as an ugly creature that hid something beautiful within—and thus suggested the idea of a serious joke. This was a key concept of the Renaissance—for Aretino, for Erasmus, and for Rabelais, who refers to it at the beginning of Pantagruel as a key to his work.109 With such images we are not far from Arcimboldo’s composites. The concepts on which the satyr medals (especially those made up of various animals) rely in particular—physiognomy, the serious joke, and harmony—apply also to Arcimboldo. The heads made out of cazzi (male members) and of animals are also better understood in relation to Arcimboldo according to what we now know about the natural historical, humanist, and political features of the artist’s interests, as explained further in the present book. They are to be situated in an intellectual, witty, and literary context—comparable to that of Aretino, with which Waddington associates them—and

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not with popular culture. As with Aretino, the idea that the intellectual and literary aspect of the cazzi, while seeming to be scurrilous, is potentially profound also applies to Arcimboldo, as we shall see. Whatever his sources may have been, Arcimboldo took the concept of the composite head and developed it further. He began with a composition made of stylized animals, but based his heads on actual studies of nature. The combination of creatures and other elements into a harmonious image of discordant beings was expanded into a series of seasons and elements, and this idea was further developed into an image of Vertumnus. As we shall see, the emblematic associations110 suggested by other composites were elaborated by Arcimboldo into imperial, and then by transference princely, allegories. This sort of political allusion also had a long life: it was picked up, among other places, in the title-page illustration of Hobbes’s Leviathan.111 While Arcimboldo’s images might seem to have scurrilous antecedents, they paradoxically present serious matters in seemingly monstrous or humorous form. It is not Arcimboldo’s creation of a new type, but his creative inventions of new forms of composite heads that has made his images so compelling.



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Chapter One

Arcimboldo from 1562: The Creation of Composite Heads

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rcimboldo’s inventions must be interpreted in reference not only to some general hypotheses about what a Renaissance artist might or could have done,1 but also to the specific cultural milieu in which he actually first painted his composite heads. This cultural mileu was in Central Europe. While many roots for the development of the composite heads may be traced to Lombardy, these intriguing pictures must be related to the place where they were created while Arcimboldo was in service at the imperial court, and then only later to Milan where he continued to make such pictures for the emperor even after returning home, probably during the course of the year 1587. This chapter offers an overview of Arcimboldo’s career as court artist. Giuseppe Arcimboldo was but one of many who took the well-trodden path from Lombardy to the imperial court during the sixteenth century. Communication between Central Europe and northern Italy had been facilitated because among their crown lands the Austrian Habsburgs ruled the Tyrol, including the present Italian provinces of Trentino and Alto Adige.2 Early in the century Spain gained control over Lombardy, and since Habsburgs also reigned in Spain after the accession of Charles V (Charles I in Spain), contacts between Lombardy and Habsburg holdings in Central Europe were also strengthened. Artists, artisans, and entertainers of all stripes came to serve the Habsburg courts in Central Europe. For example, payments are recorded in September 1562, probably quite close to the time of Arcimboldo’s arrival there, to an acrobat from Milan named Ruggiero (a Springer von Maillannt Ruschier genant) in King Maximilian II’s book of accounts.3 Acrobats are pertinent to this story for these men were also performers of the commedia dell’arte and were later to collaborate with Arcimboldo.

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Two notable Milanese specialties, armor making and stonecutting, particularly enjoyed Habsburg patronage. Around 1560 the workshop of Giovanni Battista Panzeri, called Zarabaglia, and Marco Antonio Fava supplied a splendid garniture of parade armor for Archduke Ferdinand (“of the Tyrol”), brother of Emperor Maximilian II and stateholder of Bohemia from 1547 to 1563, who was long resident in Prague. Archduke Charles (Karl), another brother of the emperor and regent in Styria and adjoining lands (Innerösterreich) from 1564, also received arms from Milan circa 1560.4 Emperor Ferdinand I procured cut-stone objects from Milan and Maximilan II also owned sixty such vessels, many of which probably had been supplied by Milanese workshops like those of the Saracchi and the Miseroni.5 Under Maximilian II’s successor Rudolf II, members of the Miseroni family established a workshop in Prague which would be maintained for several generations.6 Besides stonecutters and armorers, many Lombard masons and architects were employed at Habsburg residences (including Vienna, Prague, Innsbruck, Bratislava, and Linz),7 and prior to Arcimboldo several Lombard painters had also traveled north. Among them was Francesco Terzio, an artist to the court of Archduke Ferdinand II Habsburg who may have come from Bergamo.8 Several painters who hailed directly from Milan also came to Central Europe. Documents of the early 1560s refer at times to one such figure simply as “the Milanese master”: this is Domenico Pozzo (referred to also as Poczo). Pozzo worked in Innsbruck until 1562, when, in the same year that Arcimboldo was summoned north, Emperor Ferdinand I also called Pozzo to the imperial court which at the time was residing in Prague. Much like Arcimboldo in Milan, Pozzo carried out a variety of tasks in Prague including painting shutters for the organ of the Cathedral of Saint Vitus.9 He was commissioned to execute the wall paintings in the Landrechtstube (Nové zemské desky) in the royal palace in Prague, although it is also possible that some of these paintings were painted instead by another artist from Milan. In any case, their style in general resembles that found in contemporaneous painting in the Lombard capital.10 The situation of the arts in Milan circa 1560 probably provided additional motivation for artists like Arcimboldo to look for work elsewhere. At home there was simply less demand for their talents. Arcimboldo himself had already ceased receiving regular payments from the Milan cathedral in 1558, although he continued to be involved in designing the project for the gonfalone of San Ambrogio. During the episcopate of Archbishop Carlo Borromeo the climate for the visual arts had changed. The new archbishop had strict ideas about the function and form of architecture and the figural arts to be used for the church; he introduced a new attitude that expressed the stricter side of Counter-Reformation religiosity.11 Borromeo created an austere atmosphere that allowed little latitude for artists active in his diocese, including some men with whom Arcimboldo had been directly associated. Aurelio Luini, who had had ties with Arcimboldo’s family and had worked alongside him when they were both young, was in 1581 forbidden to practice as a painter.12 Lomazzo may also have delayed the publication of his books (including the Trattato, which mentions Arcimboldo) until after the archbishop’s death in 1584 because of such circumstances.13 In any case, Arcimboldo’s period of absence from 44

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Milan (1562 to 1587 or 1588) corresponds with the episcopate of Carlo Borromeo (1560 or 1565 to 1584).14 Significantly, he left in 1562 and returned only after the cardinal’s death. In contrast with this changed atmosphere in Milan, the possibilities for artists were open in Central Europe. As previously noted, the contemporaneous Milanese prelate and historian Paolo Morigia (Morigi) says that Arcimboldo’s fame reached the ears of the imperial court, to which Maximilian II, elected king of the Romans, requested the artist come. Arcimboldo acceded to this request in 1562.15 That date, recorded on a nature study to be discussed further in chapter 5, indicates that Arcimboldo probably had come north some time during that year, since the creature depicted in the study was a rare animal that Arcimboldo could not likely have seen in Italy. Arcimboldo may have been present at the events in Frankfurt am Main when Maximilian II was crowned king of the Romans on 30 November 1562, having been elected to that position on 28 November 1562. Although the title king of the Romans may have been used before the actual coronation, as was the title king of Bohemia, it is in any case likely that the artist arrived at the Habsburg court some time during the course of that same year.16 Whenever he arrived, Arcimboldo could probably not have assumed an official position as painter to the Roman king until December 1562. On the basis of correspondence between Emperor Ferdinand I and his servitor Adam Swetkowyz, it can be determined that Arcimboldo was traveling in the suite of Maximilian II during the first months of the year 1563. This correspondence primarily concerns copies Ferdinand had ordered of two breast-length portraits (Prußtpildnus Conterfecturen), one of himself and one of Emperor Frederick III’s widow.17 The emperor began writing on 13 March with exchanges continuing on 29 March, 4 April, 13 April, 22 April, and 28 April. The artist who was to make these pictures is consistently described as the Hofmaller of the emperor’s “dear son” and is also said to be in the company of his royal majesty Maximilian II, King of the Romans. This painter is referred to as Master Joseph18—that is, Arcimboldo. Morigia was thus correct in suggesting that Arcimboldo worked for Maximilian II: he was not directly Ferdinand I’s court painter but Maximilian’s, although it is possible that he also worked under imperial supervision, as is suggested by the correspondence in which Ferdinand directs Arcimboldo’s activity.19 According to these documents Arcimboldo began his career at court as a portraitist. There is, however, no evidence that he had previously traveled to any Habsburg residence prior to 1562 to paint portraits of Habsburgs.20 On circumstantial grounds alone it is thus unlikely that he could have painted any of the portraits datable to the 1550s of members of the Habsburg dynasty that have been attributed to him.21 The recent suggestion that such portraits are copies made by him of earlier works after he had arrived in Central Europe is also implausible on stylistic grounds; those pictures are by a number of different artists.22 As noted in chapter 1, a recent hypothesis holds that Arcimboldo was brought to the imperial court to organize festivals and other spectacles after he had specialized in this sort of work in Milan. While Arcimboldo did work as designer of tournaments and other such events at court, there is no evidence for this sort of activity until 1570, T h e C r e at i o n o f C o m p o s i t e H e a d s

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and above all no documented evidence for his having done work of this kind previously in Italy.23 Arcimboldo was first used at court exclusively as a portraitist or copyist of portraits. He was employed in the genre that has rightly been regarded as the most important medium for artistic politics at court. The making of portraits also provided artists at the imperial court with a formal designation: Contrafetter.24 Like Maximilian I before him, Ferdinand I was especially concerned with the spreading of his Gedechtnus (memory) through portraits, and many portraits were painted of him.25 By the early 1560s a place for portraitists had also opened at the imperial court. Among Ferdinand’s established portraitists Jan Vermeyen was long dead and Jacob Seisenegger had retired to Linz in 1561. Although court account books (Hofzahlamtsbücher) do not survive for the years 1562 and 1563 and Arcimboldo is not listed in them in 1564, he crops up in the records of payments to court officers as a Conterfetter in 1565, where he is listed as painter to his Roman imperial majesty (then Maximilian II). Records, though not annual, exist of payments to Arcimboldo in this category through 1575.26 After Maximilian’s death in 1576, Arcimboldo retained his position as portraitist and painter to Rudolf II, appearing in the Hofstaat of Rudolf II as a Conterfetter in December 1576 with the same monthly salary, and later with raises and special grants.27 Arcimboldo is evinced painting portraits from the beginning of his career in Central Europe. He received 225 thaler for “etliche Conterfett und schöne Gemäl” (some portraits and beautiful paintings) on 15 September 1565: since it is used in tandem with a word for paintings, the term Conterfett here must indicate that these pictures were portraits. He received a similar payment, this time for 54 thaler, for “etliche Conterfett” on 6 February 1575 according to a list he had compiled.28 Lomazzo also refers in his Trattato to a portrait that Arcimboldo made of Maximilian II.29 Arcimboldo may well have made many such portraits, because Morigia also refers to his “divine hand” having done “all the portraits from life of all the personages of the House of Austria” (tutti i ritratti del naturale de tutti personaggi di Casa d’Austria).30 As distinct from drawings to date, however, just one painted portrait can with all probability be definitely identified as a painting by Arcimboldo (Figure 2.1). This work is not a portrait of a prince, princess, or other court dignitary, but a self-portrait. It is identifiable on the basis of another self-portrait, an inscribed drawing31 (Figure 2.2) that in turn serves as the basis for identifying yet another self-portrait, this one a drawing of a composite head (see Figure 1.2). The present location of the painted self-portrait is unknown, so any statement about its authenticity must be treated with caution, since current opinion must be based on an old photograph. In any event, no other paintings survive to demonstrate Arcimboldo’s work as court portraitist, as distinct from what may be called disguised portraits in the form of composite heads. As far as can be determined, Arcimboldo’s work as a painter of portraits thus survives mainly in the form of drawn and painted composite heads, as exemplified by his picture of Rudolf II in the guise of Vertumnus, wherein the emperor is made up of fruits and vegetables. Like other such double images, it can hardly be considered an official portrait (see Figure 0.3).32 Besides Arcimboldo’s self-portrait drawings, only 46

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figure 2.1 Giuseppe Arcimboldo, Self-portrait, painting, c. 1570? Location unknown. figure 2.2 Giusepe Arcimboldo, Self-portrait, drawing, 1575? Národní Galerie, Prague. Photo: Eric Lessing / Art Resource, NY.

two very summary ink sketches of Rudolf—at his coronations as king of Bohemia and as Roman king—survive to give an idea of Arcimboldo’s production as an official portraitist of the imperial house (Figure 2.3). Even so, Arcimboldo was often painting some kind of portraiture, if portraiture be defined as a counterfeit of reality in the sense that he was portraying nature.33 Although he was at first paid as a court portraitist, Arcimboldo came to do much more at court, where he often had opportunities to demonstrate his many-sided abilities.34 Lomazzo praised his extremely sharp powers of invention (acutissimo ingegno) in devising ciphers, and in finding ways to cross rivers quickly where there were no bridges or ships (passar fiumi speditamente, ove non fossero ponti ne si avessero navi.35 In 1582 the artist was sent by Rudolf II to make acquisitions of antiquities and naturalia for the imperial collections, as will be discussed in subsequent chapters.36 Probably shortly before his departure from Prague he also made a suite of drawings, depicting people making silk, for the interstices of a grotesque decoration he was proposing to Baron Ferdinand Hoffmann von Grünpichl and Strechau (1540–1607), president of the imperial Hofkammer, with an explanatory text in which among other things he T h e C r e at i o n o f C o m p o s i t e H e a d s

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figure 2.3 Giuseppe Arcimboldo, Rudolf II at his Coronation as Roman King, 1575. Národní Muzeum, Prague.

suggests that sericulture be introduced into Bohemia.37 Comanini also reports on Arcimboldo’s interest in a playing music by colors, and in an instrument which may have been a color cembalo (or harpsichord).38 Many of these talents and interests are reflected in the complex play of imagination, observation, and cogitation that went into the making of his composite heads. After what Morigia says were repeated attempts to retire, Arcimboldo finally reached his goal (Lomazzo says with difficulty) of obtaining permission to return home to Milan in 1587.39 As Morigia states, and documents verify, he remained in imperial service even after his return home,40until his death there in 1593.41 During this time he continued to receive his salary and carried out several jobs for the court.42 Thus Arcimboldo remained important for the imperial court even though he was no longer physically present there. In this regard he can be compared to contemporaneous Habsburg court artists like Hans von Aachen, who was allowed to maintain an appointment von Haus aus, meaning that he was in court employ even when he was not present in Prague. It is suggestive that Von Aachen obtained this position by court decree of 1 January 1592 at a time when Arcimboldo was also serving the court from Milan; perhaps Arcimboldo had provided an example for how this sort of appointment might function. Lomazzo says that after his return home Arcimboldo was always ready to supply the emperor with something capricciosa (whimsical). Probably this refers to several pictures he painted for the emperor, including composite heads of Flora and of Rudolf II as Vertumnus. Arcimboldo also arranged for the acquisition of works by his Milanese contemporaries. 48

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Both in his earlier and later years in Milan, Arcimboldo was involved in other sorts of design projects. Late in his life, for example, he designed the cover of a vase made for the Gonzagas in Mantua.43 Around this time he also designed a writing desk that was executed in ebony and ivory by Giuseppe Guzzi, which when Morigia described it (1595) was unfinished and still located in the house of the Miseroni.44 This sort of activity suggests that like Giulio Romano, Francesco Salviati, and other artists who served Renaissance courts, Arcimboldo had a role not just as a painter but as a designer of the applied arts. This takes him closer to the Renaissance collections, the Kunstkammer, with which his pictures may also be associated. In the end Arcimboldo gained many honors from the emperors he served, as Morigia states.45 Not only did he receive a salary and other forms of extraordinary bequest (Gnadengeld), but other special marks of favor were also bestowed on him. In 1575 Maximilian II legitimated the birth of Arcimboldo’s natural son Benedict,46 and in 1580 Rudolf II reconfirmed his and Benedict’s nobility, and improved their coat of arms.47 In 1592 Rudolf granted Arcimboldo the title of count palatine (of the Lateran)48—a singular honor that could be conveyed only by the emperor, and which in the sixteenth century was granted to only three artists: Sodoma, Titian, and Arcimboldo. It has been suggested that this form of ennoblement may cast light on the intellectual capacities of court artists who were so honored—a characteristic that is important to note in relation to Arcimboldo, as will be discussed in the next chapter—and on their role in inter-court relations.49 Something more seems to be involved in the recognition Arcimboldo received, however. His interest in genealogy, to which Morigia also attests, was not only shared by other cinquecento artists but was also important to him in a very personal way.50 As it turns out, Giuseppe could not rightly claim descent from the distinguished Milanese house of Arcimboldo with which Morigia associates him. In fact, he seems to have striven falsely to create this connection, which may be seen as part of the “incredible genealogy” he supplied to Morigia, and which the historian recorded in his history of Milan. According to Morigia and other biographers who followed him, Giuseppe was descended via his father Biagio from the distinguished noble Arcimboldo family which had, among other ancestors, produced two archbishops of Milan. It has recently been determined, however, that Biagio’s father Pasio could not have been descended from this family. So although it is said that Giuseppe had his nobility reconfirmed and his arms improved, he really was not entitled to them, for he had no previous right to claim noble status.51 Arcimboldo’s efforts at self-promotion paid off by the end of his life, and they seem to be directly expressed in his art. Although no “actual”—that is, non-composite— portraits of other individuals are known except for the sketches of Rudolf II, he made at least three (counting the painting) self-portraits that are known. In one drawing he shows himself in a frontal view, in a way that has been regarded as an allusion to Dürer’s self-portrait as Christ, and as a reference to the artist’s inspiration by a creative force coming from God (Figure 2.2).52 This same drawing has been interpreted as an expression by Arcimboldo of his melancholic qualities; it also would have represented his claim to possess creative genius since Arcimboldo, like other artists of T h e C r e at i o n o f C o m p o s i t e H e a d s

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his ilk, would have been “born under Saturn,” the planet dominating melancholy.53 In another self-portrait (see Figure 1.2), whose implications will be discussed further below, by depicting himself as a man made of paper he further claims his status as a learned literato. These considerations lead us ultimately to a confrontation with Arcimboldo’s paintings of composite heads. The date of the first versions, 1563, indicates that these striking pictures must have been conceived soon after he had arrived at court. The second series, dated 1566, was completed after an interval of a few years. Both series of the Seasons and Elements were presented together at the imperial court at the beginning of 1569. The delay in presentation suggests that among their many facets, Arcimboldo’s composite heads may have been intended to make an effect that would gain him attention. T h e C r ea t i o n o f A r c i m b o l d o ’ s C o m p o s i t e Hea d s

figure 2.4 Giuseppe Arcimboldo, Autumn, 1573. Louvre, Paris. Photo: Eric Lessing / Art Resource, NY.

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Even though Arcimboldo painted possibly no more than several score composite heads, they are by far the largest group of pictures in his painted oeuvre after 1562, as distinct from portraits (most of which do not survive or have not yet been identified with certainty), drawings, gouaches, and watercolors—including many nature studies which, as we will see, are also connected with the composites.54 The earliest extant paintings made by Arcimboldo after he came to court, and also his first pictures associated with the Habsburgs, are in fact his Seasons and Elements. These inventions were very successful and were repeated in several versions.55 Arcimboldo’s composite heads can be regarded as key documents for his work for the court between the early 1560s and the early 1590s. Pictures from the first Four Seasons series are the earliest known composite heads. Summer (Vienna, Kunsthistorisches Museum; Figure 0.1) from this series is signed on the collar, and the date 1563 appears in woven patterns on the shoulder. Winter (see Figure 1.8) from the same series is dated 1563 by an inscription on the reverse.56 Pictures belonging to the Four Elements series are the next clearly dated set. Fire (see Figure 1.1) is dated 1566 by an inscription on its back, and other pictures from this series, including a version of Water (see Figure 4.1) also in Vienna, and the initial version of Earth (see Figure 4.3), probably a work now in a private collection,57 can be dated similarly. Regardless of any other interpretation of these paintings, it seems clear that the two series were composed to complement and to be displayed together. Two in each set are represented as male—Autumn (Figure 2.4) and Winter; Air (Figure 2.5) and Fire—and two as female: Spring (Figure 2.6) and Summer; Earth and Water. These genders correspond to traditional depictions and also to their subjects’ grammatical genders in Latin and Italian (water is for example aqua; winter hiems or inverno). Two in each series face right and two face left. The corresponding pictures in each set (air/spring; summer/fire; autumn/earth; winter/water) also complement each other in gender and face toward each other.58

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figure 2.5 Copy after Arcimboldo, Air, c. 1566 or c. 1580? Private collection, Switzerland. Photo: Eric Lessing / Art Resource, NY.

figure 2.6 Giuseppe Arcimboldo, Spring, 1563. Accademia di San Fernando, Madrid.

There is more evidence that the two series were meant to be presented together. Both the Latin titles (Aqua, Ignis, Aestas, Hiems) and the dates on the backs of the versions of the Seasons and Elements in Vienna are written in the same white pigment and possess the same orthography. They were likely placed on the pictures by the same person and at the same time. It has been observed that these inscriptions are either original to the paintings or were affixed when the paintings were new. The handwriting is consistent with the mid-sixteenth century and the form of the numbers is Italianate, resembling that seen on paintings and drawings by Arcimboldo. Writing the names in Latin would have been a logical choice for someone trying to describe his pictures to people who did not speak his own language, such as an Italian writing for German-speakers. This would also have fit the humanist tone at court, to which milieu Arcimboldo belonged. It is possible that these inscriptions were put on the pictures by the artist or by a contemporary.59 There may be an additional reason why these inscriptions were placed on the backs of the paintings. They could have functioned like the poems that accompanied them when they were presented to the emperor—that is, to enhance the presentation of the pictures—and it would be consonant with the idea that they were placed there at the time the pictures were presented at the court.60 They would have helped identify the subjects of these novel compositions. The pictures include such references to the Habsburgs as the fire iron, double eagle, Habsburg lion, and imperial emblem. Although the number of such references seen in the Elements is larger than that in the Seasons, this does not speak against a dating of the Seasons from the period of Arcimboldo’s service at court, nor against their interpretation as imperial allegories.61 At the time the Seasons were painted Maximilian II was still king of the Romans, not emperor, and vaunting too many imperial associations would therefore not have been appropriate. By 1566, when the Elements had been completed, he had been emperor for two years and allusions to imperial pretensions would clearly have been more in order. In the interim between the painting of the two series, moreover, much more imperial symbolism had been elaborated around the person of Maximilian: this process started with the emperor’s entry into Vienna in 1563, of which Arcimboldo would certainly have known, as he was present in Habsburg service at the time.62 Nevertheless, the dating of these pictures has still been questioned.63 The contention has even been advanced that Arcimboldo’s compositions were conceived in Lombardy at the end of the 1550s, that the Four Seasons were almost complete by April of 1563, that interpretations of the two series as imperial allegories (to be discussed below) were elaborated only later,64 and that Winter had been realized in a Milanese ambient and only finished in Central Europe.65 But these views are based, among other mistakes, on misreadings of the documents pertaining to Arcimboldo’s career in Central Europe.66 Most important, a surviving piece of material evidence makes it probable that Arcimboldo could have begun the Seasons only after he had seen Maximilian in person. This is the cloak in which Maximilian was buried in Saint Vitus’s Cathedral, which has recently been disinterred (Figure 2.7).67 Rulers in early modern Europe frequent54

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figure 2.7 Cloak of Maximilian II, Prague Castle. Photo: Courtesy of Art Institute, Prague.

ly favored particular forms of clothing over long periods of time: for example, the Medici were buried in garments they had long worn, or that were in the same taste as clothes they had worn earlier.68 Even if the burial cloak were not exactly the same one the emperor, then king, had worn in 1563, it probably represents the sort of garment in which he was habitually to be seen—since, after all, it was deemed fit for his tomb. Crowns form part of the ornament of Maximilian’s cloak. More significant, the cloak bears the letter M, for Maximilian, on the chest close to the arm. Both these details are emphasized in the decoration of the wicker cloak that the figure of Winter wears in the painting by Arcimboldo. Furthermore, these personal references are not seen on the burial clothing of Ferdinand I or Rudolf II; they thus suggest something personal about Maximilian. It is possible that the decoration with fire iron on the cloak may refer to something Maximilian was frequently seen wearing. He was buried with a miniature version of the Order of the Golden Fleece, which includes the fire iron.69 And the inventory of his collections indicates that he had owned numerous examples of the order’s regalia.70 While portraits of Rudolf II also show him wearing the order,71 it is notable that in contrast with Maximilian, he was not inducted into the order until 1585, almost a decade after he had become emperor. Since the documentary and literary evidence indicate that Arcimboldo probably first saw Maximilian only at the end of 1562 at the earliest, there is thus no reason to doubt that the date of 1563 on the back of Winter is accurate.72 Most important, the picture makes a personal reference that was appreciated: in a festival designed by Arcimboldo that took place in 1571, Maximilian actually appeared in the guise of winter.73 The first versions of the Four Elements are clearly dated 1566 on the surviving pictures, and arguments for dating them earlier are unpersuasive. Many of the creatures depicted in Earth and Air could not have been seen in Italy, where they were unknown, but could have been seen at the Habsburg imperial court in live, stuffed, or skeletal specimens. Studies

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of animals that are found in these paintings are dated only beginning with 1562, the year Arcimboldo arrived at court; specifically, the animals found in Earth are based on studies of that year and of the years 1563, 1564, and 1566, and they also correspond to drawings with later dates, which probably derive from earlier studies. These dates securely demonstrate that the Four Elements must have been composed after Arcimboldo had come to Central Europe.74 It may well have taken him several years to make studies and then compose paintings out of so many specimens of aquatic, amphibious, avian, and terrestrial creatures, as we now know he did; perhaps all the creatures were not immediately available anyway. This could account for the gap of three years—1563 to 1566—between the Seasons and the Elements. Details of Arcimboldo’s biography also provide a good explanation of why the two series, though completed by 1566, were not given to the emperor until the beginning of 1569 and why a poem that explains many of their particulars was dedicated only in December 1568.75 Arcimboldo received payment from the court for a period of eight months ending 31 May 1566. On 2 June he received one hundred gulden aus genaden for travel to Italy and a laissez passer for Milan.76 He was back in Lombardy by at least the end of August, since he is recorded as having served as godfather at a baptism in Sedriano, a town between Milan and Magenta, on 28 August 1566.77 Although it has been suggested that Arcimboldo’s sojourn in Italy was brief,78 this probably was not the case. A previously overlooked payment record indicates that on 19 November 1568 Arcimboldo received his salary for the seventeen months between 1 June 1566 (the time of his departure) and the last day of October 1567.79 Seventeen months represents a long interval between payments, and the fact that he supplied three bills for this payment suggests that he had not been present at court to do so until perhaps after October 1567. Since he thereafter received his next payment (also previously overlooked) for the period between September 1568 and January 1569, it is entirely possible that he did not return to Vienna until September 1568.80 He would then have presented requests for the payments that he received in November of that year. This would explain why the series of two paintings that Arcimboldo had completed in 1566 was only being prepared as a gift towards the end of 1568. According to G.B. Fonteo, who worked with Arcimboldo in designing programs for festivals in 1570 and 1571 and wrote a poem dated late December 1568 to accompany the gift of the pictures to Maximilian II, the Four Elements and the Four Seasons were given together to the emperor on New Year’s Day 1569. Payments of thirteen gulden and eight thaler to Arcimboldo on 9 March 1569 and of one hundred thaler on the last day of May 1570 were made auß genaden (from grace, as a favor), and may have come in recognition of this gift, if the latter amount were not also given in recognition of his involvement with the May 1570 tournament held in Prague. It is therefore reasonable to assume that Arcimboldo presented the pictures at the beginning of 1569, soon after he had returned to the court. The gift may well have been long calculated to make a big impression and call attention to his presence and importance, and it evidently had that effect; Fonteo reports that Maximilian took the paintings into his bedchamber. We can also conclude that their effect lasted, because the emperor soon commissioned several series and individual paintings for other 56

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rulers, and later inventories indicate that more such composites were owned by the imperial collections. It also seems significant that soon after his gift of the Seasons and Elements, Arcimboldo was entrusted by the emperor with the organization of festivals. The festival he designed in 1571 moreover, reflected the meaning of the Seasons and Elements. In addition to versions of the Seasons and Elements, all other composite heads by Arcimboldo can be dated to a time after his arrival in Central Europe, and many are also distinctly associated with their creation at or for the imperial court. For example, the 1595 inventory of the Dresden Kunstkammer lists versions of the Four Seasons that are described as gifts from Maximilian to Elector August. These works may be connected to a payment of sixty-five gulden to Arcimboldo on 28 July 1574 for works he had made for the duke of Saxony at the behest of Maximilian, although this may represent only a partial payment for the pictures, and it is also possible that some nature studies which can still be found in Dresden were sent along with them.81 In any case,

figure 2.8 Giuseppe Arcimboldo, Spring, 1573. Louvre, Paris. Photo: Eric Lessing / Art Resource, NY.

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Saxon versions of the Four Seasons survive as a series in Paris (their borders are later additions; see Figures 2.4, 2.8–2.10), in which Summer (Figure 2.9) is dated 1573 on the shoulder. In the series now in Paris, Winter (Figure 2.10) bears the Saxon arms, thus transferring the political reference from the Habsburgs to the Wettin, the ruling dynasty in Dresden. Listed on the same page of the Dresden inventory is a series entitled the Four Complexions; this may be another version of the Four Elements.82 Two other pictures are also mentioned on this page of the inventory: the Cook and Wine Steward (or Butler). The Cook is described by Fonteo and Lomazzo as a figure made of cooking utensils; the Wine Steward, probably identifiable with the Mastro della cantina by Lomazzo, took the form of a figure made of wine barrels.83 Paintings by Arcimboldo meeting the description of these works, in which the Wine Steward bears Saxon arms on the plate constituting his shoulder, once existed in a private collection in Prague. 58

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figure 2.9 Giuseppe Arcimboldo, Summer, 1573. Louvre, Paris. figure 2.10 Giuseppe Arcimboldo, Winter, 1573. Louvre, Paris. Photo: Eric Lessing / Art Resource, NY.

The original versions of these last two pictures, however, were probably made for the emperor. Lomazzo indicates that pictures matching the description of the Cook and Wine Steward were in what he calls the imperial museum.84 In a marginal note dating 1571, Fonteo also mentions a painting of a cook made of utensils. In the same context he refers to a boor, a Rusticus or farmer, made of farming implements. Although the latter painting does not survive, it is recorded in a variety of prints.85 Hence the picture of a rustic must be by Arcimboldo, as must the Cook and by extension also the painting here called the Wine Steward. Other versions of the Seasons, the Elements, the Cook, and the Butler or Wine Steward were to be seen in Madrid, where they were described by several visitors at the end of the sixteenth century, and also appeared in inventories of the royal palace, although the artist’s name was not mentioned.86 The versions of the Four Seasons in this group may actually be a suite of pictures of which Summer, Autumn, and Winter T h e C r e at i o n o f C o m p o s i t e H e a d s

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now survive in American collections. Summer bears the date 1572 and the cloak of Winter bears a Habsburg impresa, the fire iron. A clue to a Spanish provenance is suggested by an inscription in Spanish on the back of Winter.87 It is possible that these pictures may be related to the appearance of Arcimboldo in a list of petitioners from the Vienna court submitted to the Spanish court in 1574.88 The Four Elements once found in Spain may also be recorded in copies. A version of Fire now in a private collection, probably an anonymous copy, depicts its subject wearing both the chain of the Order of the Golden Fleece and another medallion with a coat of arms. Whereas the medallion in the Viennese version displays the imperial double eagle with a tripartite shield like that associated with the House of Austria, especially in its Central European branch, the medallion in this Spanish version shows a single-headed eagle emblazoned with a shield divided into quarters and surrounded by another Order of the Golden Fleece: it much resembles the coat of arms of Castile and Leon.89 The surviving example of Air is a picture of similar support, provenance, and length and may thus record the Spanish, rather than the Viennese, version of this composition. (Figure 2.5)90 The Spanish series of the Elements probably dates somewhat later than the Spanish series of Seasons. In 1580 Arcimboldo received seventy florins (or gulden) through Juan de Borja, the Spanish ambassador at the imperial court, for a painting of “rostros de animales” that Borja had sent to Madrid.91 This probably was the same Earth that in 1591 Comanini wrote had been painted in “Germany” and sent to the king of Spain. However, in a letter of 4 October 1583 Guillén de San Clemente, Borja’s successor as ambassador from Philip II to the imperial court, mentions in a letter sent to the Spanish king from Vienna that Arcimboldo has sent some heads figured with diverse animals and flowers, for which Rudolf II requests that the king show favor (merced, the equivalent of Gnade) to “Joseph Arzimboldo, his painter.”92 These may well be other examples of the Elements. If so, it would indicate that the process of composition of the series was protracted, and that the pictures were indeed sent from the emperor to Spain, but—as the 1580 payment would suggest—with the expectation that favor be shown to Arcimboldo by the recipient of the gift. There is also evidence that versions of the Wine Steward and the Cook were to be seen in Spain. While, to judge from ocular inspection, a surviving painting of the Wine Steward was probably not executed by the artist himself, it nevertheless records the existence of another such composition. Significantly, the picture bears the Spanish arms on its shoulder. Its presence, in place of the Saxon arms that appear in the Dresden example, suggests that like the Seasons and Elements this Cook and Wine Steward were also meant to make some kind of allusion to the king—perhaps a sign that they were in his service.93 Further references situate other composite heads at the imperial court. The earliest of these may be mocking pictures of the imperial vice-chancellor, the jurist Johann Ulrich Zasius. Lomazzo refers to a picture in which Zasius’s nose is made of a bird, although the rest of the description does not otherwise correspond exactly to any known surviving or documented picture; Comanini mentions a hilarious portrait commissioned by Maximilian in which a doctor of laws whose face has been 60

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ravaged by French pox is made of animals and roast fish.94 Two pictures that may fit this description are noted in the inventory of the Prague collections drawn up in 1621. A contemporary report on the visit of Duke Elector August of Saxony to Vienna in February 1573 mentions that he saw another portrait in which Zasius was made of papers; when turned upside down, it formed a vase made of flowers both alive and dried. The importance of this picture, which unfortunately does not survive, will be discussed later.95 Three other invertible paintings by Arcimboldo do, however, still exist. All are probably identifiable with works cited in the 1621 inventory. These are a head made of root vegetables, which when inverted becomes a bowl (see Figure 0.4); a head made of various roast meats, which when inverted becomes a serving platter (Figure 2.11), and a head made of fruit, which when inverted becomes a bowl containing fruit (Figure 7.5). The last work may also be cited in a 1635 appendix to the 1621 inventory.96 The last mentioned head also resembles one of the paintings that Arcimboldo painted for Rudolf II after returning to Milan: his portrait of the emperor in the guise of Vertumnus. This work can be identified by a poem by Gregorio Comanini that was included in Il Figino, published in 1591. Comanini describes the picture as still being located in Milan, whence it is about to be sent to the imperial court. According to Giovanni Filippo Gherardini, the painting probably was sent to the emperor in January 1591 along with some poems, including those of Comanini and Gherardini. The picture is recorded again in 1635, and also in Swedish inventories of goods seen in Prague and taken in the Swedish sack of 1648. Similarly Arcimboldo’s Flora, another picture executed in Milan, is also described by Comanini, who wrote a poem on it that that appears in the compendium of Gherardini and in Lomazzo; Comanini says it was sent to the emperor in 1590. It is also listed in 1635.97 One other picture, known through several copies, also appears in the Prague and Swedish inventories.98 This is Arcimboldo’s celebrated Librarian, a figure made of books (Figure 2.12). One of the most startling discoveries of works by Arcimboldo in recent years is that of a painting described by Comanini in which all the seasons appear in one anthropomorphic head: autumn represented by grapes and apples, summer by grain as a cloak and cherries in the ear, spring by a trunk of the figure. This work most likely was conceived in close proximity to the painting Vertumnus—Comanini announces that he owned it, so it must have been done between 1587 and 1591—and it may represent that god in the guise of an old woman, the appearance with which he seduced Pomona.99 Lomazzo also mentions a composite head representing Janus that was in the imperial collections, though this picture has not yet been identified. This list of composite heads by Arcimboldo is probably not yet complete. For instance, versions of the Elements, which to judge from their descriptions probably were Arcimboldesque compositions, are listed in an inventory of the prince of Liechtenstein’s collection drawn up in 1613. Another painting described as a composite, Bacchus, appears in the same inventory.100 This may be a version of a picture that Fonteo mentions as being of Lenaeus (Bacchus) in his comments. Several other versions of Arcimboldo’s Seasons dated from the 1570s also exist, and while some of these are copies, others may well be workshop replicas.101 More may yet be found. T h e C r e at i o n o f C o m p o s i t e H e a d s

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figure 2.11 Giuseppe Arcimboldo, The Cook, 1570. Invertible. Nationalmuseum, Stockholm.

figure 2.12 Giuseppe Arcimboldo, (copy after?) The Librarian, c. 1566? Slott, Skokloster, Sweden. Photo: Eric Lessing / Art Resource, NY.

Arcimboldo’s composite heads enjoyed a very successful reception and, as noted in the introduction, were much imitated from an early date. This complicates the issue of attribution. T o u r n a m e n t s , Fe s t ival s , a n d Pai n t i n g s

While Arcimboldo did not start as a designer of court festivals, this activity nevertheless deserves special attention. Morigia says that Arcimboldo pleased not only Maximilian but the entire court with “many other inventions, as of tournaments, jousts, games, wedding ceremonies, coronations, and particularly when Karl duke of Austria took a wife.”102 Morigia also mentions his “apparati di commedie”— esigns for comedies or theatrical presentations.103 Lomazzo praises the singularity of Arcimboldo’s inventions, above all in masquerades (mascherate), citing his tournament designs—especially those created in 1571 for the Vienna celebration of the

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wedding of Archduke Charles (Karl).104 At least four books of drawings that once existed for such events are recorded in the 1607–11 inventory of the collection of Rudolf II; one such book survives, containing drawings that can be identified as having been made for definite occasions, including a few that can be associated with the 1571 Vienna tournament (Figures 2.13 and 2.14).105 Independent accounts, letters, and many other documents also relate to Arcimboldo’s designs for the Vienna ceremonies, as well as to a tournament he designed in Prague in 1570. Several similar events of the 1570s and 1580s may also have been designed by him.106 It is now certain that he did design a running at the ring that was held in Prague in 1578.107 Renaissance festivals were obviously a form of entertainment, but they were also what has aptly been called the spectacle of power.108 In them the ruler, his family, and court could appear as heroes, gods, or personifications of virtue. They could triumph over evil and appear as virtuous and above all in control of worldly dominions. The power of these festivals was manifest in the subjects they enacted and in their

figure 2.13 Giuseppe Arcimboldo, design for costume, 1585 or before, Uffizi, Florence. figure 2.14 Giuseppe Arcimboldo, design for costume, 1585 or before, Uffizi, Florence.

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ceremonies. Of course the splendid costumes, sets, and consumption of food and wine that accompanied the events also indicated the rulers’ wealth and the power that lay behind it. The first such event definitely designed by Arcimboldo was a tournament held in Prague in February 1570 to celebrate the betrothal of Archduchess Anna, daughter of Maximilian II, to Philip II of Spain.109 The duke elector of Saxony, the margrave elector of Brandenburg, and the duke of Bavaria joined Maximilian in a procession leading to a joust, or running at the ring, held on February 26; Arcimboldo designed the pomp and its costumes. The artist himself marched in the procession, where one account says he was recognizable by his long beard (see Figure 2.2). The most famous tournament designed by Arcimboldo was held in Vienna in April 1571 to celebrate the marriage of Archduke Karl to Maria, daughter of the duke of Bavaria. This tournament, which glorified the eternity of the Habsburg reign and their widespread dominions, is important for the interpretation of Arcimboldo’s paintings. Both its theme and its costumes resembled Arcimboldo’s paintings of seasons and elements—notably Water, composed of fish—and participants also dressed as animals, aquatic creatures, and various other creatures like those found in Arcimboldo’s pictures. The tournament of 1571 in fact specifically elaborated themes that had been presented by Arcimboldo’s paintings of composite heads. In its procession Habsburgs and their courtiers personified seasons, elements, and—in an even more complicated manner—rivers, countries of Europe, winds, and gods. The liberal arts and their companions (see Figure 5.1) were also present. The theme was Europe’s response to the challenge of Asia and Africa; the tournament obviously represented the cohesion of Europe under the Habsburgs, and in turn the Habsburgs’ dominion over the world. The message was also like that of the paintings: as the Habsburgs ruled the body politic (note the corporeal metaphor again), so they ruled over the seasons and the elements.110 Maximilian appeared as winter in this event, and in Arcimboldo’s initial Seasons, winter is the painting marked out as the emperor’s own (see Figure 1.8). Such spectacles also were intended as a form of entertainment . On the day after the procession of Europe, another tournament consisting of running at the ring thus contained comic aspects. As was the case with Arcimboldo’s paintings, a serious message could be delivered in the form of an entertaining, witty, even joking image. Along with artists and courtiers, Italian performers were also present at the 1570 and 1571 tournaments. One was Giovanni Tabarino, also known as Jan Tabarin, who in 1568 had already come north and been present at an imperial Diet in Speyer, where he gave performances of the commedia dell’arte. The 1570 tournament brought together for the first time a larger group of Italian actors—including Tabarino, Antonio Soldino, Giamarina Romano, and Arcangelo d’Abruzzo—who performed as acrobats as well as comedians: in the 1570 tournament they portrayed devils and a dragon inhabiting an artificial mountain.111 Tabarino also returned to participate as an acrobat in the 1571 tournament. It is significant that he and his acrobatic troupe were the same performers who helped introduce the commedia dell’arte into Central Europe.112 66

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Arcimboldo’s involvement with the commedia dell’arte, and his treatment of peasants as laughable at the 1570 tournament, are noteworthy in light of claims that his paintings have popular or carnivalesque sources. The claim relates his composite pictures to a “dehierarchization” of the world supposedly effected in the carnival, and explicitly associates his painting with the commedia dell’arte.113 And it is true that he may have employed some popular sources or elements in his art, as is indicated by a signed drawing (Madrid, Museo del Prado)114 of a woman going to or coming from market. But evidence from the 1570 tournament itself does not support this claim. Peasants were depicted in this event, an appeal to popular culture was indisputably made, and practitioners of the commedia dell’arte were involved. Yet no disruption or inversion of the hierarchy is to be found in Arcimboldo’s invention. (Nor of course is this suggested by the drawing of the market woman). On the contrary, the tournament vividly contrasted the peasants’ lack of skill and coarse behavior with the performance of their social betters. This contrast was made even more effective by a local male boor playing the part of a peasant bride. The misbehavior and ineptitude of peasants was derided, and laughter served to confirm the superiority of social superiors—hence affirming the social hierarchy, not undermining it. Pictures of peasants painted later at the court of Rudolf II similarly present them as base, ugly, brutish, and violent. This sort of visual humor, which might also be found in other paintings possibly once owned by Maximilian, presents a negative depiction of the lower social orders (a word more appropriate here than the modern notion of “classes”). This form of degradation does not “dismember” the social structure, as has been claimed, any more than it disrupts the social order or turns it on its head, as the argument for “carnivalization” would have it. On the contrary, many Rudolfine paintings, like Arcimboldo’s tournament designs, use what has been called “repressive humor” to reaffirm the social hierarchy.115 This, too, was a function of the tournament. T h e S o c ial C o n t e x t a n d Re c e p t i o n o f Arcimboldo’s Composites

Arcimboldo’s involvement with court entertainments may suggest the relation of his pictures to the functions of entertainment and display. It may also suggest some insights into the context in which his paintings were received. Duke Elector August of Saxony had participated in the Prague tournament of 1570, and in 1573 he returned to pay a visit to the emperor. During his visit to Vienna in February 1573 the duke elector was treated to a program of recreation that stretched over several days. On 21 February the emperor took him on a hunt that ended at the Schloss (castle) at Kaiserebersdorf, east of Vienna. The next day the emperor showed him the new castle gardens and the Neugebäude, an important residence being laid out at the time. These residences were comparable to the Italian villas in their function as suburban places for retreat and leisure. On 22 February the empress Maria showed the Saxon duchess the imperial stables, while Maximilian took the elector to see pictures and T h e C r e at i o n o f C o m p o s i t e H e a d s

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other things in camera, most likely in the private quarters of the Vienna Hofburg.116 The practice of showing gardens and collections to important visitors was repeated during the reign of Maximilian, who entertained the king of France similarly the following year.117 During the reign of Rudolf II this was also standard practice for the reception of ambassadors and other dignitaries, including German princes, in Italy, as exemplified in Medicean Florence. The use, display, and function of Rudolf’s Kunstkammer have been described as forms of representation of imperial majesty,118 and as is indicated by accounts of August’s visit in 1573 and of that of his successor Christian II in 1607, displaying collections of art and horses may have been one element in a larger series of entertainments, as was the case at other courts. In 1607 hunts, banquets, and tourneys were also laid on, and Christian met alone with Rudolf II in the Kunstkammer.119 A contemporaneous account of the 1573 visit by the Italian nobleman Ottavio Landi describes one of the objects that the duke elector was shown at that time by the emperor. This was a portrait of the courtier Ulrich Zasius, depicted in the form of a composite head that provoked laughter: this painting must also have been by Arcimboldo. It was an invertible head, which appeared to be a vase of flowers when viewed right-side up, a portrait of Zasius made of paper document pages when the image viewed upside down. This last image of Zasius was, like many of Arcimboldo’s other pictures, obviously also allegorical. The chancellor became literally a man of paper (fatto tutto di scritture, di cedoli, di polize, di lettere, et di memoriali). It may be recalled that a similar conceit is involved in Arcimboldo’s self-portrait as a man made of documents. His picture of Zasius probably caused quite a stir, since the duke elector of Saxony acquired pictures from him soon afterwards.120 On this and on other occasions, pictures by Arcimboldo may well have provoked conversation—much as the picture of Zasius seems to have done, since it was singled out in Landi’s account of the 1573 visit. This may have been one of the paintings’intended functions: to provoke discussion as well as entertain, and perhaps to occasion witty repartee as well as present a message. These elements are all suggested by one of the major contemporary sources for Arcimboldo’s paintings, Gregorio Comanini’s Il Figino. Comanini’s treatise takes the form of a dialogue set in Milan. While its purported subject is imitation, much important discussion centers round a conversation about Arcimboldo’s paintings. Most of the paintings discussed are the artist’s later works—Vertumnus, Flora, and the head showing all seasons in one—and we may well imagine that the scene is a Milanese one. But we may well imagine that such discussions occurred at the imperial court as well. Wit, learning, intellectual content, and a message are all suggested by Comanini’s account, and they are all present in Arcimboldo’s work—as is the naturalistic content that Comanini also claims is present. Comanini also rightly gives a clue to how the pictures function as more than entertainments or joking pastimes: they are related to poems, and they convey a serious content. It is to these subjects that we turn in the next chapters.

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Learning, Poetry, and Art

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n Il Figino, Comanini suggests that something more than mere entertainment or stimulation of conversation is involved in Arcimboldo’s paintings of composite heads. He says of them: I don’t recall ever before having seen such charmingly inventive paintings or such learned allegories as these. I know that the good painter needs to be as well read as the good poet [literally fa bisogno di una certa universale letteratura] because his knowledge enables him to become another Proteus, transforming himself into diverse forms and dressing in the costumes of others, as is appropriate for a good imitator.1

Comanini not only calls the paintings allegories but grounds his comment in the suggestion that Arcimboldo is to be related to the ideal of the uomo universale, someone who possesses knowledge of the sciences as well as the arts. This chapter will follow Comanini’s lead in examining Arcimboldo’s connections with humanism, poetry, and natural philosophy as providing further insights into the immediate reception and interpretation of his paintings. Although the ideal of the universal man might seem to be a Renaissance cliché,2 it does not seem to hit so far of the mark where the imperial court in the later sixteenth century is concerned. The bounds between different cultural endeavors were fluid in Prague and Vienna, where one could be a humanist, scientist, and artist at the same time.3 In sixteenth-century Milan, Arcimboldo’s other main place of work, as in other Italian centers, it was also possible to be a painter, poet, natural historian, and theorist at the same time. While some scholars have sought to show differences between the manners of expression, activities, and interests of humanists or poets 71

and those of artists, and to downplay the significance of the two groups’ collaboration and mutual impact, an ever-increasing amount of information also indicates that the argument for this separation does not hold in many cases, and especially not in regard to Arcimboldo.4 Let us begin with Arcimboldo’s initial period of activity at the imperial court. It has been noted that “Maximilian gathered around him a whole collection of learned men.”5 These included figures from many different countries, religious confessions, and intellectual backgrounds. Arcimboldo had contact with several of these men, and with other humanists as well. Among those present at the court of Maximilian II were the imperial historian Wolfgang Lazius, who was also physician to the emperor, professor of medicine at the university of Vienna, and a cartographer and scholar of numismatics and genealogy, characteristic humanist interests; Paulus Fabritius, imperial astronomer (mathematicus), personal physician to the emperor, botanist, and poet; Johannes Sambucus, court historiographer, compiler of an important emblem book, and major book collector; Hugo Blotius, imperial librarian and avid correspondent; Lazarus Schwendi, military commander but promoter of irenicism; Jacopo Strada, antiquarian, architect, and fountain designer; and Johannes Crato, imperial physician and philosopher. Also found at Maximilian’s court were the botanists Carolus Clusius (Charles de l’Ecluse), Rembert Dodoens, and Pietro Mattioli, whose significance for Arcimboldo will be elaborated later. Other important thinkers and writers, including poet Philip Sidney, cabalist Guillaume Postel, and Jesuit educator Peter Canisius, all worked in or passed through Vienna, where they had contact with the court. Arcimboldo was probably in contact with many of these people and with several other men of comparable note. Paolo Morigia offers evidence for what was possibly the earliest contact between Arcimboldo and a member of these learned circles. The reference appears in the first version of Morigia’s biography of the artist, which forms part of a lengthy account of the house of Arcimboldo. Morigia traces the origins of the Arcimboldi to Germany in the era before Charlemagne, recounts stories of their ancestors, and gives a fantastic etymology for the family name. He says he has obtained this information from Giuseppe Arcimboldo, that material on the family origins has come from an old book on parchment written in German that Maximilian’s physician had read to the artist, and that the physician has ascertained that there are two places named Arcimboldo. Morigia adds that Arcimboldo’s source indicates that cemeteries in Augsburg and Regensburg have tombs with the arms of Arcimboldo, and that there are many Arcimboldi living in many German cities.6 While Morigia’s stories about the ancient Arcimboldi and their burial in German cemeteries strain credulity and in fact offer a false genealogy for the painter’s direct family, which could not claim noble roots, some details about his sources do ring true. Even in their use of a false genealogy, they point to an identification with a real person. This person is Wolfgang Lazius, physician to Maximilian II. Lazius was born in Vienna, the son of a Swabian immigrant. He became professor of medicine in Vienna, and was thus clearly a native speaker of German; in fact, in a later controversy with Strada he stood for the dignity of the Germans.7 Lazius was 72

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also a noted historian whose researches in the first instance involved local history, starting with a history of Vienna: this book had gained him noble status and employment as Emperor Ferdinand I’s historian.8 It is easy to associate old manuscripts, which Lazius eagerly sought and used, with this sort of study. Lazius was deeply concerned with genealogy, an abiding interest of the Habsburgs. It had been one of their preoccupations since the time of Maximilian I (reigned 1493–1519). Lacking connections with older royal houses, as well as ancient noble origins, the Habsburgs, like many other arriviste monarchs, created their own roots, setting them in a legendary past.9 They placed their origins in Roman, even Trojan antiquity, and styled themselves “the last descendants of Aeneas.”10 The Habsburg cult of ancestors was also manifested in works of art—most notably in the triumphal arch for Maximilian I constructed in paper by Albrecht Dürer and other artists. Lazius made significant contributions to these efforts. He wrote an extensive history of Austria that remained unpublished. This work extolled Habsburg traditions, which he traced back to the Carolingian past.11 His genealogy of the Habsburgs appeared in print most fully in a work that was published in 1564, and must therefore have been in press during the time that Arcimboldo was arriving in Vienna.12 Lazius’s research resulted in the production of what have been called “incredible genealogies.”13 Some of the main sources for these genealogies were the forgeries of Annius of Viterbo, who had written world history from the times of Noah—for example, identifying the arrival of Janus in Italy with that of Noah—and had concocted forgeries, such as a text purported to be by Berosus, to support his narratives.14 On such bases the origins of the Habsburgs, as of other noble Germanic families, could be traced back not only to the ancient Germans, Romans, or Trojans but even to the Hebrews. In his use of the pseudo-Berosus texts, Guillaume Postel was Annius’s primary successor, and he supplies a link to Lazius since he was also present at the Vienna court in the 1550s. Lazius shared Postel’s interest in this use of the pseudoBerosus.15 Lazius’s major work on the migrations of the ancient Germans clearly represents the tradition of Annius.16 This book has been described as tying the knot between Noachine legend and modern nobility and extending it to the Germanic world. In it Lazius traces the roots of each of the peoples who compose the German nation to the tribes mentioned by the Roman historian Tacitus in his De Germania. He also concludes each part of his discussion with a genealogy of all the modern noble families.17 All enter into the Habsburg fold. Lazius’s antiquarian researches aided his genealogical investigations. In addition to being an avid coin collector and numismatist, he collected books and other antiquities and evidently traveled to do research as well. Like other humanist antiquarians, Lazius used the visible relics of the past to comment on, or construct an account of, the past. His commentary on the imperial coin collection exemplifies his approach, which might otherwise be described as uncritical or imaginative.18 Indeed, his study of coins was criticized by the antiquarian Jacopo Strada in the controversy with Lazius. Most notoriously, Lazius used evidence of monuments and their L e a r n i n g , P o e t r y, a n d A r t

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inscriptions to support his construction of a fantastic genealogy. On the basis of a Hebrew transcription—probably from a Jewish gravestone—found in Gumpendorf near Vienna, which he had had transcribed and explicated, he argued that the Germans were directly descended from the Hebrews.19 Many of these features resonate in Morigia’s account of Arcimboldo’s family, and point to their source in Lazius. The combination of genealogy with other antiquarian pursuits speaks for Lazius’s approach, as does the use of manuscripts together with monuments to build an argument. The fantastic genealogy Morigia gives of the Arcimboldi reflects Lazius’s approach to tracing aristocratic lineages of Germanic nobles, with whom the Arcimboldi are associated in Morigia’s text. The discussion of how the German physician interpreted evidence supposedly found in German cemeteries to pertain to the Arcimboldi resembles Lazius’s own sort of reasoning in finding Hebraic origins for the Germans. One aspect of Morigia’s account of how he had learned the origins of the Arcimboldi seems to betray the influence of another method introduced by Annius that also was employed by Lazius. This is the innovative use of etymology as a historical method. Annius employed the process of equivocation, which is used as a means for studying etymology as a key to history.20 This method is evinced by Morigia’s account of how the name Arcimboldo is to be related to the discovery of a silver mine in a wood by Saitfrid, a mythical Arcimboldo ancestor. In this fantastic etymology, arcimboldo is a word that means material found together with silver, and boldo means bosco, or wood in Italian. Hence, says Morigia, Arcimboldo means mine in a wood, which name has stuck with the Arcimboldi and explains why their family coat of arms is silver impaled.21 There are several reasons why Lazius might have had occasion to come directly into contact with artists. Cartography and chorography interested him because he envisaged the composition of a monumental group of commentaries on Austria—an aim he expressed on the cover page of his Typi chorographici provinicarum Austriae, a compilation of eleven historical maps that was published in Vienna in 1561.22 Significantly, these maps were made by Lazius himself: he first made drawings for use as models for the illustrations, then did the etchings or engravings. He thus may be said to have acted as an artist. For this reason, if not also to have assistance in execution, he may well have had cause to talk with a professional artist.23 There are also good reasons, conversely, why Arcimboldo would have sought genealogical information from Lazius. Arcimboldo was himself involved in the construction of an incredible genealogy for his immediate family, as we have seen. According to the information Morigia says he received from the painter, and to the other biographers who have followed, Giuseppe Arcimboldo was descended via his father Biagio from a distinguished noble family of that name. It has recently been determined, however, that Biagio’s father Pasio could not have been descended from this family.24 The document Giuseppe received from Lazius may therefore be seen as something the painter would have used for his own genealogical efforts to serve his ambitious self-fashioning. This ambition, as remarked, is what his self-portraits also reveal. It is this sort of self-promotion that may also be associated with his painting 74

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such extraordinary pictures as the Seasons and Elements and then presenting them as a group; after absence from court, such a gift would have had some éclat. In any case, soon after Arcimboldo’s first arrival at court, Lazius was involved in the design of a program on which he needed to collaborate with artists: the first royal entry of Arcimboldo’s master Maximilian II into Vienna, held on 16 March 1563. This event was treated with much pomp and ceremony, and saw the erection of many temporary decorations. In this regard it can be compared to the “joyous entries” by which rulers were greeted in the cities of the Low Countries, France, and Italy. On such occasions the prince would enter the city in emulation of a Roman triumph. This would have had a special resonance for Maximilian, since his title at the time was King of the Romans. In a joyous entry, triumphal arches were erected at various points in a city, as they were for Maximilian in Vienna. They could be decorated with the ruler’s personal devices, with depictions of his ancestors, with his coat of arms, and with heroes or personifications that were identified with him, as also happened in Vienna. All contributed to the spectacular presentation of Renaissance power, which was to become one of the themes of Arcimboldo’s work as well.25 Lazius was called upon to design the imagery of the arches erected for the entry of Maximilian into Vienna. Although some scholars have suggested that when humanists collaborated with artists they were largely concerned with supplying texts, Lazius, like many other humanists at the imperial court, certainly did more than that. Not only did he write the inscriptions that appeared on the arches, but he invented their figural imagery as well.26 The program he devised consisted of themes emphasizing geography, religion, and family in celebration of the Habsburgs; it urged Maximilian to uphold religion and advance Austrian interests. A tournament was also held.27 Several artists known to have collaborated on the actual execution of the arches for the 1563 entry also had intellectual aspirations.28 One was Melchior Lorck, a learned artist who hailed originally from Flensburg in Schleswig-Holstein. Lorck was a man with many interests, wide competence, and humanist inclinations. Like Lazius, he was interested in chorography and the history of the ancient Germans, conspicuously demonstrated by the series of costume studies he did between 1567 and 1573. He later entered the circle of the antiquarian and cartographer Abraham Ortelius, whose interests paralleled those of Lazius and who was connected with many other artists, including the nature painter and Habsburg court artist Joris Hoefnagel, and also Pieter Brueghel.29 A printmaker and draftsman of noble origins, Lorck traveled first to Central Europe and then to Constantinople in the suite of an imperial embassy to the Porte, the court of the Ottoman Sultan, where he arrived probably late in 1555. He lived in that imperial embassy compound for several years, making studies of buildings and monuments in the city and also of Ottoman life and, of individual Turks. He even made a portrait of the sultan.30 More than just enemies, rivals, and antagonists of the Habsburgs, the Turks possessed much material and visual culture that was of evident interest to members of the imperial dynasty, who collected Turkish items and included the portrayal of Turks as characters in their festivals.31 Turkic elements also enter into the imaginary of Arcimboldo, where they may be seen in some of the turbaned and otherwise “oriental” features of his L e a r n i n g , P o e t r y, a n d A r t

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costume designs. Lorck had returned to Vienna in 1560 and would have been present when Arcimboldo arrived in Austria; it is thus possible that they had either direct or indirect contact. Heinrich Vogtherr the Younger is also documented as having painted the arches for the Vienna entry. The younger Vogtherr was another many-sided artist. He had participated in the publication of his father’s Kunstbüchlein, one of the handbooks published in the wake of Albrecht Dürer. These handbooks contain instructional material on such matters as the graphic representation of theoretical ideas on the orders of human proportion to make them more broadly accessible to artists and artisans.32 Artists and humanists including Arcimboldo and his associates also demonstrably collaborated on events similar to the 1563 entry later during Maximilian’s reign as emperor, and they continued to do so during the reign of Rudolf II. A good example is Rudolf’s 1577 entry into Vienna, his first after he had gained the imperial title, which may illuminate Lazius’s way of communicating with artists in 1563. In 1577 the city council of Vienna had again entrusted the entry to a court humanist, in this case court astronomer Paulus Fabritius, who like Lazius was simultaneously a professor of medicine at the university. Fabritius designed several triumphal arches that were constructed at different points throughout the city. He supplied inscriptions and invented programs for them which contained political, technological, astronomical, and political allusions. The arches were erected and decorated by a company of artists including the painter Bartholomeus Spranger and the sculptors Hans Mont and Matthias Monmacher.33 Fabritius specifically says that he served as humanist advisor on this project. Yet the collaboration was far from one-sided. Spranger contributed poetic inventions and personifications to the arches, to use Fabritius’ words. Give and take occurred in the conception of their symbolism: the artists convinced the humanist for the sake of variety, ornament, and novelty to substitute a Pegasus for a pyramid to be placed on top of one of the arches. Along with copiousness, variety is one of the principles of expression in traditional rhetoric, and ornament here did not simply mean the application of some sort of decoration to the arch, but was a reflection of rhetorical concerns: the application of the appropriate quantity and quality of ornament was again one of the chief concerns of rhetoric. The application of such rhetorical criteria suggests that the artists were applying literary principles to the visual arts, and the terms Fabritius uses (poetic inventions and personifications) clearly indicates that poetic ones were in mind. The notion that poetry is like painting is of course an ancient commonplace (recall Horace’s ut pictura poesis—as is painting, so is poetry).34 This concept was very much alive during the Renaissance. Most famously, the concept of pictures as visual poems, poesie, was applied in the sixteenth century to mythological pictures by Titian representing stories from Ovid, such as Perseus and Andromeda and the Rape of Europa. Titian’s pictures are closely associated with Habsburg patronage. The initial versions of them were made for Philip II of Spain, Maximilian II’s first cousin and brother-in-law. A second series of Titian’s poesie was acquired by Maximilian him76

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self in 1568, along with another painting by Titian.35 It is thus likely that the idea of thinking of pictures as poems was current in the circles in which Arcimboldo was working during the 1560s—circles to which Fabritius as court astronomer and physician would also have belonged. This, too, provides some background to Arcimboldo’s thinking about painting, and we will pick up the relation of his paintings to poems in the next chapter. Titian’s paintings represented female nudes and were meant to be seen in various views. This is also how many notorious paintings by the imperial artist Spranger worked—namely his mythological pictures of the 1580s, in which nude bodies are intertwined and locked together in situations that are often erotic. The comparison is not forced because Rudolf II, for whom Spranger’s paintings were made, was from 1563 to 1571 brought up at the court of Philip II—his uncle, first cousin, and eventual brother-in-law—where he would have seen Titian’s poesie. He would also have been able to see second versions of Titian’s paintings in the imperial collections when he returned to Vienna in 1571. A reference in a posthumous inventory of Rudolf’s collections that must apply to Spranger’s mythological paintings referred to them as “poetisch,” so this notion seems to have stuck.36 The poetic quality of Spranger’s images is exemplified by their use of the pictorial equivalent of rhetorical ornament. Here, for example, the multiplication of contrasts and contrapposto may be regarded as pictorial antitheses.37 Similarly, a principle like that of rhetorical decorum determined that the amount of ornament was to be related to the genre of painting depicted: more being used for a higher genre such as history painting, less for a lower genre such as the painting of animals or of everyday life. A naturalistic mode would be employed for lower genres of paintings, whereas higher genres would allow for idealized or fantastic forms of imitation.38 This way of thinking of painting as poetic or rhetorical is also germane to Arcimboldo’s creations, as we shall see. Beyond their association with poetic invention, genealogical themes like those Lazius had introduced in the 1563 entry also recur in later humanist programs for Habsburg celebrations. They are conspicuous, for example, in the designs for a 1571 tournament that Arcimboldo helped organize. Among other things, the program for this tournament emphasized the significance of the Habsburgs’ mythical origins, as the 1563 Vienna entry designed in part by Lazius had done.39 The 1563 entry had furthermore been the first of many such events, including entries, tournaments, balls, masquerades, and other entertainments and ceremonies that spanned the reign of Maximilian and continued during that of Rudolf. These ceremonies glorified the monarch, expressed his political aspirations, and presented themes of imperial ideology. Entries and tournaments combined mythical, ancient, historical, and literary characters and allusions. Tournaments were replete with mythological heroes, supernatural beings, fireworks, and what we would now describe as special effects. Large-scale enterprises, they often engaged humanists and scholars as well as artists in their design.40 Any possible contact between Lazius and Arcimboldo must have occurred between 1562 or 1563, when the painter came to Vienna, and 1565, the year Lazius died. L e a r n i n g , P o e t r y, a n d A r t

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This period was crucial both for the conception of Arcimboldo’s composite heads and for Lazius’s direct involvement with artists. From correspondence between the court official Adam Swetkowyz and Emperor Ferdinand I, discussed in the last chapter, we know that Arcimboldo must have been in Vienna at the time of the 1563 entry. Hence he could have witnessed the entry even if there is no record that he actually worked on it. Arcimboldo may well have been inspired by this entry and thus gained more than manuscripts from his contact with Lazius. In any case, he became imperial pageant master in 1570. His designs for tournaments also evince his connection with humanists, including Jacopo Strada, who had been Lazius’s rival at court. Strada was born in Mantua into an affluent and noble family. He received a humanist’s training and also seems to have gained some artistic instruction, probably in the circle of Giulio Romano. The Mantua court of the Gonzagas, at which Giulio was the prominent artistic personality, may have sparked Strada’s long-lasting interests in the history and remains of ancient Rome. Strada is known to have been in Rome, and he also worked elsewhere in Italy, France, and then Nuremberg in the 1540s. In Nuremberg he came into contact with the Fuggers, to whom he purveyed books and antiquities. This began his career as a dealer in antiquities.41 Strada was much more than a dealer; he helped advise collectors and was himself a collector of coins and manuscripts, as well as a renowned scholar of antiquity. He planned a multi-volume opus which would have been a sort of encyclopedia on the subject. One result of his researches was the publication of a study of ancient numismatics in 1553.42 These interests are suggested in Titian’s famed portrait of him, in which he is shown with books, coins, and statuettes (Vienna, Kunsthistorisches Museum). In 1558 Strada first appeared on the payrolls of the imperial court. Soon thereafter he became embroiled in controversy with Lazius, whose commentary on the imperial coin collection he criticized severely. In this controversy Strada also had occasion to correspond directly with Maximilian II, who was then still just an archduke. Accused by Lazius of being a mere painter, Strada wrote a letter to Maximilian in June 1559 in which he questioned Lazius’s competence as a numismatist.43 Strada’s evident ambitions to become advisor in such matters—which clearly epitomize, among other things, his striving to be taken seriously as a humanist—came to fruition in 1563, the year of Arcimboldo’s arrival at court: in that year he was appointed imperial antiquarius. In this role, Strada advised the emperor on acquisitions and in general seems to have overseen the imperial collections. Strada had already been appointed architect to the court in 1560, and architecture represents another side of his interests. He edited the seventh book of the treatise on architecture by Serlio, and in 1565 in Vienna he designed an important Renaissance structure for Maximilian: the Stallburg, which was used to house both the imperial horses and the imperial collections. From about 1568 he was probably involved in the design of the Neugebäude, a noteworthy imperial villa located to the east of Vienna near the imperial palace at Kaiserebersdorf, for which he supplied fountains and other waterworks—another subject that occupied him for a time, and 78

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about which he produced several manuscripts.44 At the Neugebäude Strada he also collaborated with numerous artists, including Spranger, who was later to become a leading painter at Rudolf II’s court.45 Drawing was central to Strada’s antiquarian endeavors. Visual images were essential to this pursuit because they provided an indispensable way to communicate information. Hence the use of illustrations as woodcuts for publications on numismatics, and the large corpus of drawings replicated and presented in numerous manuscripts to potential patrons.46 Strada used his collections, which he called his musaeum, to prepare libri di disegni, books on a wide variety of subjects including numismatics and fountains.

figure 3.1  Jacopo Strada, elephant with trapping, drawing inscribed by Ottavio Strada, 1571. Österreichische Nationalbibliothek, Vienna.

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One compendium of Strada drawings includes designs for costumes and horse trappings appropriate for festivals, as well as a drawing for an elephant (Figure 3.1). An inscription indicates that this drawing was made for the tournament of 1571, of which Arcimboldo was in charge, and a payment to Strada made in that year also establishes that he was in Vienna at the time. The inscription on the drawing of the elephant points to the probable function of other sheets in the volume, and allows us to speculate that Strada may also have helped with the costumes and program of that tournament. In any case, the drawing gives evidence for collaboration with Arcimboldo, and also is related to the naturalistic side of Arcimboldo’s art. Strada can now also be demonstrated to have designed costumes for a tournament held in 1572 at Bratislava, with which Arcimboldo was also probably involved.47 After Strada was released from imperial service in 1579, Arcimboldo on occasion filled the role of antiquities agent and advisor. Another Italian-born humanist and draftsman, Giovanni Battista Fonteo (or Fontana; Fonteius in Latin) also collaborated with Arcimboldo on the 1571 tournament and on other projects. While earlier scholarship has given some attention to Fonteo, as he called himself in Central Europe, certain key details about his family and education that have not been previously elucidated are important for the interpretation of his work and consequently of Arcimboldo’s art. Fonteo was born in Milan circa 1547.48 He was a nephew of Primo Conti (or del Conte), erudite master of sacred scripture at the Collegio Ambrosiano in Milan and participant at the Council of Trent.49 Although Conti published nothing in print under his own name, an edition of the Disticha Catonis by Erasmus has been attributed to him. The editor of this work signs himself Philerasmus—Erasmus lover—an obvious sign of attachment to Erasmus.50 In addition to this evidence, which results from his probable editing of this work, Conti can be demonstrated to have been close to Erasmus and his ideas. He had met Erasmus in person in 1534, was very familiar with details of the great humanist’s biography, and was inspired by him for his own work on philology and eloquence.51 In June 1558 when Arcimboldo was working for the cathedral of Como, in which city Conti himself had taught in 1537, Conti wrote a letter to the inquisitor of Como defending Erasmus, whose writings were in imminent danger of being put on the index of books forbidden by the church; they landed on the index just a year later.52 Conti formed the nucleus of a group of Lombard admirers of Erasmus and imparted that philosopher’s teaching to his pupils. This is evident in a treatise by the most distinguished of those pupils—Marcantoni Maioragio, who was the son of Giuliano Conti, otherwise known as Julianus Comes, and thus also Primo’s nephew, and at the same time a relative of Fonteo. Maioragio’s treatise on eloquence—which he named in honor of Conti, Primus Comes seu de eloquentia—presents an Erasmian thesis of the reconciliation of eloquence and piety. Consonant with his training, Maioragio became someone who has been described as a fundamental figure in Milanese literary culture, and who also connects the Conti circle with antiquarianism in Milan, as represented by Andrea Alciati.53 Alciati was a prominent Milanese jurist who is best known as the inventor of 80

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emblem books. Emblem books, it may be recalled, consist of an image (imago) which illustrates a motto (lemma) which a poem also explicates; in turn the motto epitomizes the image and the poem. These books, with their combination of poems and images, are key exemplars of the pairing of text and image. They are related to literary phenomena identified with concettismo.54 These connections are worth elaborating because both concettismo and Erasmian ideas are important for the interpretation of Arcimboldo. Morigia says that Fonteo, or as he calls him, Giovanni Battista Fontana de’ Conti, was from an early age the pupil of his uncle Primo Conti.55 His close identification with his uncle is further expressed by his choice of name. As is shown by his signature on the poem that accompanied on the pictures Arcimboldo presented to the emperor (Baptistae Fonteij Primionis), he adopted Primo Conti’s name as part of his own.56 We can thus assume that he would have communicated this preference to Arcimboldo. His devotion to his uncle’s interests is also evinced by his edition of the spiritual letters of the Angelic sister Paola Antonia Negri, which were eventually published in Rome in 1576. Negri was the center of the female branch of the Barnabites. She was an important spiritual reformer; Fonteo wrote her biography and included it in his edition of her letters.57 Negri’s letters had earlier inspired Primo Conti, who had promoted them to the Council of Trent.58 The publication of the Negri letters in Rome stems from the time of Fonteo’s later career, when he was a papal protonotary in the Eternal City. Fonteo was at that time probably also in the service of the Cesi family, as he had been since about 1572; he wrote a genealogical history of the Cesi, which was published posthumously.59 He also compiled a manuscript on the archbishops of Milan, which remains unpublished in the Biblioteca Ambrosiana.60 He died in Rome in 1579 or 1580. Before his career in Rome, Fonteo worked at the imperial court. According to the poem he wrote on Arcimboldo’s pictures, he was present there at least by the end of 1568, since the poem is dated in December of that year and was designed to accompany Arcimboldo’s pictures when they were presented to the emperor on New Year’s Day 1569. Since the poem is elaborate and complicated, it is likely that Fonteo had already been familiar with Arcimboldo’s paintings and court matters for some time before he wrote it.61 Fonteo must have remained part of the entourage of the court. In 1570 he dedicated a treatise on laughter, De risu, to the Venetian ambassador to the emperor, Michele Frangipani. According to references in De risu, he traveled with the court during its peregrinations through Germany, Austria, and Hungary, in 1570 attending the imperial Diet in Speyer, among other events.62 He was also present at a tournament held in Prague in 1570, and he wrote a description of it. In 1571 he also delivered a funeral in St. Veit’s Cathedral in Prague for Melchiore Biglia, a Milanese patrician born circa 1510 who had been papal nuntio to the imperial court from 1565 until his death in Prague on 22 April 1571. In this long oration, which survives in a manuscript of ninety folios, Fonteo notes that he had met Biglia three years before and provides much other information about court personalities and activities.63 In 1571 he also participated in the organization of the tournament in Vienna, for which he wrote a L e a r n i n g , P o e t r y, a n d A r t

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figure 3.2 Giovanni Baptista Fonteo, tournament (detail), drawing, c. 1570. Kunstbibliothek, Berlin.

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lengthy manuscript description that he gave to Maximilian. Fonteo was still working at the imperial court in 1572, as is indicated in correspondence by the humanist Stephen Pighius, who was then acting as tutor to the prince of Cleves.64 Pighius mentions that he has befriended Fonteo, who was later to write an elegy on the prince’s death that was published in 1576.65 Fonteo collaborated closely with Arcimboldo during the period 1568 to 1572, if not longer. Aside from the poems he wrote on Arcimboldo’s pictures, he also wrote the cartel—the program—for the 1571 Vienna tournament. A separate program for this tournament survives: probably in Fonteo’s hand, it is inscribed with the names of Arcimboldo as its fabricator and Fonteo as its coordinator. Fonteo also wrote a lengthy description of the celebrations, which included a ball and masquerade, and composed poems which were set to music for the festival. His hand-written description of the 1570 Prague tournament suggests that he was most likely involved in that event as well, and he may also have worked with Arcimboldo on a tournament held in Bratislava in 1572.66 Like Strada, Fonteo was moreover not only a humanist but a draftsman. This is evinced by a long drawing of a tournament procession, which bears a complex monogram containing all the letters of his name (Figure 3.2).67

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No records of court payments to Fonteo have yet been found, and it is thus possible that he may have been employed or paid directly by Arcimboldo himself. The manuscripts he presented to the emperor and to Frangipani (De risu) no doubt were given in anticipation of some sort of payment in gratitude, and they also suggest that he was not directly paid by the court. Perhaps it was out of a desire for further recognition, or in a search for regular employment, that he may have claimed to have designed the 1571 tournament—a claim reported by Lomazzo, who says that Arcimboldo gave Fonteo the task of writing the cartel for the tournament (which in fact survives), but that they had a falling out when Fonteo claimed he had invented its designs. Lomazzo also says that Maximilian communicated frequently with Arcimboldo about the tournament. But the two Lombards did not start their relationship this way, since Fonteo helped Arcimboldo with texts and probably also with drawings, to judge from his own drawing of a tournament. Indeed, it may even have been connections established earlier in Lombardy that initially brought Fonteo to Arcimboldo’s attention. In any case, since Arcimboldo had left the imperial court in 1566 and returned by 1568, when Fonteo helped him with the poem on his paintings, it is most likely that he had met Fonteo on his return to Milan during this interval. The appearance of the two men at court in 1568 suggests that Arcimboldo may have recruited Fonteo in Milan. The first known task that Arcimboldo gave Fonteo, to produce a poetic accompaniment and explication of the Seasons and Elements, suggests that they were involved soon after Arcimboldo’s return, if we recall that these pictures, though completed by 1566, were not presented to the emperor until New Year’s Day 1569. Fonteo’s writings thus may be read as an important source for the interpretation of Arcimboldo’s works. A r c i m b o l d o , Mila n e s e L i t e r a t i , P o e t r y, and Humanism

In sixteenth-century Milan literati often associated with artists, and artists were also frequently writers. As we shall see, Arcimboldo was both, and his association with Milanese circles of literati are important for an understanding of his work. Before he ever came to the imperial court, Arcimboldo had already had contact with such circles. It may be recalled that Melzi, the inheritor of Leonardo’s manuscripts and the compiler of the Treatise on Painting attributed to Leonardo, was one of the judges of the competition for the organ shutters of Milan cathedral. The 1564 competition for the gonfalone also involved Bartolommeo Taegio as one of the judges. Taegio, an important Milanese intellectual, merits further attention in relation to Arcimboldo. His dialogue La villa, published in 1559, is dedicated to Emperor Ferdinand I, the father of Maximilian II and one of Arcimboldo’s patrons himself. It contains many references to painting and discusses jokes, emblems, and pastimes. It thus suggests a further context in which Arcimboldo’s pictures might have been received: the villa as a place of leisure.68 It was indeed with these sorts of pastimes that Elector August was received by Maximilian when he was shown a painting L e a r n i n g , P o e t r y, a n d A r t

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by Arcimboldo. Taegio also points us to learned circles in Milan centered around Andrea Alciati, the humanist and legal scholar who invented emblem books, and hence again to circles centered around Primo Conti.69 Although Taegio’s connection with Arcimboldo is indirect, other Milanese intellectuals besides Fonteo were closely associated with Arcimboldo over a long period of time. One was Giovanni Filippo Gherardini, mathematician, musician, and poet. He was a member of the Accademia degli Affidati of Pavia, with the nickname of “Affetuoso.” From 1576 he was magistrato della santità (health commissioner) of the commune of Milan, and was sent on diplomatic missions to Rome and to the Spanish court. He is also recorded as having composed numerous collections of poems, some of which survive.70 A codicil notarized in Milan on 17 March 1581, added by Arcimboldo to his will, gives Gherardini usufruct over his property if Arcimboldo’s sons should die before him or at the same time, or if they have not obtained the age of eighteen at his death.71 This reveals the existence of a friendship between Arcimboldo and Gherardini that continued through the 1580s, hence into the time after Arcimboldo had returned to Milan. A document of 17 May 1588 indicates that Gherardini had sold a house to Arcimboldo.72 Another document datable between 1587 and 1589 indicates that Gherardini and Arcimboldo were living in a house that belonged to Arcimboldo.73 Gregorio Comanini says that the two men were living in the same house, and it is likely Arcimboldo’s house was that domicile.74 In 1591 Gherardini published a booklet with poems in Latin and Italian on Arcimboldo’s Flora and Vertumnus. The book contains three poems by Gherardini himself, one of which also appears in Lomazzo’s Idea of 1590.75 Another previously unnoticed poem by Gherardini also alludes to Arcimboldo and Figino; in it Gherardini speaks of “my Arcimboldo.”76 He also indicates what Comanini says, and what is documented, that he and Arcimboldo are living in the same house. In his introduction to the booklet, dated 17 January 1591, Gherardini suggests that he put the collection together in association with Arcimboldo. He says specifically that it was sent with Arcimboldo’s consent, and suggests further that it was intended to accompany the paintings of Flora, which had been sent the previous year, and Vertumnus, which was already on its way to Rudolf II.77 Gherardini adds that the booklet was intended to complement a poem that Comanini had composed on Vertumnus after having already written one on Flora. Arcimboldo had been thinking of sending a single copy of Comanini’s poem to the emperor, but Gherardini instead included that poem in his booklet. In Idea, Lomazzo states that Arcimboldo had sent Comanini’s poem on Flora, which Lomazzo also publishes along with Gherardini’s poem on the painting, together with the picture when it was shipped to the emperor.78 Comanini also refers to Arcimboldo’s Flora in a book on mystical theology that he published in 1590.79 As noted, versions of Comanini’s poems that also appear in his own treatise of 1591, Il Figino, are to be found in Gherardini’s booklet. Hence it seems clear that the many poems on Flora and Vertumnus may have served much as Fonteo’s poem had done when it was presented along with the Seasons and Elements: much as Fonteo’s poems were to explain 84

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Arcimboldo’s paintings to Maximilian II, these poems were written to explicate the paintings made for Rudolf II. Comanini says in Il Figino (through the mouth of the character Figino) that he is a very good friend of Arcimboldo and often passes many hours in his company and that of Gherardini. He may have received information about Arcimboldo’s paintings directly from the painter, and other aspects of his activities also cast light on Arcimboldo’s work. As noted in the last chapter, Comanini published an oration on the death of the duke of Mantua, whom Arcimboldo also served at the end of his life.80 Torquato Tasso also edited and published a collection of Comanini’s poems after he had died; he mentions that Comanini and Giacopo Mazzoni were his friends. This is important because Comanini’s ideas about imitation, to be discussed in chapter 8, were derived from Mazzoni.81 The poems Gherardini assembled are probably the same ones Lomazzo mentions in Idea. 82 They bear out the validity of another statement by Moriga that many learned people wrote poems in Arcimboldo’s honor; Morigia specifically names as authors those figures whose works are included in the booklet Gherardini assembled. 83 The booklet includes two poems by Bernardino Baldini, two by Sigismondo Foliani, a madrigal by Gherardo Borgogni, and two poems by G.A. da Milano. Several of these poems were also printed elsewhere.84 Baldini and Foliani were among the contributors to Rabisch, a compilation of poems by various authors put together by Lomazzo. Like Comanini, Foliani wrote a poem on Pope Gregory XIV.85 Nevertheless, although Rabisch came out of the milieu around the Academia di Val di Blenio led by Lomazzo, Arcimboldo did not belong to it—nor did others who wrote on his pictures, such as Gherardini and Comanini, who belonged to interlocking but not identical circles in Milan. More significant may be Foliani’s association with Fonteo’s family. Fonteo’s uncle Primo Conti was responsible for Foliani’s having gained a position as teacher.86 Foliani, in turn, wrote a letter of condolence, datable 1579, to Primo Conti on the death of his brother Antonio Conti, Fonteo’s father. This suggests that Foliani may well have known the younger Fonteo as well.87 The practice of writing poems on paintings was widespread in the Renaissance, and it seems to have been frequent in Milan around 1590 when much attention was given to paintings by Fede Galizia, Giovanni Ambrogio Figino, and other artists.88 Comanini’s art treatise is named after the painter Figino, and it stages a dialogue between that painter and the learned ecclesiastic and writer Stefano Guazzo. This also suggests the close connection that existed between poetry, humanism, and painting in Milan at that time. A large compendium of poems found in manuscript (British Library London) that are written in many different hands also demonstrates this association. These poems are mainly about Figino, and many of the figures who had contributed to Gherardini’s booklet also have poems in this volume. Comanini is represented by three poems (fol. 89r, 101r, 102r), including one published in his treatise Il Figino. The compendium also includes eight poems by Bernardino Baldini (on fol. 3r; 30r, 106r, 116r, 117r, 141r, 155r, 156r), a similar number by Gherardo Borgogni (fol. 6 L e a r n i n g , P o e t r y, a n d A r t

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repeated 177r; 21r; 22r; fol. 31 r; fol. 31 v; fol. 90r; fol. 91r), and one by Pompeo Barbarito (on fol. 95r). In addition it contains a poem on Figino by the painter Lomazzo (161r) as well as poems by such other figures as Barbarito, who had dedicated (38r) a poem to Borgogni and Figino. One poem by Borgogni refers to Figino as “poeta, e pittore.” Strikingly, the compendium also justifies the claim that Figino was a poet; it contains a hitherto unknown poem by the artist himself. This poem, published here (in the note below) for the first time, is signed by the artist; in it he praises his own painting of apples.89 It puts Figino in the company of many other Lombard artists who were writers. Beginning with Leonardo himself, the line continues with Melzi’s compilation of the Leonardesque Treatise on Painting, and with Lomazzo’s treatises on painting and Lomazzo’s extensive corpus of poetry. Along with several other notable Renaissance artists, including Michelangelo and Bronzino,90 Lomazzo was important not only as a painter but as a poet. He was the author of several poems in the compilation Rabisch, and published a large compilation of his own poems entitled simply Rime.91 He also mentions that besides Michelangelo and Bronzino, Gaudenzio Ferrari, Bernardino Luini, and also Aurelio Luini (who we have seen were close to Arcimboldo) also wrote poems.92 One poem in the London compendium, written by Baldini, is directly about Arcimboldo and Figino (fol. 156r).93 The association between the two artists is established by a letter from Figino, pasted into the back of the volume, which was written to the imperial stonecutter and artistic agent, Ottavio Miseroni. In it Figino tells his fellow Milanese that Arcimboldo had tried to get him to paint a picture for Rudolf II. This may also be regarded as providing support for the reliability of Comanini’s information on Arcimboldo, as presented in Il Figino. All this also creates a context for consideration of Arcimboldo’s activity as a poet. As remarked, among the poems in Gherardini’s compilation are two by a G.A. da Milano—one a madrigal praising the painting of Vertumnus, the other a sonnet praising Arcimboldo’s paintings in general.94 No other contemporaneous Milanese writer seems to have had the initials G.A. Arcimboldo, however, used the signature “Giuseppe Arcimboldo da Milano.” A reasonable inference, then, is that the poet G.A. da Milano is Arcimboldo himself. Although it might seem unusual for an artist to write about himself in this way, the self-praise in the poems by G.A. da Milano does not appear so strange when seen in light of the fact that Figino also wrote a poem on his own picture. In Il Figino, Comanini also has one of his characters praise his own poem on Arcimboldo. Arcimboldo’s poetry is included in the notes here, and will be considered further in later chapters. It can be read for what it displays about the artist’s knowledge of antique sources and myths, and it leads us to a larger conception of his learning and interests. The poems refer, for example, to Apelles and also to Prometheus, who is called the son of Japeth—a recondite reference. This sort of reference is but one sign of Arcimboldo’s learning. Other such signs are the complicated programs Arcimboldo developed for the 1570 and 1571 ceremonies held in Prague and Vienna, which employ many references to antique sources. 86

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figure 3.3 Giuseppe Arcimboldo, drawing of sericulture, c. 1587. Museum of Fine Arts, Boston.

His costumes for that event were based on descriptions in a variety of ancient authors.95 His antiquarian interests, meanwhile, are revealed in a letter that accompanied drawings for silk making proposed for the decoration of the Prague residence of Baron Ferdinand Hoffmann von Grünpichl and Strechau, president of the imperial Hofkammer (Figure 3.3). In the letter, Arcimboldo speaks of the term grotesque as originating in the discoveries made every day of paintings in Roman caves and grottoes. Whatever significance this discussion may have for the interpretation of Arcimboldo’s paintings of composite heads,96 it must be considered first to indicate the artist’s participation in a contemporaneous argument over the use of grotesques, and further to show his knowledge of antique matters. While this letter must have been written circa 1587, and his poems on his own paintings a few years later, there is evidence for such antiquarian knowledge to be found throughout Arcimboldo’s career. He had obtained genealogical data about his family from Lazius in the early 1560s as well as information about epigraphy and L e a r n i n g , P o e t r y, a n d A r t

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monuments. The interests in genealogy and in epigraphy suggested by Lazius are, to repeat, characteristically antiquarian or humanist, and the information stayed with Arcimboldo a long time, since he probably could not have communicated it to Morigia until later—perhaps not even until after he had returned to Milan in the late 1580s. The genealogical themes enunciated by Lazius in relation to the Habsburgs also crop up in programs for ceremonies fabricated by Arcimboldo, and in his paintings of the 1560s through about 1570, as noted above. Arcimboldo’s knowledge of antique matters needs further comment.97 According to a letter of 8 September 1582 from Rudolf II to Raimund Dorn in Kempten, the Hofconterfetter Arcimboldo was sent to Kempten to inspect antiquities and works of art that the emperor wished to purchase.98 He was to make a selection and to either bring the antiquities back himself or have them sent. Thus he was obviously highly regarded as an expert judge of antiquities as well as of contemporary artworks. We may return finally to a self-portrait by Arcimboldo that emphasizes his literary and intellectual sides as well as taking us back to the issue of his composite heads. This is the drawing of a composite head made up of paper documents (see Figure 1.2) which clearly shows the painter’s features, identifiable from another selfportrait drawing (see Figure 2.2). Arcimboldo does not show himself as a painter or draftsman, as he might have done had he composed the head of paint brushes, pens, canvases, or panels. Instead he fashions himself as a man of paper—literally, a man of letters.99 This image rounds out the picture offered in this chapter of Arcimboldo’s learning, poetry, and connections with humanists and poets. The discussion supplies not just a background for Arcimboldo’s remarkable self-portrait, but a context for the interpretation of his composite paintings in general. Needless to say, it hardly supports the views of those critics who might wish to dismiss the relation of Arcimboldo’s paintings to poetry and learning. This chapter has dwelled at some length on establishing some of the intellectual and literary background that contributed to the conditions and circumstances in which Arcimboldo painted his pictures of composite heads. The paintings may have provided entertainment at court but they are not just simple jokes, made by someone who lacked ideas in his head and could not make further references. Arcimboldo’s intellectual and literary aspirations may well have led him toward the choice seen in his composite self-portrait, in which he depicts himself as a head made of letters.

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Serious Jokes

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r cimboldo’s composite heads present visual displays of wit that may elicit a smile or a laugh. At the same time they engage with poetry, politics, philosophy, and other discourses, and many present a serious message. They thus combine the earnest with the humorous. This chapter elaborates on this aspect of Arcimboldo’s pictures, ultimately discussing how his paintings intertwine diverse strands to make serious jokes. As we have seen, Arcimboldo was both a painter and a poet. In his self-portrait he styled himself as a man of letters; painting and poetry are close to each other in his artistic conception. Most obviously, his transformations of the human face recall those other famed poetic transformations, the metamorphoses of Ovid.1 Ovid is relevant for Arcimboldo because his poem supplies some sources both for subjects in his paintings—including Vertumnus, Flora, and Pomona—and for themes suggested by some of them, such as the golden age. Although pictures do not communicate in the same way as do words, Arcimboldo’s poems and paintings parallel each other in several significant ways.2 For example, the language of the poem he wrote on his own picture of Vertumnus (Figure 0.3) and visual details found in the painting itself depend closely on an elegy by the Roman poet Propertius. Arcimboldo’s poem begins (the original texts are given here for sake of comparison): A che tanto stupore / e poi lieti ridere? Certo che solo un muchio mi credette Di frutte e di verdura / Son Vertunno 91

This adapts the first lines of Propertius’s elegy (IV, 2): Quid mirare meas tot in uno corpore formas? Accipe Vertumni signa paterna dei.

Arcimboldo’s beginning words are particularly close to the translation of Propertius by Vincenzo Cartari3: A che ti meravigli di vedere Tante forme in un corpo? Se m’ascolti Che sia Vertunno tu potrai sapere.

Arcimboldo’s painting of Vertumnus likewise derives much of its visual imagery from the features described originally in Propertius’s poem, thence in the Italian translation he may also have used.4 The first fruits of each season which Propertius evokes appear in various parts of the face: grape clusters and spiked ears of corn in the hair (ll. 13–14), cherries (l. 15) in the hair and one eye, a mulberry (l. 16) in the other eye (l. 18), a pear (l. 18) as the nose, and apples and pears (l. 19) in the cheeks. Meanwhile the squash, cucumber, and cabbage also mentioned by Propertius are seen in the chest (ll. 43–44). The objects are seen in the picture from top to bottom in the same sequence as in Propertius’s poem. Also described by Propertius (l. 47) is the general principle of composition in which one form turns into a cornucopia of all. Arcimboldo plays with both media, making visual puns that depend on a knowledge of poetry just as he adapts the visual imagery of poetry to the poetic constructions of visual art. Since several of the lines of Propertius may be read ambiguously as referring to Vertumnus’s hair, eyes, or stomach, Arcimboldo places the fruits or vegetables in his picture accordingly. Since in one line (14) coma is juxtaposed with grain (or corn—coma lactenti spicca fruge), corn is placed in the hair of the god in the picture. Since a gourd is mentioned in the poem in such a way that it can be read as pertaining to the stomach (curcurbita tumido ventre), a gourd appears in the stomach in the picture. Arcimboldo’s evident ability to make visual puns is a clear display of his wit. Wit may be defined here for the purposes of discussion in a way that it would have been understood in Arcimboldo’s time: as the faculty that seeks out and finds the relation between things.5 For Renaissance writers and artists, it would accordingly have been connected with fantasia, the power of the imagination. In fact, it was specifically for his display of fantasia that Arcimboldo was praised in his own time.6 The poems’ presentation shifts expectations from wonder (mirare, meravigli), or stupor in Arcimboldo’s poem, to laughter (ridete in Arcimboldo), and finally to recognition of the subject as Vertumnus. These shifts of perception are mirrored by Arcimboldo’s painting, and are to be related to the paradox of perception discussed in the introduction. Arcimboldo paints fruits and flowers that can be apprehended separately but can also been seen as composing a head. Likewise, the head can be recognized as that of a specific subject, who in this instance is Vertumnus. 92

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And Vertumnus, as both the poem (in both Arcimboldo’s and Propertius’s versions) and the painting suggest, has a further significance that is related to the fate of Rome and the Holy Roman Empire. The relations between man and nature found in Arcimboldo’s work operate not only on the metaphorical level but also on the metaphysical level. Both poetry and natural philosophy can inform his imagery. Consequently the macrocosm of nature, particularized by the personification of an element or season, may also be paralleled by the microcosm of man. Thus a composite head in human form may stand for a conception of nature. This way of thinking relies on a metaphysical system of correspondences according to which what is above is also below and the macrocosm of the universe parallels the microcosm of man. This system supplies the basis for the poetics of correspondence found in Arcimboldo’s witty images. Deploying visual devices much as do the witty, intellectual, and complex poems that the artist and other authors wrote on his paintings, Arcimboldo’s pictures are themselves full of visual conceits. The literary term “conceit” was understood circa 1600 as a synonym for concept, thought or idea, and Arcimboldo’s pictures are certainly full of ideas. More specifically, the term “denotes a fairly elaborate figurative device of a fanciful kind which often incorporates metaphor, simile, hyperbole or oxymoron.”7 Fancy may be understood as fantasy here, and oxymoron is related to paradox—a device that is present in all of Arcimboldo’s composite heads to the extent that one cannot apprehend the head as a whole while one focuses on the individual parts, and vice versa. The visual conceit in Arcimboldo may be described as the way in which a fish or an animal can become a part of a face. In this sense Arcimboldo’s conceits can be considered to be like the poetic conceits found in sonnets. They are thus comparable to the extravagant metaphors employed by some Petrarchan poets of his time. Poetic conceits in the Petrarchan tradition are those in which the poet compares parts of his love’s face to the sun, coral, and so forth. Like any other literate Italian of his time, and all the more so because he was a poet, Arcimboldo would have been familiar with Petrarch. Moreover, Arcimboldo makes the comparisons of Petrarchan poetry literal—or rather, we should say, visual. Because of their structure of elaborate comparisons by which animals, birds, fruits, and vegetables can become parts of the face, Arcimboldo’s witty images have indeed frequently been compared to the type of contemporaneous poetry known as concettismo. This is a poetry built on an elaborate structure of correspondences, familiar to English speakers from “metaphysical poetry” such as that of John Donne.8 As it was cultivated from the later sixteenth century on, the poetry of concettismo employed ever more elaborate conceits, often of an esoteric or recondite manner, much as Arcimboldo’s complicated images also often do. Furthermore, the use of elaborate conceits is related to the form and idea of the emblem. Emblem books contain images which illustrate poems epitomized in mottoes. The poems in turn explicate images, and the images illustrate the poems. Even without employing an actual visual image, conceptist or metaphysical poets may also evoke the emblem in their elucidation of morals through descriptions of the natural Serious Jokes

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figure 4.1 Giuseppe Arcimboldo, Water, 1566. Kunsthistorisches Museum, Vienna.

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order. In this regard it should be recalled that Arcimboldo can be linked with emblematists, and above all with the inventor of the genre, Andrea Alciati. The emblem was a form of expression combining words and images, poetry and pictures, that was much practiced at the imperial court. In any case Arcimboldo’s pictures can be related in how they function to the way emblems work. Both employ allusive or allegorical elements. Specifically, the combination of careful depictions of nature with allegorical content recalls the naturalistic emblems of Georg (Joris) Hoefnagel.9 Hoefnagel’s emblems, like many others, often employ epigrams, and the particular form of poetry to which Arcimboldo’s paintings can be compared is also epigram. Especially in the Latin poetry of Arcimboldo’s time, epigram revived the meter known as elegiac distich (a line of dactylic hexameter followed by a hendecasyllabic line), which had been used by poets of classical antiquity such as Propertius, whose poems are also called elegies. Elegy and epigram were the favorite forms of contemporaneous poetry in Latin in Bohemia during the era of Maximilian II and Rudolf II, and they were also produced in Italian in Lombardy during Arcimboldo’s lifetime. Propertius’s elegy is thus also echoed in Arcimboldo’s concise, epigrammatic verse. The presentation of a situation, the balanced construction in distich form, and the compressed witty expression of an elegy which is also seen in epigram are moreover comparable to the manner of expression found in paintings by other artists at Rudolf II’s court. Pictures of mythological subjects by such artists as Bartholomeus Spranger display visual antitheses in the form of contrapposto, chiastic compositions, and joking if obscene references comparable to those found in the epigrammatic or elegiac poems of the Roman authors Martial and Catullus. The close affiliation of Arcimboldo’s painting to poetry lends support to further comparison of the two forms of expression in his own pictures. Starting from semiotic and linguistic premises, Roland Barthes argued that Arcimboldo’s paintings had a “linguistic foundation, his imagination is poetic, in the proper sense of the word . . . it does not create signs, it combines them—deflects them—exactly what a craftsman of language does.”10 His analysis, mentioned in the introduction to this book, can be supported by the more philological and historical arguments presented here. Barthes identified several rhetorical devices, also to be regarded as poetic, that were employed in the composition of Arcimboldo’s paintings. For instance, he called the use of a shell for an ear a metaphor; and a mass of fish standing for Water (Figure 4.1) metonymy. He also thought that Fire (Figure 1.1) employed allegory. He pushed his thesis to argue that everything in Arcimboldo was metaphor, and in a certain sense that is true. An extended metaphor is a conceit, and an enlarged or sustained metaphor is an allegory. Much as Arcimboldo’s pictorial metaphors may be regarded as conceits, his paintings of composite heads in many cases worked as allegories. In this regard, too, they may be elucidated not merely by the general analysis of a twentieth-century interpreter, but by the forms of interpretation common to the sixteenth century and many earlier eras in Europe.11 As is well known, figurative readings of poems, and hence of paintings in which multiple levels of meaning could be established, were standard practice. Chapter Four

A r c i m b o l d o ’ s A lle g o r ie s

In his Degli affetti della mistica theologia, published in 1590, a year before his treatise Il Figino, which gives so much information about Arcimboldo, Gregorio Comanini also specifically relates his analysis of the composition of the Song of Solomon to Arcimboldo’s painting Flora. As he reads it, the Song is like Arcimboldo’s painting in that parts of the text have been selected and mixed much as flowers are selected and mixed in Flora. 12 But in other language that also resonates in Il Figino, Comanini likewise indicates how the mimetic qualities of poetry may be related to their figural or allegorical content. He calls King Solomon an exalted icastic poet who, under metaphor and marvelous hyperbole, has hidden profound secrets and sung not fables but truth.13 The allegorical aspect of Arcimboldo’s art, to which Comanini also frequently alludes, ranges from the simple to the complex. Most straightforward are his inventions of pictures of the sort represented by a personification known as the librarian or bookman—a man made of books (Figure 2.12). Here the metaphorical idea of calling a man “bookish” becomes visual reality. While also being in some sense a kind of pictorial metonymy, Arcimboldo’s paintings of a cook and a wine steward or butler, whose forms are composed respectively of kitchen and drinking implements, are constituted similarly. So is a composition known as Agriculture, which documents describe as a man made of farming tools.14 A similar principle is operating in Arcimboldo’s pictures of the seasons and elements, although the allegorical content is expanded. Arcimboldo’s Elements are constituted according to the procedures of allegory whereby the element of fire can be related to a flame, earth to the creatures that dwell on it, water to fish and other aquatic creatures, and air to birds. Likewise, among the seasons spring is a time of flowers, hence the painting Spring is a head composed of flowers; since summer is the season in which grains grow, Summer is a head made of grain; Autumn reminds us of the season when wine and fruit are harvested, and Winter depicts the time when fruits and flowers do not grow—except, as in Italy, citruses, which account for the prominent citrons on its chest. The composition of Flora, goddess of flowers, of leaves and flowers in another painting is a form of metonymy, but it is also an extended metaphor since Flora is like flowers (Figure 0.2). Many of the poems that were written on this picture thus play similarly with these ideas about Flora. They also employ many rhetorical and poetic devices, such as antithesis and chiasmus. Finally, the painting of Vertumnus, god of seasons, shows the god made of fruits and flowers from different seasons, and is evoked in another elaborate poem.15 This painting extends the allegory; it is a distinctive kind of portrait historié, meaning a portrait of an individual in another guise, most often an ancient hero or god. To cite a contemporaneous example, Henry IV of France is sometimes represented in the guise of Jupiter.16 Comanini’s poem on the painting of Vertumnus indicates that Arcimboldo’s picture is also a portrait of Rudolf II in the guise of the ancient god. As emperor he is likened to the god of the seasons. It is also known that at least two and possibly three other composite heads by 96

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Arcimboldo were portraits. Lomazzo describes a portrait done from nature (ritratto naturale) of the imperial vice-chancellor as a face made of animals in which the nose was a bird and the chin a trout. This was a portrait probably of Maximilian II’s vicechancellor, Johann Ulrich Zasius.17 Zasius is most likely the same person who appears in the portrait described by Comanini as being of a doctor whose face was ravaged by the French pox (syphilis) and was depicted in the portrait as being made of various roast meats and fish. Indeed, Lomazzo and Comanini may be describing the same picture.18 Because of the mockery involved, a face made of roast meat may also be regarded as allegory (now echoed in contemporary American parlance, as in “he’s dead meat”). (Figure 4.2) Maximilian II had commissioned the portrait of the pox-ridden face, which image provoked laughter.19 Zasius evidently was also mocked by Arcimboldo in other paintings. Although there are many more reasons for Arcimboldo’s conception of invertible heads, some significance may reside in the choice of this form for another portrayal of Zasius, described above as a composite head made of documents, which when turned upside down became a floral still life. The choice of an invertible image may have been deemed appropriate for someone like Zasius who was “two-faced” in his dealings with Maximilian II; his character was exemplified by his attempt to undercut the emperor’s efforts to purchase the library of the orientalist Johann Albrecht Widmanstetter by trying to purchase it for himself.20 It has also been suggested that several other composite heads—for example, the man made of books—were also portraits.21 The existence of some composite images that are known to have been portraits suggests that this interpretation may be possible, although there is no definite proof. The portrayal of Rudolf II as Vertumnus— his features are generally recognizable—is however a different matter. The image culminates a whole series of allegorical references initiated by the original Seasons and Elements.22 Features found in both series suggest that they are royal or imperial images. The objects found resting round the heads resemble wreaths or crowns, as does the crown of grapes around the head of Vertumnus. Comanini, Arcimboldo’s contemporary who explicated his painting of Vertumnus, explicitly observed that the horns and antlers in Earth (Figure 4.3) formed a royal crown.23 Visible clues support the inference that something more was meant by Arcimboldo’s painting. Several other details in the original versions identify the Seasons and Elements as having belonged to the Habsburgs. As noted in chapter 2, the original version of Winter wears a cloak emblazoned with an M and a crown, like the one actually worn by Maximilian II. It also bears a fire iron, a symbolic device of the Habsburgs’ favored knightly order of the Golden Fleece. This order was particularly appreciated by Maximilian II, as has been noted above. Winter was probably singled out for association with Maximilian because this season was regarded as the head of the year (caput anni)—that is, the season chosen to begin the year in the Roman imperial calendar, a connection known and emphasized by Arcimboldo’s contemporaries. 24 In the Vienna tournament of 1571—in which the costumes of the elements also recalled Arcimboldo’s pictures, particularly the Four Elements—Maximilian II also played the role of the season of winter.25 Serious Jokes

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figure 4.2 Giuseppe Arcimboldo, The Jurist, 1566. Grispholm, Slott, Sweden. Photo: Eric Lessing / Art Resource, NY.

figure 4.3 Giuseppe Arcimboldo, Earth, 1566. Private collection, Vienna. Photo: Eric Lessing / Art Resource, NY.

In the Elements it seems hardly accidental that Fire bears not only a fire iron in its ear but also a full chain of the Golden Fleece around its neck. The fleece itself is depicted prominently. Next to it is a medallion with the imperial arms, the double eagle surmounted by imperial crown. The eagle’s breast bears a tripartite shield: the arms of the House of Austria, of Habsburg. Earth has a fleece in the place where the Order of the Golden Fleece would be worn. A lion skin placed over the shoulders of Earth recalls the skin worn by Hercules, the presumptive ancestor of the Habsburgs, much in the way that busts of Habsburg emperors depict them wearing such a skin. Something similar is suggested, for example, by the armor worn in bronze portraits of Charles V by Leone Leoni and of Rudolf II by Adriaen de Vries.26 The torso of Air consists of a peacock, which the Habsburgs had employed as their heraldic bird since the reign of Charles V (Figure 2.5). Escutcheons of the emperor’s territories could be applied to it, as is seen in sixteenth-century prints. A peacock with a tripartite shield on its chest surmounted the triumphal gate of the Austrians designed by Lazius for the entry of Maximilian II into Vienna in 1563, which Arcimboldo may well have seen. Moreover, the bird that prominently faces forward in the chest of Air is an eagle, traditionally the imperial bird. The Seasons and Elements are thus clearly marked as belonging to the Habsburgs. In this way the sequence of correspondences is extended from the macrocosm to the microcosm to the body politic. The seasons and elements are shown as being under Habsburg control. Thus the suggestion seems clear that as the emperor rules over the world of states, so he rules over the elements and seasons—the universe. Moreover, as noted previously, the seasons and elements can be regarded as being in harmonious disposition to each other—two in each series facing right, and two left—and complementary in gender—two in each series male, and two female. Since both the cycle of the seasons and the elements are eternal, it is thus implied that the Habsburgs’ reign is to be eternal. These references culminate in Vertumnus. This picture depicts Rudolf II as god of the seasons, and as such he is also comparable to the god of the elements, with which Vertumnus is linked in certain mythological accounts. In another painting, described by Comanini and recently rediscovered, Arcimboldo had depicted all the seasons conjoined in one image,27 but in this visage they are combined into just one season. This undifferentiated conjunction of seasons thus suggests that they form one undifferentiated season: this is the mark of the golden age that has come with the reign of Rudolf. This Holy Roman Emperor is thus shown as the ruler of a new Rome that will enjoy the eternal domination of the world. This domination had been foretold for ancient Rome in the elegy by Propertius, on which Arcimboldo’s picture is ultimately based. The theme of the return of the golden age may always have been implicit in Arcimboldo’s conception of the seasons and elements, since he showed them in harmonious disposition. At the time he was conceiving his initial series of seasons and elements, this aspect of humanist panegyric was certainly being expressed in relation to the emperor by others. A motet composed by the court musician Jacob Vaet (1529–1567) for Maximilian’s coronation as Holy Roman Emperor in 100

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November 1564 greeted the monarch with a panegyric praising him as Jove and as Hector, and—most significantly—saying that the long hoped for golden age had returned with his reign.28 A poem by Fonteo known in two versions, to the second of which the author added further comments, confirms that the original versions of the Seasons and Elements were meant to be understood as imperial allegories. Fonteo’s original poem was presented with the Seasons and Elements when they were given to the emperor on New Year’s Day 1569. Although this event occurred a couple of years after both series of paintings had been completed, there is no reason to doubt that Fonteo conveyed Arcimboldo’s intention, however much he may have indulged in embellishment. Arcimboldo employed Fonteo as his spokesman, and he certainly went along with the practice of presenting explanatory poems with his pictures: he clearly was familiar with the poems that Comanini and others had presented with Vertumnus when the picture was given to the emperor, since he added his own poems to the group. He had similarly used Fonteo on several occasions to serve as his mouthpiece for ceremonial events.29 Fonteo not only wrote poems on Arcimboldo’s pictures but described a number of ceremonies that Arcimboldo had designed. The most famous of these was the ceremony for the marriage of Archduke Karl held in Vienna in 1571, which further elaborated upon the subject matter in Arcimboldo’s paintings of seasons and elements, as we have seen. In the tournament procession the seasons, rivers, gods, and countries of Europe were all shown coming together, as personified by the Habsburgs and their courtiers. This suggested the unity of seasons, gods, and the world in general under the Habsburgs. It also suggested, as did the paintings, that as the Habsburgs ruled the body politic (note the corporeal metaphor again), so they ruled the seasons and the elements. Maximilian appeared in the guise of Winter, in a way that coincided with what Fonteo said about the imperial Roman choice of that season to begin the year.30 Fonteo’s descriptions have sometimes been regarded as later embellishments, even ekphrases or rhetorical descriptions, but they certainly express what is seen visually in Arcimboldo’s works. The complicated process that went into the construction of the Elements and its dependence on nature studies, to be discussed in the next chapter, probably accounts for the delay between the Seasons and the Elements. Arcimboldo’s probable absence from court between 1566 and 1568 helps explain why Fonteo did not write his poem until the latter year. Sylvia Ferino-Pagden has recently suggested a solution which may allay remaining doubts about Fonteo’s presentation of these series as imperial allegories. Responding to claims that imperial allusions have only been added in the second series—the Elements—and to the apparent problem that Fonteo’s texts were composed only after the completion of Arcimboldo’s paintings, she suggests that the addition of more explicitly political allusions (in the form of additional devices seen in the Elements) could have been born from the desire to increase the forms of honor given the emperor. This form of panegyric would have been more appropriate after Maximilian had acceded to the throne, for in fact he had not been emperor when his court painter had composed the Seasons. Serious Jokes

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She also avers that having the paintings described in literary form by a humanist to give them greater weight may have been Arcimboldo’s own idea, or may have been suggested by his Milanese friends, who we know included learned humanists. In either case, it meant that the emperor could more easily identify himself with them as official products, use them as propaganda, and even go further in sending copies and replicas to his relatives and to other sovereigns.31 Fonteo describes at length the harmony between the Elements and the Seasons— how they exist in harmonious conjunction, how this betokens the emperor’s reign, and how the eternal cycle of the seasons suggests the eternity of Habsburg rule. He also adds that the choice of heads is related to the prophetic discovery of a head under the foundations of the Capitoline, indicating that Rome would be caput mundi. While this last may be a literary embellishment, given the prophetic nature of the poem by Propertius, it is not impossible that Arcimboldo was aware of the allusion and may even have intended it. In any event, much of what Fonteo says can be read directly from the pictures, and this is another reason why his description does not need to be taken merely as a later ekphrasis. Moreover, the presence—or substitution—of telling features in pictures of similar content made for other important recipients indicates that Arcimboldo’s own versions of the Seasons and Elements (as opposed to copies or imitations) did carry a political charge. For example, in the version of the Seasons (Paris, Musée du Louvre) that was given to the duke-elector of Saxony, the crossed swords of Meissen, symbol of the Saxon electoral dignity, are substituted for the crown, M, and fire iron in the version made for Maximilian II (Figure 2.10).32 Similarly, the Cook and Wine Steward are variously marked in versions known as belonging to the service of Saxony or Spain, since they are adorned respectively with the Saxon or Spanish coats of arms.33 It is also possible that other known versions of the Seasons in which Winter bears only the fire iron were intended for the Spanish royal family. Hence many of Arcimboldo’s composite heads were allegories. The most frequently repeated versions—his series of seasons and elements—possessed initially imperial, then in subsequent versions conveyed other sorts of political messages. A r c i m b o l d o ’ s Ri d i c u l o u s Pi c t u r e s

While Arcimboldo’s paintings are thus in many instances allegories, they can also provoke laughter. Later observers, certainly viewers in the twenty-first century, may find them amusing, and some of the painter’s contemporaries also responded to his work in this way. Arcimboldo was thus stuck with the reputation of being the master of the ridiculous. In Il Figino, Comanini calls Arcimboldo’s composite-head portrait of the doctor, probably Zasius, most ridiculous or laughable (ridicolissimo). He says that one can imagine the pleasure Maximilian II took from it, and the laughter it caused at court.34 Landi also describes the invertible portrait of Zasius, a head made of papers, an incredibly laughable or ridiculous face (una faccia incredibilmente ridicola). Galileo Galilei, in a passage to which we shall return, also refers to Arcimboldesque paintings as jests.35 102

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Arcimboldo’s own poem on his painting of Vertumnus, which we have seen has allegorical import, also indicates that the artist himself was aware that his picture might provoke laughter but sought to check it. Comanini, in the poem which identifies the picture as a portrait of Rudolf II, also was aware of this possible reaction, as he began his poem on the same picture: Whoever you are, looking at me, A strange and deformed image, With a laugh on your lips That flashes in your eyes And stamps your face With novel happiness At the sight of a new monster36

Here it may be emphasized that according to Comanini, this monstrosity was in part what made the picture attractive and ridiculous at the same time. The attraction of Arcimboldo’s paintings stemmed from their novelty and monstrosity; “novel happiness” was aroused by the sight of a “new monster.” This corresponds to an argument made by Julius Caesar Scaliger in his attack on Girolamo Cardano. As Scaliger put it, as expressed in Anthony Grafton’s summary, “The human mind loves new things—especially those, like ‘pictures of monsters,’ that ‘surpass the common boundaries of truth.’”37 On the other hand, another familiar criticism, already made centuries before Arcimboldo by Saint Bernard of Clairvaux, illuminates how the monstrous is also ridiculous. Saint Bernard had decried the ridiculous monstrosity, ridicula monstruositas, of some works he had seen. This opinion was well known in Arcimboldo’s time. In his treatise on art, Arcimboldo’s Bolognese contemporary Cardinal Gabriele Paleotti repeated Bernard’s objection and exemplified it in his own description of monstrous images: in the first of these images many bodies are seen in one head, and in the second many heads are seen in one body.38 The first image brings to mind several paintings by Arcimboldo, including that of Zasius, which was specifically described as ridiculous; the second recalls other paintings by Arcimboldo like Earth, in which many animal heads make up the composition. Paleotti adduces this definition of ridiculous monstrosity in a discussion of grotesques. Originating in the ancient form of Roman decoration that used depictions of fantastic hybrid creatures, grotesques were also thought of as chimeras—beasts made of parts of various animals. Vicenzo Danti says that chimeras are not imitated from nature but are made of parts of diverse natural things; he understands them to be like a genre that comprises all species of grotesques.39 Giovan Batttista Armenini also calls grotesques chimeras (chimere).40 Many of these conceptions resonate in Arcimboldo’s work. Arcimboldo’s paintings have been interpreted by some critics as a kind of grotesque, and inasmuch as they are composed of bits of nature’s creations they may also be called chimeras. It may be debatable to treat them in this way, but it is not Serious Jokes

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necessary to press the point to think of how such associations could be made.41 Arcimboldo himself was in any event aware of grotesques, and he proposed a form of grotesque decoration for Ferdinand Hoffmann. In the letter that accompanied those designs, he offered a history of the term which resembled that used by Pirro Ligorio and by Armenini. Fonteo also called Arcimboldo’s pictures chimeras.42 In marginal notes to a copy of the poem he presented along with Arcimboldo’s pictures of the seasons and elements, he said that just as Polygnotus was outstanding in the invention of colors, Pyrrhus in that of lines, and Gyges in that of shadows, so was Arcimboldo outstanding in the invention of grilli or chimerae. He categorized Arcimboldo’s pictures as grilli and, describing several other examples of the sort, said that by this he meant pictures composed out of the instruments that pertained to their subjects, as was the case in Arcimboldo’s composite images. Fonteo’s linkage of grilli with chimere was not unique because Lomazzo also associated the two.43 Lomazzo, moreover, had also called grotesques a kind of bizarria and grillo.44 Like grotesques, grilli may be discussed variously, but one connotation that was certainly familiar in the sixteenth century was presented by the Roman writer Pliny, whose so-called Natural History was known to Milanese painters from at least 1389.45 Pliny (Natural History 35:114) talks about a painter Antiphilus who painted a figure in a ridiculous costume who was known by the joking name of Gryllus, whence such pictures became known as grylli (idem iocoso nomine Gryllym deridiculi habitus pinxit, unde id genus pictura grylli vocantur). Significantly, grotesques seem to have become commonplace exemplars of the ridiculous in Arcimboldo’s time. Giovanni Andrea Gilio’s 1564 treatise on art, which is contemporaneous with Arcimboldo’s first composite heads, mentioned monsters in his discussion of grotesques. Gilio says that one should laugh at monsters.46 Giorgio Vasari, whose Vite were published in 1550 and 1568, also defined grotesques as a category of licentious and very ridiculous sogni. They were made of monsters, through the whim of the artist.47 Similarly Pirro Ligorio, writing at the same time, linked grotesques (grottesche) with dream images (sogni) and extravagant or monstrous images (stravaganti pitture, anzi mostruose).48 For many reasons Arcimboldo’s pictures may therefore be considered as ridiculous pictures, pitture ridicole, to use another term from Arcimboldo’s time that has since been applied by modern historians to some sixteenth-century paintings.49 According to the contemporaneous definition provided by Paleotti, ridiculous pictures are so called because they move the viewer to laughter.50 There are various causes for this laughter, and we have already discussed one of them: as Paleotti mentions, it is monstrosity. As Paleotti’s discussion indicates, Aristotle’s treatment of the subject in his Poetics was fundamental for an understanding of laughter and notions of the ridiculous. Aristotle (Poetics 1449a) says that the laughable (or ridiculous) is a part of the base (or ugly): του ἀισχρου ἐστι τò γєλοιόν μόριον. It consists of some fault or ugliness that does not cause pain or injury in itself.

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Aristotle’s definitions of the laughable created the basis for treatments of the subject by later writers. Hence there arose an extensive discussion of the laughable in antiquity.51 Cicero (De oratore 2:15) believed that the Greeks had written treatises De ridiculis. In De oratore 2:36 he used Aristotle’s definitions for his own discussion of the ridiculous. He also devoted considerable attention to the laughable in his major tracts on rhetoric (De oratore 2:16–2.90; Orator 87–90) and elsewhere (De officiis I: 103–4). Quintillian (Institutio oratoria 3:6) employed Cicero’s discussion for a lengthy account of laughter (risus), which also discussed jokes and pleasantries. Cicero also devoted a lengthy section of De oratore (2.54ff) to iocus et facetiae, jokes and witticisms. This discussion was certainly well known in Arcimboldo’s time. Baldassare Castiglione’s Il cortegiano (1528), the Book of the Courtier so popular in the cinquecento, says that the source of the ridiculous is to be found in a kind of deformity.52 Paleotti also refers to this definition, alluding to Vincenzo Maggi’s De ridiculis (“On the Ridiculous”) of 1551.53 In this treatise Maggi discusses at length the definition of the ridiculous as an aspect of the ugly.54 This conception is also applicable to images by Arcimboldo, like his portrait of a man made of cooked meat. Maggi cites many passages from Cicero and some from Quintillian; Quintillian’s chapter on jokes was also cited by Paleotti.55 In general, Ciceronian wit was a part of Renaissance discussions of rhetoric.56 Another quality discussed by Paleotti and Maggi as aiding the emergence of the ridiculous was novelty.57 Comanini had specifically linked it with monstrosity in Arcimboldo. Novelty was also connected with monstrosity by Scaliger, and Paleotti associated it further with the marvelous. Referring to Aristotle, Paleotti noted that novelty was thought to excite admiration, and marvelous things brought delight. The notion of the marvelous was also applied to Arcimboldo. Speaking of Arcimboldo’s portrait of Zasius, Lomazzo says that it was marvelous, and that indeed all Arcimboldo’s pictures were marvelous. Lomazzo also describes the painting of Flora as something truly marvelous (cosa veramente meravigliosa).58 In the ancient sources on laughter and the marvelous, paintings are often adduced as comparisons—and in speaking of the ridiculous, Maggi also alludes to them. One may thus follow this logic and refer to ridiculous pictures as jokes. So indeed did Pliny call them, using the term grilli. Beyond being grilli, or ridiculous pictures, Arcimboldo’s pictures were in fact specifically regarded as jokes: Comanini referred to one of them as a scherzo.59 Some later commentators have followed him. The contemporaneous understanding of Arcimboldo’s pictures as jokes can, however, be further elaborated.60 Ancient discussions and examples of jokes provided the sources for the compilation of joke books, exemplified in the Renaissance by Poggio Bracciolini’s Facetiae. These joke books were also put together by many other authors, including Poliziano, and in a way the tradition culminated in the extensive section on jokes in Castiglione’s Cortegiano.61 Ancient sources also supplied a basis for considering the establishment of the joke as an independent literary genre.62 They served as a foundation

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for the extensive consideration of laughter in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, when several treatises were written on the subject.63 Treatises on laughter were especially a concern of Renaissance physicians.64 Best known is probably the vernacular work by Laurent Joubert, the Traité du ris. 65 The topic, however, was also addressed by other humanists writing in Latin. As mentioned, Vincenzo Maggi published a separate tract, De ridiculis, along with his commentaries on Aristotle’s Poetics and Horace’s Ars poetica. Most directly pertinent to Arcimboldo is another such treatise in Latin, the dialogue De risu by the painter’s collaborator Fonteo. In 1570 Fonteo dedicated the manuscript of De risu to Giovanni Michele Frangipane, the Venetian ambassador to the imperial court. This occurred at a time when, as noted in the last chapter, he was also traveling with the imperial court. He must have been at work on De risu during the period when he was collaborating most intensely with Arcimboldo. To repeat: Fonteo had submitted his poems along with Arcimboldo’s paintings of the seasons and elements at the beginning of 1569, he was in Prague when Arcimboldo designed a tournament there in 1570, and he worked with Arcimboldo on another festival in Vienna in 1571. Thus it is more than reasonable to assume that the ideas expressed in his treatise on laughter were known in the circles around Arcimboldo—and probably, because of the close contact between the two men, to Arcimboldo himself. De risu is a learned defense and compendium of ancient texts on laughter. It draws on the ancient rhetoricians, including Aristotelian and Ciceronian sources, for its definitions. But it goes beyond the expected commentary on the ancient discussions of the theme, which is represented by Maggi’s treatment, and thoroughly culls through much ancient literature for examples of jokes and laughter. It indicates that the ancient sources could have been well known to the painter, either directly or via Fonteo. Moreover, Fonteo gives an idea not only of the intellectual milieu in which Arcimboldo’s composite heads were made, but of their social milieu as well— and hence of some of the surroundings in which they were to be received. This mileu is again the Habsburg court. In De risu Fonteo (fol. 62r) states that kings are just like other men in listening to jokes and responding to them with laughter. He tells the story of how Alexander the Great took a joke (fol. 59v.–60r), and also indicates how the discussion of jokes and laughter pertains directly to the court of Maximilian II. The dialogue begins at a dinner at the house of Frangipane, where the characters regale each other with stories about court fools, and about all the ludicrous or ridiculous things that exhilarate Maximilian II and cause him to laugh.66 A discussion about laughter ensues, including all the examples Fonteo finds for what causes or exemplifies it. This discussion of jokes and laughter in relation to the prince corresponds to Renaissance notions of the ideal ruler.67 Among such other qualities as clemency, for which Maximilian was especially celebrated, the ideal ruler was supposed to possess urbanity. As dicussed by Cicero, urbanity (urbanitas) was an expression of humanity (humanitas); it involved the possession of wit, which was demonstrated by the ability to tell jokes, among other things.68 As it was brought to bear on the concept of the ideal ruler urbanity meant, among other things, the ruler’s ability to take and tell a 106

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joke. In other words, the Renaissance ruler was supposed to have what now would be called a sense of humor. This conception can also be related to the ideal of urbanity as pertaining to the courtier. In the sixteenth century Castiglione’s Courtier was the most famous source for such ideals; in it Castiglione, like Fonteo later, presented his discussion of jokes and laughter in a court setting—namely the court of Urbino. In his portrayal of conversations at this court he also established principles for conducting conversation, among many other aspects of behavior. Courtiers were to be witty and skilled at repartee, and were to enliven their conversation with jokes.69 This suggestion is expressly made by one of the interlocutors in the second book of Il Cortegiano, Federigo Fregoso, and it starts an extensive discussion of jokes and pleasantries. Castiglione’s book enjoyed an immense reception, and had its readers in Central Europe as elsewhere. One of them was the emperor Rudolf himself, to whom an edition of Castiglione was dedicated in 1587. Peter Burke remarks that “Rudolf II is seen as a withdrawn scholarly figure and his court at Prague as a centre of occult studies, but a translation of the Courtier was dedicated to the emperor and his ennoblement of half-a-dozen artists suggests that Rudolf shared at least some of the values expressed in the dialogue.”70 As Rudolf’s reception of the Vertumnus suggests, one of these values was probably the ability to take a joke. Beyond its impact on the discussion of jokes—Maggi and other writers on the subject were close readers of Castiglione—not the least important effect of the Courtier was its impact on subsequent treatments of conversation. In his Galateo (1558), a famed guide to behavior, Giovanni Della Casa devotes much attention to conversation and cites Castiglione, whose ideas he both amplifies and simplifies.71 Stefano Guazzo’s La civil conversazione (1574) also quotes Castiglione, whose work Guazzo turns almost into a rule book for conversation.72 The fourth book of La civil conversazione is also set directly at a court, and in it he brings us close to the circumstances in which Arcimboldo’s paintings were originally received. Guazzo also brings us close to Arcimboldo. In fact, Guazzo is one of the main interlocutors in Comanini’s Il Figino, which offers so much commentary on Arcimboldo. Many comments made in Comanini about Arcimboldo are put into the mouth of the character Guazzo, and Comanini may well have had good reasons for this choice. In his dialogue on universal honor, Guazzo praises painting and especially Figino as its paragon, quoting a poem by Gherardo Borgogni on one of his pictures.73 While Comanini’s treatise deals with questions of imitation, his discussion of humor and of Arcimboldo’s pictures must have been regarded as appropriate topics for the sort of conversation that Guazzo had envisaged. Furthermore, correspondence exists between Borgogni and Guazzo, and between the painter Figino and Guazzo, regarding Il Figino. In his letters Guazzo accepts the flattery of being a character in the dialogue, and explicitly says that his writings are honored by Comanini’s tract.74 The role of jokes in providing a pastime or point of conversation is also suggested by Bartolommeo Taegio, who was also linked, albeit not immediately, to Arcimboldo. Taegio’s treatise La villa establishes conversation as an aspect of affability and urbanSerious Jokes

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ity—a form of recreation in which games, sayings (motti), and jokes (burle), if not too biting, can be employed.75 Entertaining conversation was one of the recreational aspects of the villa which is also discussed in other books about the subject.76 As we have seen in chapter 2, conversation about the entertainment offered by Arcimboldo’s pictures was probably one of the original contexts in which the pictures were received. The tournaments that Arcimboldo designed in 1570 and 1571, both discussed in chapter 2, are informative about what the artist and his milieu found laughable, and thus about the reception of the comic at court. A contemporary description in German by “Zirfeo Schwartzkunstler” describes peasants participating in the 1570 tournament. One male peasant, looking like a beer barrel, enters dressed as a bride, wearing fake bosoms and a large, ugly mask as he ogles the women present. The peasants fall off their horses, quarrel with the tournament organizer, and fail in almost all instances to strike the target. The peasants begin to dance, but then start fighting. The “bride’s” appearance is specifically described as “gar lecherlich”—really laughable.77 Some paintings by Arcimboldo—for instance, his mocking images of Zasius— can be compared to this scene for the way they evoke laughter and use that humor for social and political purposes. In this respect they are also comparable to the political humor of antiquity, which involves what has been called controlling laughter.78 Entertainment and laughter are part of Arcimboldo’s charge, but not in the form of carnivalesque inversion, as some have claimed. Such interpretations have invoked the humorous literature of Lombardy as support for that view. Teofilo Folengo’s macaronic verses, which mix Latin and the vernacular, are one such example; Lomazzo’s Rabisch, a potpourri of vernacular, Latin, and supposed dialects related to his Academia della Val di Blenio, is another.79 But these books also support another reading. Although Folengo has been related to the kinds of concern with food, humor, and popular culture that are supposedly present in Arcimboldo (and later genre painting), his writing is actually a very witty and learned concoction that necessitates a through grounding in Latin and Greek literature. This is evident from the outset of his mock epic Baldus, which invokes fat muses to stuff the poet with pasta: it plays against the trope of the thin (gracilis) muse evoked by Callimachus and other ancient writers. Authoritative scholarship has argued that Folengo’s “‘earthy’ view of the world was far from displaying any sympathy for the poor and underprivileged. [His] texts had very little to communicate to ordinary people, and in fact the poet’s public was an extremely cultivated one . . . and [the poems] were based on flawless prosody.”80 Beneath its seemingly “grotesque” peasant exterior, Lomazzo’s compilation also hides much learned allusion. Dante Isella, the most eminent scholar of Lomazzo’s Rabisch, has explicitly pointed out that the play with masks and drunkenness in Lomazzo’s compendium is an expression of the concepts of poetic furor and inspiration. According to Isella—and close reading of Lomazzo’s poems in the light of other publications by him, such as his Della forma delle Muse81 supports this interpretation—Lomazzo is a writer who has imbibed Orphic theories, and who hides pro108

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found truths under a deliberately misleading and bizarre exterior.82 This observation about masks and ugly exteriors has a deeper resonance that will be further examined presently. These readings can be applied to the interpretation of Lomazzo and Folengo as expressions of the grotesque. Lomazzo said that his book of poems, called Rime, was written “in imitation of grotesques used by painters.” But, as he explains on his title page, the poems were called grotesques not only because they were delightful for their variety of inventions, but because they were useful for the morality that they contained.83 Conversely, he says that painted grotesques were so named not only because they came from grottoes but because like enigmas, ciphers, or Egyptian hieroglyphs they use figures to signify concepts or thoughts, as in the conception of emblems or imprese. Lomazzo justifies the use of grotesques as ways to express concepts in visual form so as to avoid revealing their profound meaning to the masses.84 His view of grotesques is echoed by Pirro Ligorio, who also viewed them as symbols “to show how moral matters were figured.”85 While Arcimboldo has been yoked to Folengo and Lomazzo’s use of supposedly comparable popular and grotesque elements, the comparison may also be taken in another direction. Under a seemingly risible interior, Arcimboldo’s pictures, like grotesques, could impart a meaning. As in the traditional view of poetry, whose conjunction of the delightful with the useful Lomazzo’s discussion evokes, Arcimboldo’s paintings and poems could instruct and delight at the same time. Like other famous works of Renaissance literature—one thinks of Rabelais, Erasmus, or Shakespeare— they could be simultaneously comic and profound. As we shall see, the comparisons to Rabelais and Erasmus are directly relevant to Arcimboldo, and a comparison to Shakespeare is not so remote either. In his Sonnet 130 Shakespeare rings humorous changes on the Petrarchan tradition, parodying its conceits by which the poet compares parts of his love’s face to the sun, coral, and so on: “My mistress’ eyes are nothing like the sun— / Coral is far more red than her lips’ red . . . .” This parody in turn gives rise to a literal portrait of a beauty, published in a print in The Extravagant Shepherd of 1654, in which Cupid stands in the beauty’s head, her eyes are literally suns shooting arrows, her cheeks are roses, her breasts globes, and so forth.86 This printed image clearly calls to mind Arcimboldo’s manner of composition. It is also important to remember that in the sixteenth century Ovid’s metamorphoses, too, might be read through a Petrarchan lens. Thus it is also possible to look upon Arcimboldo’s poetic paintings as descendants of the Petrarchan tradition. Might they also be seen as visual jokes on this tradition as well? In any case, it is in a humorous spirit that Arcimboldo’s monsters can be read as metaphors.87 Yet Arcimboldo’s paintings—like other expressions of contemporaneous literature in Italian, namely comedy—could also introduce a grave tone.88 They could evoke a laugh, but also convey serious content. They thus acted in a manner comparable to the serious play of comedy, and other forms of expression that work according to the principles of serio-ludere—serious play. In short, Arcimboldo’s pictures are serious jokes. Serious Jokes

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A r c i m b o l d o ’ s Sile n i

Comanini directly evokes the notion of serious jokes in his poem on Arcimboldo’s Vertumnus. He also adumbrates what this idea may further signify when he explains why the viewer must halt the reaction of laughter to realize that the picture hides serious content. After mentioning its risible quality, Comanini immediately alerts the viewer of the painting that there is something more to its monstrosity: If in looking you don’t admire The ugliness that makes me handsome, It’s that you don’t know how Ugliness surpasses Every beauty.

Comanini explains what he means by this seemingly paradoxical inversion of values when, toward the end of the poem, he reveals that the composite head of Vertumnus represents Emperor Rudolf II. . . . I am like a Silenus, as dear To the young Greek as to the old one; Esteemed by Plato, for on the outside I seem a monster, and on the inside I hide a kingly image and A heavenly resemblance.89

In revealing that the “kingly image” is a portrait of Rudolf II, Comanini thus makes known the source for the conceit in which an ugly, monstrous, or risible exterior hides something beautiful or heavenly. This is Plato’s Symposium. Towards the end of that dialogue Alcibiades compares Socrates first to figures of Silenus in statuary shops (Symposium 215b) and then, for his musical eloquence, to the satyr Marsyas. Among other things, Alcibiades says that the outward casing Socrates wears is like that of a sculpted Silenus (Symposium 216c): this is an image of ugliness, as a similar play with the comparison in the Symposium of Xenophon (IV: 19) indicates. In his praise of Socrates as a Silenus in Plato’s Symposium, Alcibiades suggests that this image applies to Socrates’s joking, scoffing exterior. However, as Alcibiades also says, something more is hidden inside (Symposium 217a): “Whether anyone else has caught him in a serious moment and opened him, and seen the images inside, I know not, but I saw them one day, and thought them so divine and golden, so perfectly fair and wondrous.” Alcibiades explains further (Plato, Symposium 221e–222a) that the resemblance of Socrates to statues of Silenus pertains most to his talk: If you choose to listen to Socrates’s discourses you would feel them at first to be quite ridiculous: on the outside they are clothed with such absurd words and 110

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phrases—all of course, the hide of a mocking satyr. His talk is of pack-asses, smiths, cobblers, and tanners, and he seems always to be using the same terms for the same things; so that anyone inexpert and thoughtless might laugh his speeches to scorn. But when these are opened, and you obtain a fresh view of them by getting inside, first of all you will discover that they are the only speeches which have any sense in them; and secondly, that none are so divine, so rich in images of virtue, so largely—nay so completely—intent on all things proper for the study of such as would attain both grace and worth.

This is of course a classic definition of irony as a mode of expression, and it has often been taken accordingly as one definition of Socratic irony. Most important for our purposes, Alcibades’s description of Socrates as a Silenus, already disseminated by other ancient writers, became widely known during the Renaissance through its translation by Marsilio Ficino in a publication of 1484. Thence the metaphor of the Sileni became a staple of dialogues and treatises on love. It was also employed in a frequently reprinted exchange between Ermalao Barbaro and Pico della Mirandola about stylistic questions.90 As Rosalie Colie has suggested, the paradox of the Silenus and the notion of serio-ludere to which it is related provided a classical pedigree for paradoxes when they became an important genre in the sixteenth century.91 The Silenus of Alcibiades was also an important basis for the concept of the serious joke. This is indicated by the inclusion of the Barbaro-Pico exchange in a compendium of specifically Socratic serious jokes compiled by Caspar Dornavius.92 The book also includes Dornavius’s own poems on the natural world: this connection between the Socratic joke and the natural is telling for Arcimboldo. In any case, the compendium is noteworthy because Dornavius (the Latinized name of Dornau) was a Silesian humanist who had spent time in Prague and had connections with many people there, including men active at the imperial court of Rudolf II.93 The idea of the serious joke was certainly also current at the imperial court, as the titles of two books by Michael Maier, one of Rudolf II’s court physicians, suggest.94 It thus seems legitimate to apply the notion of serious jokes to other forms of expression at that court. The Sileni of Alcibiades had become proverbial long before Maier and Dornavius wrote about them. Erasmus had included them in the 1508 edition of his Adages, which was then expanded in 1515. After discussing how Socrates and other ancient figures were Sileni, Erasmus took the metaphor in a Christian direction by evoking Christ, the apostles, and his own contemporaries as Silenus figures, and conversely by attacking priests and implicitly the Pope for seeming to be good on the outside but ugly within. Erasmus elsewhere used the Silenus as a metaphor for style and, significantly, in his Praise of Folly he also made Folly herself into a Silenus figure. Folly remarks on Christian paradoxes, citing the Sileni of Alcibiades as exemplifying how “you will find everything reversed if you open the Silenus.”95 The Adages and the Praise of Folly enjoyed tremendous success in the sixteenth century. Through them, what had originally been a Platonic discussion of the Sileni of Alcibiades became widely diffused. The prologue to Rabelais’s Gargantua exemSerious Jokes

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plifies this diffusion. Rabelais explicitly presents as a model for his own work the Sileni of Alcibiades found in Plato’s Symposium, which he says are boxes painted with comical figures on the outside and intended for mirth, but which hold a precious drug inside. Rabelais says that one must interpret in a more sublime sense that which in his book might have seemed at first to have been uttered in mere lightheartedness. Rabelais clearly seems aware of the sort of inversion posed by Erasmus’s Adages, as is suggested by his allusion to some who wear a monkish cloak but are the very reverse of monkish on the inside. Much has been written about how these words provide a key to reading Gargantua, or even all of Rabelais, in relation to concepts of laughter.96 Whatever may be said about this issue, it is clear that serious laughter, or laughter combined with serious matters—perhaps even, as one recent book has put it in an extreme emphasis, laughter at the foot of the cross97— was central to the presentation of the Rabelaisian message. The Erasmian tradition also had an impact on the visual arts. It ultimately provided both immediate and mediated sources for the reception of Arcimboldo. In Arcimboldo’s own Lombardy, already during the first quarter of the sixteenth century artists had begun responding to the Adages—which, for example, supplied the source for images by the sculptor Bambaia.98 The satyr comparison presented first in Plato was extended literally and figuratively to a number of figures in Renaissance Italy. It was applied to Aretino and also to Giovio, whose portraits may in turn provide a source for Arcimboldo’s composite images, as has been mentioned above. The connection with Giovio can be emphasized because Giovio, who died in 1552, would have been a local celebrity in Como—along with the Plinies, he is depicted among the statuary on the cathedral of Como—when Arcimboldo worked for the cathedral there during the 1550s. The reverses of two portrait medals of the 1530s or early 1540s present an emblematic image of Aretino and Giovio as satyrs. On each medal the satyr’s head is made of phalluses. This form of synecdoche, as it has been called, while referring to the satyr also alludes to the subject of the medals. It has been regarded as a possible prototype for Arcimboldo’s composite heads, which were painted at least two decades later.99 Erasmus and variations on the Erasmian tradition are immensely important for sixteenth-century European culture in general. Nevertheless, something much more specific is involved in mediation of the Socratic tradition through Erasmus to Arcimboldo and his milieu. First, the idea of the Socratic joke was certainly known in court circles intimately connected with Arcimboldo. Fonteo referred to the joke of Plato and Socrates’ joke in his treatise on laughter which, as discussed above, can be situated at the court of Maximilian II. More important still, Fonteo was the nephew of the leading Erasmian in Italy, Primo Conti, whose name he adopted (Fonteo Primionis). He must have been schooled in the writings of Erasmus, with which his relative Maioraggio was also deeply concerned. Fonteo was brought to the court by Arcimboldo, who may have fetched him from these very circles in Milan in 1566; the coincidence of Fonteo’s arrival at court in 1568, when Arcimboldo employed him to write a piece that basically explained his serious jokes, is too great not to suggest that something more was involved. Another artist who collaborated with Arcimboldo, 112

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namely Jacopo Strada, also possessed books by Erasmus in his library and seems to have imbibed the Erasmian spirit for his own ideas of religious toleration and moderation.100 The milieu in which Fonteo and Strada collaborated with Arcimboldo would also have been one in which Erasmian notions were very important. This was of course the imperial court, where already under Charles V, and especially under Ferdinand I, who was emperor during Arcimboldo’s first years at court, Erasmian ideas had shaped much opinion: Ferdinand in particular had a close personal relation with Erasmus, who had met the thirteen-year old Habsburg archduke in 1516 when he was residing in Mechelen at the court of his aunt Margaret of Austria. Erasmus influenced Ferdinand’s education both personally and through his writings. He dedicated to Ferdinand’s brother Emperor Charles V the Institutio Principis Christiani, his book on the education of the Christian prince, and he dedicated to Ferdinand himself his paraphrase of the Gospel of John. He also advised Ferdinand to exercise moderation in dealings with the Protestant Reformers.101 In turn Ferdinand granted Erasmus a privilege to print all his works, because he thought they might be useful. This approach is related to what has been described as the climate of moderation in religious matters that existed at the imperial court, where some of the imperial advisers “openly displayed Erasmian sympathies and approved of colloquy.”102 This quest for compromise and spirit of moderation also marked the milieu of Maximilian II; it has been said that an Erasmian dynamic was operative in Maximilian’s Vienna. The irenic approach of many of Maximilian’s important courtiers was grounded in the Christian humanism of Erasmus.103 Arcimboldo’s own inclinations, as well as the milieu in which they arose and were received, would therefore have led to an understanding of his images as serious jokes. Comanini’s Il Figino helps to bring together strands of this theme. A dialogue on whether the art of painting brings pleasure or instruction, it demonstrates with reference to Arcimboldo’s pictures that painting can do both. It can strive for effects like those of poetry, as stated by a staple concept of poetic theory that has prevailed since antiquity: instruction should be mixed with delight, the useful should be mixed with the sweet. In this way and many others, Arcimboldo’s paintings are serious jokes.

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Natural Philosophy, Natural History, and Nature Painting

I

t became a well established ideal of the Renaissance that the painter should possess a broad range of learning. This view of the artist was suggested by Comanini in relation to Arcimboldo, but 150 years earlier Leon Battista Alberti, in his tract De pictura, had already indicated that painters should possess what might be called scientific knowledge and should associate with writers. Several figures, including Alberti himself and most notably Leonardo da Vinci, are often thought to have achieved this ideal, becoming exemplars of the uomo universale.1 We have already seen how the Leonardesque tradition in Lombardy was important for Arcimboldo, who because of his multiple talents and activities might even be called the Habsburgs’ Leonardo.2 This chapter investigates the pertinence of what might now be called scientific discourse to Arcimboldo, his career, and his paintings. While chapter 3 demonstrated how Arcimboldo associated with writers, and how humanists aided him in the preparation of elaborate designs for tournaments, the program for the 1571 Vienna tournament demonstrates an even broader range of references. The tournament presented cosmic themes: its participants entered appearing as personifications of the rivers of Europe, metals, planets, European countries, continents, seasons, elements, and the liberal arts. In short, the tournament represented the macrocosm or greater world through the microcosm of man. It also established a parallel to the body politic, because countries and continents were personified by individual participants.3 Lomazzo insists that the inventions and imaginative designs (invenzioni e capricci) were Arcimboldo’s own. Indeed, a significant discrepancy between Fonteo’s written account and Arcimboldo’s preparatory drawings points to the painter’s personal role in the conception of the tournament.4 In his written description Fonteo refers to one participant, who portrayed the Roman companion of the art (or science) of 115

astronomy, by the name Manilius. Manilius was the author of a didactic poem entitled Astronomica, which was much studied during the Renaissance period. But on the surviving design Arcimboldo drew of the costume for this figure, his inscription refers to Gaius Julius Hyginus, a Roman freedman believed to have written a work on astronomy, De astronomia (Figure 5.1).5 Even if the difference results from a change in planning, this inscription suggests that Arcimboldo possessed knowledge of some classical sources on astronomy, and was thus involved not only with the realization of the designs but with their ideation, as may be inferred from Lomazzo’s comment. Arcimboldo’s work as an artist knowledgeable in astronomy complements the way in which astronomers of his time, including Fabritius and Kepler, were—like many other physicians and naturalists around the imperial court—also knowledgeable humanists.6 Manilius contains much information about what is now commonly regarded as astrology, and astrological lore may also be relevant to the construction of Arcimboldo’s composite heads of Earth (Figure 4.3) and Water (Figure 4.1). Expressing widely held beliefs, Manilius (Astronomica 2:453–65) indicates, for instance, how the parts of the body are distributed among the constellations, whose signs exercise special influence on them. Aries (the Ram) governs the head, Taurus (the Bull) the neck, Leo (the Lion) the shoulder blades, Cancer (the Crab) the breast (pectus), and so forth. This may supply another reason for the prominent appearance of the bull in Earth’s neck, the lion in his shoulder, and the crab on Water’s breast. The horned creatures in Earth’s head may appear to replace the ram, since the ram’s skin appears on the chest of Earth; as explained in chapter 4. Its presence, along with the appearance of the lion in the form of a skin rather than of a living creature (especially since we now know that Arcimboldo probably made drawings of live lions), may well be determined by their reference to Habsburg symbolism, in which the ram’s skin represents the Golden Fleece. The replacement of the Fleece complicates the interpretation but is not necessarily inconsistent with the sources, however, since Hyginus (Astronomica 2:20) also refers to the Golden Fleece in describing the appearance of the constellation of Aries. Astronomy is one of the liberal arts, one of the four mathematical sciences that belong to the traditional quadrivium (astronomy, music, arithmetic, geometry), and there is evidence of Arcimboldo’s familiarity with two more of these disciplines. He was deeply interested in music. In Il Figino, Comanini mentions that Arcimboldo had invented a form of Pythagorean musical notation using colors for music to be played on a particular instrument. Whatever this instrument may have been—and I believe that it was a chromatic cembalo7—it points to Arcimboldo’s involvement with both the theoretical and practical aspects of music. He may have been knowledgeable of some aspects of geometry; the 1621 inventory of the Prague Kunstkammer lists a lute (lauten) by Arcimboldo. It is possible that this instrument is identical with a Perspektiflauten by Arcimboldo recorded in another early document.8 An interest in perspective relates, of course, to geometry. Questions of harmony, a basic notion in Renaissance musical science, lead to more basic considerations of natural philosophy and their bearing on Arcimboldo’s 116

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figure 5.1 Giuseppe Arcimboldo, Companion of Astronomy, drawing, 1571. Uffizi Gallery, Florence. Photo: Scala/Ministerio per i Beni e le Attività Culturali / Art Resource, NY.

work. Concepts of harmony were based on assumptions about the harmonic disposition of the universe, and hence touched on considerations of the harmonic relation of microcosm to macrocosm, the underlying theme of the 1571 tournament.9 The belief that a parallel existed between macrocosm and microcosm also underlay the basic conception of many of Arcimboldo’s composite heads: his pictures suggest, for example, that the constituent parts of nature can be represented by parts of human beings. This parallel is most evident in his semblances of human heads that stand for elements and seasons. In these pictures the greater world or universe, the macrocosm of the elements and seasons, is represented in the microcosm of a head (multum in parvo).10 Arcimboldo’s pictures thus proceed from a standard premise of Renaissance natural philosophy: that the parts of the universe parallel each other or are linked. In his discussion of a head made of animals, Comanini elaborates how some of these notions of natural philosophy may work in the composition of Arcimboldo’s paintings, which are also informed by ideas taken from natural history. Comanini explains why individual creatures were placed in different parts of the head by referring to traditional naturalistic lore, notably Pliny’s Natural History. For example, he explains why Arcimboldo placed an elephant in the cheek by citing a passage in which Pliny states that an elephant (like a cheek) shows shame.11 The qualities of other beasts consequently are to be related similarly to their positions in the head. Comanini thus indicates that physiognomy governs some operations in the system of correspondences on which the parallels in Arcimboldo’s paintings rely. Physiognomic theory, which holds that animals parallel or exemplify the functions of parts of the body, has roots in ancient natural philosophy and medicine.12 Arcimboldo thus demonstrates that his composite heads are not merely to be related to the Leonardesque tradition because they resemble Leonardo’s “grotesque” heads. Some N at u r a l P h i l o s o p h y a n d N at u r e P a i n t i n g

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sort of physiognomic reflection or investigation also lies behind Arcimboldo’s inventions, as indeed it does behind Leonardo’s so-called caricature heads.13 Physiognomic theory was current in the mid- and late sixteenth-century, not just through the Leonardesque tradition but through other conduits as well. Pliny’s text had been familiar to Lombard painters at least since 1389, when it was illuminated by Peitro da Pavia.14 The Renaissance recasting of classical notions of physiognomy is exemplified by the writing of Giovan Battista della Porta, who also had connections with the imperial court. Della Porta’s important treatise on physiognomics explicitly and extensively compared the heads of men to those of animals.15 It would have interested a portraitist like Arcimboldo. More important, a definite link exists between physiognomics, nature painting, and Arcimboldo’s circles. Rudolf II used the naturalistic miniature painter Joris Hoefnagel to lure Della Porta to Prague.16 Other aspects of natural philosophy are also involved in the conception of Arcimboldo’s pictures. Like Leonardo’s caricatures, Arcimboldo’s composites reveal an awareness of humoral theory. According to this doctrine, the four humors determine the four general dispositions (sanguine, choleric, melancholic, phlegmatic) of human beings, and are visible in a person’s countenance. Arcimboldo shapes his Elements and Seasons according to the microcosm/macrocosm analogy not only by having each picture correspond to one of the four ages of man (childhood, youth, maturity, old age), but also to each of the humoral dispositions, which in turn correspond to the elements, seasons, and the ages of man.17 This correspondence may be observed in the differences of color tonality among the various heads and in their semblance of facial expressions, as seen most clearly in the ruddy, choleric Fire. Along with physiognomy, phytognomy may also have played a role in Arcimboldo’s compositions. In phytognomy, which term comes from another book by Della Porta, a plant’s character is derived from its appearance, and the various parts of the human face or body are related to plants, much as in physiognomy they are related to animals. Della Porta’s works were certainly known in Prague, and ideas similar to his phytognomic theories may well have circulated in Arcimboldo’s milieu.18 It is thus possible that the comparison of parts of the body or face to plants was also operative in Arcimboldo’s compositional practice. In any instance, Arcimboldo’s Seasons and Elements personify natural entities in human form. They rely on the conceit that the human microcosm embodies the macrocosm of the universe, personified in the four seasons and four elements. They can be related to the four ages of man: childhood, youth, maturity, and old age—represented respectively by Spring and Air, Summer and Fire, Earth and Autumn, and Winter and Water. They also correspond to the complexions or temperaments—sanguine, choleric, melancholic, phlegmatic: indeed versions of the Elements were described as the complexions, with the pairs corresponding to each temperament.19 As noted, two pictures in each series are male (air, fire, autumn, winter) and two are female (spring, summer, earth, water) according to their genders in Latin (e.g. aqua, terra). The corresponding pairs (spring-air, summer-fire, autumn-earth, winter-water) face each other, as do two in each series. The basis for these associations come from natural 118

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philosophy: spring and air are hot and wet; summer and fire are hot and dry; autumn and earth are cold and dry; winter and water are cold and wet. A r c i m b o l d o a n d Na t u r al Hi s t o r y

In 1582 Arcimboldo was sent by the emperor to Germany to acquire not only antiquities but also animals and marvelous birds from the New World (Thiere und Wundervoegel aus der neuen Welt).20 This mission suggests that he was trusted as an expert to judge naturalia as well as antiquities. The confidence placed in him was well founded, because drawings that can now be attributed to Arcimboldo indicate that he had already become familiar with many “exotic” animals and birds, including creatures from the New World.21 Arcimboldo was not only regarded as an expert on natural history, but his works—like those of his colleagues and followers at the imperial court, and like Jacopo Ligozzi in Florence—can also be closely related to its practices. Natural history has recently been called the “science of describing.”22 Originating in ancient and medieval description of naturalia, Renaissance natural history described, distinguished, and catalogued animal and plant species. It was concerned with the observation and recording of zoological, ornithological, and botanical specimens. A further step was obviously the dissemination of this knowledge, in one form or another of publication. In this process of recording, observation, and dissemination an artist could clearly play a key role—and Arcimboldo did, as we shall see. Arcimboldo’s involvement with natural history may have emerged from his contacts with physicians at the imperial court. As discussed in chapter 3, Arcimboldo probably encountered Wolfgang Lazius towards the beginning of his career in Central Europe. During his years at court he could have had the opportunity to meet many other physicians, including such diverse and important figures as Pietro Andrea Mattioli, Rembert Dodoens, Paulus Fabritius, Thadeus Hagecius (or Hajek), Johannes Crato, Michael Ruland, Oswald Croll, Mathias Borbonius, Julius Alexandrinus, Anselm Boethiius de Boodt, Michael Maier, and Franciscus de Paduanis (Franciscus Paduanus, also called Patavinus). Like Lazius, several of these physicians were not only trained humanists but also made contributions to the history of several sciences. Hajek and Fabritus were astronomers, Croll was involved with the occult sciences, Maier with alchemy, and De Boodt wrote the first scholarly study of gems. Most significant for present discussion, Dodoens, Fabritius, and Mattioli were all scholars of natural history. They participated in an endeavor that involved several other people in the circles of “learned celebrities” around the court of Maximilian II, as they have been called. These include such men as Carolus Clusius (Charles de l’Écluse), Rembert Dodoens, and Ogier de Busbecq, all of whom were important for the history of botany.23 Perhaps most prominent among this group is Clusius, who had been called to Vienna in 1573 to serve as herbalist and plant collector and to make a medical garden for the emperor. Gardens were of course one of the foci for natural history. Clusius associated with other scholars at court, including Fabritius. He lodged with a univerN at u r a l P h i l o s o p h y a n d N at u r e P a i n t i n g

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sity physician, Johann Aicholz, the owner of another garden, and in whose company he traveled in Central Europe. He also wrote a book on Hungarian plants based on observations made during his travels. Though the imperial medical garden vanished during the reign of Rudolf II, Clusius remained in Habsburg service for a while after the death of Maximilian II; he would thus have been present at court during much of the time Arcimboldo also was in service there.24 From 1592 Clusius directed the garden of the university in Leiden. Also noteworthy for his involvement with natural history is Busbecq, who had been head of an imperial legation to Constantinople, where he resided for several years. Although Busbecq and Melchior Lorck do not mention each other, Lorck, who was also in Vienna in 1563, must have been residing in the imperial compound while it was under Busbecq’s direction. Busbecq wrote many letters and later published a description of his travels.25 Significantly, he returned to Vienna in 1562, the year Arcimboldo arrived at the imperial court: he brought with him the tulip and other plants that previously had been uncultivated in Europe outside Turkey. Busbecq no doubt stimulated the court’s interest in eastern growths and in gardens.26 Certainly Clusius’s later studies of tulips would have relied on Busbecq’s specimens; it is also tempting to relate Arcimboldo’s studies of tulips to those same flowers, which would have been of great interest in Vienna. Anselm Boethius de Boodt is another noteworthy scholar; who ties together natural history and nature painting, physicians, and art. He was born in Bruges in 1550, and after studying at Orléans—probably after he had worked for some time in the Low Countries—first appeared in Prague in 1583 when Arcimboldo was involved with naturalia. He was made Hofmedicus in 1588, imperial physician in 1604, and remained at court until Rudolf II’s death in 1612. De Boodt’s first publication was his edition of the third volume of the Symbola Divina et Humana, published in 1603. This work—begun by the Bruges-born historian Jacopus Typotius, who had died in 1602—was a collection of explications accompanying illustrations of imprese of rulers and other dignitaries. These imprese supposedly had been designed by the imperial antiquarian Ottavio Strada, but they were probably invented or collected by his father, Jacopo Strada, who, as we have seen, was connected with Arcimboldo. Six years after this collaborative publication, De Boodt published his Gemmarum et lapidarum historia. This examination of gems and stones contains much alchemical and magical lore and it cites works including those of Mattioli. Of relevance to the visual arts is what it reveals about an understanding of stones at the imperial court, and also, surprisingly, its contribution to color theory.27 Most important in the present context, De Boodt was also involved in natural history. He assembled twelve volumes on the subject which contain 728 illustrations of quadrupeds, birds, fish, insects, reptiles, and plants.28 They represent all the creatures of the natural world, thus complementing the collections of Georg Hoefnagel, who had represented the four elements in a famous series of four emblem books adorned with splendid gouaches and watercolors that he also presented to Rudolf II, Arcimboldo’s later patron. De Boodt’s books may be described as a paper museum like that of Cassiano del Pozzo, which they anticipate. They likewise unde120

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niably evince an interest in scientific concerns. De Boodt’s urge toward taxonomy and standardization is seen in the inscriptions in Latin, Greek, French, German, Dutch, Italian, Spanish, and Czech—all of which seem to have been written in De Boodt’s own hand. In several instances a specimen’s medicinal properties and further scientific use are also noted, thus demonstrating DeBoodt’s medical experience.29 In any case the existence and probable use of these drawings cast into doubt some of the claims made for the primacy of the Academy of the Lynxes around Galileo Galilei, which is claimed to have made the first studies of this kind.30 De Boodt engaged a number of artists for this project. One, also known from a botanical print published by Hendrik Hondius, was Elias Verhulst—also a Fleming, apparently from Mechelen. But more significant was De Boodt’s own personal involvement as an artist. Many pages bear either a signature or the monogram A.D.B. fecit—obviously De Boodt’s own. De Boodt thereby reveals himself to have been one of the major creators of his own albums. Though a physician, he was also an accomplished illustrator. The quality of his own images is higher, in fact, than that of many others in his book. Although those images may have been copied from other sources—the books still have not been studied sufficiently to determine whether that is true—they all make an effort at convincing lifelikeness. In contrast with other images in the albums, which often lay a creature down on the page without offering any context, De Boodt’s own illustrations make a fairly consistent attempt to put the animals into some appropriate natural setting. They put a bear on a cliff, a porcupine in brush, birds on a branch, and so forth. Shadows and variations in color intensity create the illusion of naturalness. In all this, De Boodt shows not only his competence but his proclivities as a painter, as well as his knowledge of natural history. Significantly, De Boodt also knew about Arcimboldo’s inventions and collected them. An Arcimboldesque personification of Air is found amongst his compendia. Later markings identify the various birds in the head, suggesting that De Boodt was using the image as a sort of compendium.31 His illustrations are a step forward from the nature studies of Arcimboldo’s generation, and indeed they represent a step forward in the study of natural history because of the presence of inscriptions. Renaissance physicians and naturalists of De Boodt’s generation, as well as older ones, had cause to be interested in art and artists, as previous discussion of Lazius has already suggested. Since antiquity pharmacological questions had led physicians to the study of herbs, and consequently to the compilation of books about herbs. Herbals or herbaria served as compilations of knowledge of plants. The ancient text of Dioscurides, in particular, became one of the important foundations for natural history during the Middle Ages and Renaissance.32 This book is best known from an illuminated manuscript called the Anicia Julia codex, named after the daughter of a late Byzantine emperor who had owned it. In the sixteenth century the manuscript was acquired by the Habsburgs: Mattioli was familiar with it and Clusius prepared an edition of it. Mattioli’s edition of the Materia medica of Dioscurides is in fact one of the best known books by an imperial court physician, and has been described as the most N at u r a l P h i l o s o p h y a n d N at u r e P a i n t i n g

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important natural history of plants since Dioscurides himself.33 It was first printed in Prague by the publisher Melantrich in 1562, the year in which Arcimboldo entered court service.34 It was embellished by woodcut illustrations, much in keeping with the tradition of the herbal, which depended not only on upon description but also on illustration to address its immediate—and empirical—concern.35 Since communication depended on accuracy of representation, observations made in the fifteenth to seventeenth centuries verified, corrected, and added to the herbal tradition that had been established in antiquity.36 Consequently, naturalistic verisimilitude in illustration, whatever standards were applied to the procedure of evaluation, gradually came to be regarded as essential for the identification of plants. This leads us to consider the role of Arcimboldo and his art more closely in relation to natural history. A r c i m b o l d o ’ s Na t u r e S t u d ie s I d e n t i f ie d

figure 5.2  Lilium persicum from Carolus Clusius, Rarorum aliquot stirpium per Pannoniam, Austriam etc. historia. Antwerp, 1583.

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Arcimboldo’s paintings of composite heads display nature in all its abundance. His paintings of the seasons are filled with flowers and fruits. Myriad sea creatures are seen in Water. Air is made of dozens of birds’ heads. Animals of all kinds appear in Earth. Flora and Vertumnus are also full of fruits, flowers, and vegetables. All the natural details in these pictures are carefully observed and depicted. It has recently been suggested that Arcimboldo’s minute realism and scrupulous rendering of details reveals the technique of a real scientific illustrator,37 that his paintings represent many different kinds of creatures,38 and that it is thus logical to assume that he had a fund of nature studies on which to draw.39 Numerous studies of animals and drawings of birds have been attributed to him in the past.40 Many more than have been previously ascribed41 can now be identified as his work, including an important and previously unstudied cache in Dresden. It can also now be seen that Arcimboldo did many more flower and plant studies than have hitherto been recognized. Several documents pertaining to the famous Bolognese physician, naturalist, and antiquarian Ulisse Aldrovandi provide the key to the identification of these drawings. They form the basis for attribution of much of the corpus of Arcimboldo’s nature studies, including the “marvelous creatures” from the New World that he was sent to Germany to acquire. They also allow further insights into Arcimboldo’s connections with natural history. A letter of 11 September 1585 written to Aldrovandi from Prague by Franciscus de Paduanis (Franciscus Paduanus, also called Patavinus) establishes that in the 1580s Arcimboldo was in fact regarded as an expert in the depiction of naturalia. De Paduanis was one of many physicians and other court servants who were involved in the study of natural history, many of whom also may be linked directly or indirectly with Arcimboldo. A native of Friuli, he resided in Prague from 1583 until his death in 1589; there he served as physician to Hans Kinsky, burgrave of Karlstein Castle.42 Like other court physicians, De Paduanis had broader scientific interests, for instance in astrology (which also included “modern” astronomy): the year of his correspondence with Aldrovandi is also the date of an astrolabe made by the imperial C h a p t e r Fiv e

instrument maker, Erasmus Habermel, which belonged to him. This astrolabe (now in Oxford’s Museum of the History of Science) possesses an unusual dodecagonal design and an asymmetrical star map. In his letter to Aldrovandi from De Paduanis, which though published in part has not yet been interpreted in full, De Paduanis writes that he has obtained from Giuseppe Arcimboldo da Milano (Josepho Arcimboldo Mediolanense), first painter of the emperor, images of many birds and quadrupeds. These have been delineated with colors from life (ad vivum), and have been prepared for Aldrovandi. De Paduanis says he has previously written about these paintings; he also says he has tried to have Arcimboldo depict a plant called tusai, also known as the Persian lily, which has been illustrated in Clusius’s book on rare plants found in Hungary (Figure 5.2). De Paduanis had obtained a sample of this plant and hurried to bring it to Arcimboldo, but the painter was somewhat negligent, taxing De Paduanis’s patience, because he was absent from Prague for several days to attend a wedding. In the meantime the flowers yellowed, leaves fell off, and the plant wilted. In lieu of Arcimboldo’s depiction of the flower, De Paduanis could provide Aldrovandi only with a lengthy verbal description.43 In another undated (and hitherto unpublished) letter De Paduanis indicates that Aldrovandi was happy with the drawings of the animals and cranes that he had sent, and promises to send something taken di fresco which was in the hands of his imperial majesty. He says it is difficult, however, to get drawings of “rare things” at the court. He promises nevertheless to send Aldrovandi a drawing of something “real, true, and natural” and not a fabulous creature.44 De Paduanis’s correspondence with Aldrovandi thus suggests that Arcimboldo was intimately involved with several aspects of the project of natural history. Communication of the sort represented by the De Paduanis-Aldrovandi correspondence has been regarded as characteristic of, and essential for, the emergence of Renaissance natural history.45 It demonstrates that it is obviously incorrect to say that Arcimboldo “did not intend to communicate descriptions to the Republic of Letters.”46 On the contrary, he was demonstrably connected directly with the world of physicians and naturalists, including in this instance— significantly—the renowned Aldrovandi. The De Paduanis letters place Arcimboldo directly in contact with the community of naturalists. They demonstrate, moreover, that Arcimboldo’s nature studies, although hard to obtain, could be used for purposes other than as preparatory designs for paintings—that they were, N at u r a l P h i l o s o p h y a n d N at u r e P a i n t i n g

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in fact, actually used by naturalists. The letters show Arcimboldo to be participating directly in the dissemination of knowledge about natural history. Aldrovandi’s papers in Bologna include lists of drawings of creatures depicted at the imperial court in Prague; they were taken from the royal gardens, which are said to have contained various plants that came from Italy, Spain, and other far-off

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figure 5.3 Giuseppe Arcimboldo, blackbuck antelope and hartebeest, c. 1584. Biblioteca Universitaria Bologna.

places. The lists explicitly indicate that De Paduanis had arranged to have the drawings made, and otherwise verify that they were done by Arcimboldo.47 They mention many birds and other animals from places that would be exotic to a sixteenth-century European, including the Americas, Africa, Asia, and northernmost Europe. De Paduanis obtained Arcimboldo’s images through the mediation of another physician, Jakob Scutellarius, who had come from Parma and was active as imperial physician in Prague from April 1581 to 1590.48 These letters are important for several reasons, the first being that they can be used for the identification of nature studies by Arcimboldo. The list of representations of creatures from Prague that De Paduanis procured for Aldrovandi from Arcimboldo names twenty-four different animals and birds. Five of the animal studies survive in the volumes from Aldrovandi’s collection still in the University Library in Bologna. These drawings are executed in watercolor and gouache on gray paper. The individual sheets are pasted onto folios, and are therefore recognizable as having a provenance different from that of other illustrations that are drawn directly onto other folios in the same books. The animal studies pasted onto the folios are drawn as if they were standing on small pieces of grey-green terrain. One is a depiction of a blackbuck antelope (antilope cervicapra), which can be identified in the list of drawings given to Aldrovandi as “la capra del Bezar” (Bezoar goat): this is the same nomenclature used by Aldrovandi himself in his treatise on animals with cloven hoofs.49 A (north African) hartebeest (alcelaphus buselaphus, probably related to the ancient bubale) is depicted above this creature on the same page: it is probably listed as “l’asino d’Africa” in the studies given to Aldrovandi (Figure 5.3).50 Another folio depicts both a mountain coati (nasuella olivacea) below and a male red-flanked duiker (cephalopus rufilatus) above; the former of these animals has been identified as the “tasso marino” in the list of drawings.51 Another hitherto unidentified drawing may be added to this group: a depiction of a desert jerboa (jaculus orientalis) pasted onto another folio. This creature is described by an inscription as “lepore dell’India” or Indian hare;52 it is probably the creature called a “mus Indicus”, or Indian mouse, in the lists that survive in Aldrovandi’s manuscripts.53 These images of the blackbuck antelope, hartebeest, duiker, and coati have for some years been recognized as models for nature studies contained in a compendium mainly of oil paintings on paper that was assembled during the reign of Rudolf II, and which is usually known as the “museum” (Musaeum) or bestiary (bestiaire, Tierbuch) of Rudolf II (Handschriftensammlung, Österreichische Nationalbibliothek, Vienna, cod. min. 129 and 130).54 These animals in the “museum” have been described as copies after similar creatures in another Viennese collection of nature studies (also Handschriftensammlung, Österreichische Nationalbibliothek, Vienna, cod. min. 42, fol. 19r bottom; fol. 21r top; fol. 18r bottom), which have been related to the Aldrovandi drawings, but the existence of multiple versions suggests that they may depend on yet other examples of the same sources.55 In any event, this second Vienna codex (cod. min. 42) contains drawings by several artists, including studies that have also been identified as sources for those in N at u r a l P h i l o s o p h y a n d N at u r e P a i n t i n g

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the collection of images in the “Museum.”56 A number of animal drawings in this second volume have also been attributed to Arcimboldo: most can now be confirmed and several more added. Already convincingly attributed to Arcimboldo are a moose (alces alces) (fol. 9r; Figure 5.4) that lacks antlers and thus is probably a cow;57 a reindeer (rangifer tarandus; fol. 19r top); a stag (a male of the species cervus elaphus on fol. 9r at the top); the head of a boar (sus scrofa) with malformed tusks (fol. 6 r);58 a goat (capra hircus fol. 21 r bottom) that is probably a preliminary sketch since it is done entirely in blue wash, resembling tournament designs by Arcimboldo in Florence; a gray mongoose (herpestes edwardsii) dated 1572;59 and studies of a lizard, chameleon, and salamander that are mentioned in chapter 1 (see Figure 1.10). Slight variations in quality of execution may indicate the participation of workshop assistants in the execution of these and other nature studies, but in all instances the prototypes appear to have been made by Arcimboldo himself.

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Some other studies of animals have recently been attributed to Arcimboldo. These include antlers (fol. 11r); goats’ hooves (fol. 23 r and 24 r; Figure 5.5), the head of a stag (fol. 20r); the head and neck of a chamois (rupicapra rupicapra; fol. 20r bottom); of an ibex (capra ibex, fol. 22r bottom); and another chamois head (fol. 22r top). Although none of the actual bird studies listed in Aldrovandi’s papers seems to have survived, Aldrovandi offers clues to the identification of their models, and hence to the attribution of many colored drawings of birds to Arcimboldo. In the second book of his treatise on ornithology he includes a drawing of a bird he calls an Indian dove with a duck’s beak (colomba indica cum rostro anatis). Aldrovandi says that the image had been sent to him some years earlier from the court of the Holy Roman Emperor by Hieronimus Patavinus, an outstanding physician in Vienna.60 Patavinus is an older form for the name Paduanus, and it was occasionally used for De Paduanis: hence Aldrovandi must be referring to the physician known as Paduanus

figure 5.4  Giuseppe Arcimboldo, moose, c. 1566? Österreichische Nationalbibliothek, Vienna. figure 5.5  Giuseppe Arcimboldo, goat’s hooves, c. 1563? Österreichische Nationalbibliothek, Vienna.

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(whose first name, however, is Franciscus and not Hieronimus), here called de Paduanis. The bird, therefore, must be the one listed as a “colombo d’India” among the specimens sent from Prague to Bologna. The bird in this illustration is modeled after a specimen of stranoenas cyanocephala, which is a species found only in Cuba—in the West Indies. Hence it is correctly called a “dove from the Indies.” An example of this species is depicted on a sheet attached to the bottom of a folio (fol. 41r; Figure 5.6) in the Vienna volume (cod. min. 42) which contains animal studies by Arcimboldo.61 Two more birds in the Vienna book (cod. min. 42) probably also correspond to models for some of those found in Aldrovandi’s list, but while the birds have been attributed to Arcimboldo, the more precise identification has not yet been made. These birds are a black crested crane (balearica pavonina; fol. 36r, top left) and a peregrine or Aplomado falcon (falco femoralis; Figure 5.7), a bird from the Western Hemisphere. A version of the former illustration is probably listed as “La Grue cerra o crestata” in

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Aldrovandi’s manuscripts, and one of the latter as “Il Falcon d’India.” Although the falcon has not been unanimously attributed to Arcimboldo, it bears a date in his writing and resembles his other drawings in manner of execution.62 Another drawing of a helmed curassow (crax pauxi pauxi), a bird also known as a stone hocco (cod. min. 42, fol. 46r above; Figure 5.8), which also can be attributed with certainty to Arcimboldo is described as a “Gallina Indica” by Aldrovandi in his ornithological treatise.63 This drawing may therefore correspond to the “Gallo della Pietra” in the list of sheets given him, since that name combines two terms to describe the bird which is also known as a hocco à pierre or stone hocco.64 A black-crowned night heron (nycticorax nycticorax), dated 1585 by Arcimboldo (cod. min. 42, fol. 36r, upper right) and previously attributed to him, may correspond to the bird listed as “avis ex gruum genere” in the list of birds by De Paduanis—and it may be one of the cranes (gru) to which reference has been made.

figure 5.6 Giuseppe Arcimboldo, blue-headed quail dove (“colombo d’India”), 1577. Österreichische Nationalbibliothek, Vienna. figure 5.7  Giuseppe Arcimboldo, aplomado falcon, 1575. Österreichische Nationalbibliothek, Vienna. figure 5.8  Giuseppe Arcimboldo, helmeted curassow (stone hocco), 1571. Österreichische Nationalbibliothek, Vienna.

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Most recently several other bird studies have also been attributed, rightly, to Arcimboldo. These include a kestrel (falco tinnunculus or naumanni) shown with various flowers such as lawn daisies (fol. 29r top), which also has a significant detail, a tell-tale circle; a partridge dated 1578 that is almost completely albino (fol. 36r, bottom); a little bittern (ixobrychus minutus) dated 1577 by Arcimboldo (fol.37r, upper left); a little owl (athene noctua; fol. 37r top right); a great tit (parus major; fol. 37r second from top); an albino crow (corvus monedula) dated 1574 (fol. 37r at bottom); a bittern (botaurus lentiginosus) with blue washes, dated 1577 by Arcimboldo (fol. 39r top)65; a blue tit (parus caeruleus) dated 1576 (fol. 39r bottom); a ring-necked pheasant (phasianus colchicus; fol. 41 r, top) dated 1577; and a quail (coturnix coturnix) with an extra foot (fol. 46r bottom), also shown plucked (fol. 46r bottom; Figure 5.9). All the drawings of birds and other animals in the Vienna codex (cod. min. 42) that have heretofore been attributed to Arcimboldo are done on individual sheets of paper cut out and pasted onto folios. All have been executed with brush in watercolor or gouache on paper. Like the drawings in Bologna, all those in Vienna contain white heightening where appropriate—for example, in the highlighting of hooves. Blue washes are employed for shadows cast on the ground, with a distinctive umbra and penumbra; the terrain itself is often yellowish or yellow green. The coloring, the rendering of shadows, and in general the broad handling of the brush to build up forms—seen particularly in the more sketch-like drawings in the Vienna codex, where areas of paper are left blank to suggest highlights—closely resemble similar details in Arcimboldo’s drawings for festivals and tournaments in Florence (Gabinetto dei Disegni degli Uffizi). So does the masterly use of brush and wash to sketch forms only in outline, or to delineate basic internal features. Another trait found on many of the Uffizi drawings that are authentic works by Arcimboldo is a little circle drawn in the same color (usually blue) as the rest of the drawing. A similar mark also appears on most of the Vienna studies of animals, and its presence helps to confirm their attribution to Arcimboldo, for whom they seem to have served as a kind of identifying mark.66 In any case, the numerals found on the Uffizi drawings and on several of the sheets in Vienna are almost identical to each other in form. Many drawings attributed to Arcimboldo also show flower studies on the same sheets with birds or animals. These and other traits and elements of style thus allow for the attribution to Arcimboldo of several other animal studies in the 130

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Vienna volume (cod. min. 42).67 These include a hare (lepus caprensis) and a rabbit (oryctolgus cuniculus; top and bottom on fol. 16 r); an Asian elephant (elephas maximus; fol. 7r, top); a dromedary camel (camelus dromedarius; fol. 7r bottom); and, as already noticed by other scholars, a cheetah (acionyx jubatus; at the top of fol. 13 r) and a leopard (panthera pardus, second from the top of fol. 13 r).68

figure 5.9 Giuseppe Arcimboldo, quail with extra leg, 1571. Österreichische Nationalbibliothek, Vienna. figure 5.10 Giuseppe Arcimboldo, dead bee eater. Österreichische Nationalbibliothek, Vienna. figure 5.11 Giuseppe Arcimboldo, goose with extra leg, 1577. Österreichische Nationalbibliothek, Vienna.

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Many more bird studies in watercolor and gouache that share a similar style and other details with the blue-headed quail dove (stranoenas cyanocephala), the curassow, and the aplomado falcon as well as with other animal studies by Arcimboldo, may now be attributed to him. These previously undiscussed drawings are of a gerfalcon (falco rusticolus, fol. 27 top)69 that also shows a telltale circle; a bird of paradise (paradisaea apoda, fol. 27r bottom); a European kingfisher (alcedo atthis, fol. 29 bottom); a shrike (lanius cinereus, fol. 30r bottom); a dead juvenile bee eater (merops apiaster, Figure 5. 10) with flowers (fol. 34r); a purple-capped lory (lorius domicellus, fol. 30r, top); male and female pheasants (genus phasianus, fol. 40r top and middle); a bee eater (merops apiaster) dated 1583 by Arcimboldo (40r bottom); a grey partridge (perdrix perdrix, fol. 42r top); a goose (anser anser) with an extra leg, dated 1577 (fol. 44r bottom; Figure 5.11); a red-footed falcon (falco vespertinus) dated 1577 (fol. 49r top); a house sparrow (passer domesticus) dated 1577 (fol. 49r bottom); a crossbilled 132

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figure 5.12 Giuseppe Arcimboldo, moose, 1566. Kupferstichkabinett, Dresden. Photo: Herbert Boswank. figure 5.13 Giuseppe Arcimboldo, duiker, 1569. Kupferstichkabinett, Dresden. Photo: Herbert Boswank.

finch (loxia curvirostra; fol. 51r bottom); and a jay (garrulus glandarius, fol. 52r top) on what seems to be a blossoming fruit tree, with another blossom drawn beside it. Possibly also by Arcimboldo is another kingfisher (fol. 51r middle); probably by him is a male rock ptarmigan (lagopus mutus, fol. 51r top) in summer plumage. The identification of these animal and bird studies in Vienna also leads to the identification of a hitherto largely undiscussed cache of drawings (in Dresden, Kupferstich-Kabinett, CA 213) that represents a significant addition to the corpus of animal studies by Arcimboldo. Like the studies in Vienna, these drawings are executed in watercolor and gouache on separate sheets of paper that have been pasted onto pages and bound into a book. The book seems to have been assembled in the seventeenth century. In some instances the individual animals have been cut out along their outlines and pasted down. In many cases a landscape base has been added, or the existing ground has been embellished by the addition of washes or tufts of grass which are placed over the forms Arcimboldo himself drew. These additions are evident because they often overlap onto the pages to which the drawings have been glued.

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figure 5.14 Giuseppe Arcimboldo, coati, 1577. Kupferstichkabinett, Dresden. Photo: Herbert Boswank. figure 5.15 Giuseppe Arcimboldo, stag, 1564. Kupferstichkabinett, Dresden.

One of these Dresden drawings, a moose (fol. 39r; Figure 5.12), attaches antlers to the female moose (alces alces) depicted in Vienna. The antlers are depicted separately on the Vienna version (cod. min. 42, fol. 8r; Figure 5.4). This drawing has previously been associated with those drawings in the Vienna codex; it has been called German circa 1600, yet a date of 1566 is clearly legible on it.70 Both it and many other related drawings done in a similar style can be attributed to Arcimboldo. Comparison to the Vienna and Bologna drawings, to the so-called “Museum” (in which, for example, the Vienna version of the moose is replicated on fol. 18r), and to the style and handwriting seen on the authentic drawings by Arcimboldo in Florence provides the basis for these attributions. In Dresden there appear versions of the hartebeest (alcelaphus buselaphus; fol. 27r), the blackbuck antelope (fol. 43r), the duiker (fol.35r; Figure 5.13), the coati (fol. 70r; Figure 5.14) and the jerboa (fol. 71r; Figure 5.27) found in the Aldrovandi collection (and in part also in cod. min. 42 and 129, the “Museum”). Examples of the cheetah (fol. 11r), the leopard (fol. 12r), the stag (fol. 42r; Figure 5.15), and the reindeer (fol. 48r; Figure 5.26) found in Dresden are also seen in the Vienna codex (cod. min. 42, and in the “Museum”). A weak copy of a drawing of a tiger (panthera tigris; cod. min., 42, fol. 13r middle) known in Vienna seems to depend on the same model that served for a drawing found in Dresden (fol. 4r), and is most probably based on a drawing by Arcimboldo himself. A tiger is also listed among the drawings in the catalogue of animal studies found in Aldrovandi’s papers, so the prototype of the Dresden drawing probably served as the model for that drawing as well. Four other drawings in Dresden, of a black headed sheep (ovis ammon; fol. 10r; Figure 5.16), a wild goat (capra aegagrus; fol. 30r), a ring-tailed coati (nasua nasua, fol. 69r), and an angora cat (felis silvestris; fol. 82r; Figure 5.17) are based on models that were also used for the representation of those creatures in the “Museum” (cod. min. 129 respectively fol. 29r, fol. 23r, fol. 55r, and fol. 50r bottom). Finally the chamois (rupicapra rupicapra, fol. 29r; Figure 5.18) in Dresden, which is also stylistically comparable to other designs, resembles studies of the head of a similar creature that are found in the Vienna codex (cod. min. 42) with drawings by Arcimboldo (cod. min. 42 fol. 20r top and 22r bottom). In addition to these studies the Dresden volume also contains the following drawings, versions of which have not yet been found in other locations, but which for stylistic reasons can also be attributed to Arcimboldo. These are a female (fol. 1r) and male lion (panthera leo, fol. 5r); a puma (puma concolor, fol. 8r); a bear (of the genus ursus, fol. 14r), a camel (fol 17r, perhaps copied after Arcimboldo’s design seen in cod. min. 42, fol. 7r bottom); a wild dog (fol. 18r); another kind of antelope, perhaps an oryx (either oryx beisa or taurtragus oryx, fol. 26r, although beyond the horns the representation is not very precise, and the markings are different from known oryxes); a lynx (possibly identifiable as an Iberian lynx or lynx pardinus because of the spots on its body, fol. 19r; Figure 5.19); another antelope, most likely a female waterbuck (because of the white area around its tail: kobus ellipsiprymnus, fol. 38r); and a male and female water buffalo (bubalus bubalis; fol. 65r and 66r).

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figure 5.16 Giuseppe Arcimboldo, black-headed sheep, 1577. Kupferstichkabinett, Dresden. Photo: Herbert Boswank. figure 5.17 Giuseppe Arcimboldo, angora cat, 1578. Kupferstichkabinett, Dresden. Photo: Herbert Boswank. figure 5.18 Giuseppe Arcimboldo, chamois. Kupferstichkabinett, Dresden. figure 5.19 Giuseppe Arcimboldo, lynx. Kupferstichkabinett, Dresden.

All these sheets are drawn with gouache—used to differentiate textures of the skin, fur, and hoofs—and with wash. Both are employed to render form in a manner similar to that seen in other animal studies by Arcimboldo. All also contain washes to render shadows like those seen in the drawings by Arcimboldo in Florence and in Vienna. The forms of numerals on several Dresden drawings are also the same as those on the sheets in Florence and in Vienna. Although the addition of washes to the landscape obscures some effects, the quality of execution of these drawings is high. The artist who drew them is Arcimboldo. Almost all these drawings or their prototypes served as models for the paintings in the second volume of the Rudolfine “Museum” (cod. min. 131). These include several folios which have seemed to be done after “nature” but are in fact after Arcimboldo. Many of Arcimboldo’s drawings may nevertheless be considered to have been done from life.71 In any case, it is entirely possible that some of these drawings now in Dresden were among the objects done for the duke-elector of Saxony, for which Arcimboldo was paid in 1574—if they were not instead gathered together at a later date by the Saxon ruler. For the Dresden court can now be demonstrated to have been a major collector of Arcimboldo.72 Furthermore, the illustrations of some creatures in the so called “Museum” that are not known from versions in surviving drawings, yet which stylistically resemble Arcimboldo’s animal and bird studies, probably point to the existence of other lost prototypes by the artist. The striped ground squirrel, an African species (xerus erythropus), and the nilgiri marten (martes kwatkinsi), which lives in India (cod. min. 129 fol. 54r, of the “Museum”), are called respectively “Ardilla de Indias” and “Huron de India” in inscriptions below them. These creatures are thus most likely to be identified with the animals listed as “L’Ardilla” and “L’Hurone” in the inventory of drawings done for Aldrovandi. The slow loris (nycticebus coucang) found in the “Museum” (Österreichische Nationalbibliothek cod. min. 13, fol. 38r) is also probably based on a prototype by Arcimboldo. A copy after this design in black chalk is one of several such drawings now in London (British Museum, Department of Prints and Drawings, Sloane Ms. 5219) that are related to the sheets in the “Museum” (cod. min. 129) and in the Vienna album (cod. min. 42) containing Arcimboldo’s nature studies.73 While the London drawings have been regarded as preparatory to the sheets in the “Museum,” they bear color notes in Dutch and their quality is not high. Since the drawings in Vienna of the boar’s head and goat’s head copied in London are by Arcimboldo, it is thus most likely that the drawings in London are copies after his prototypes, if not after the “museum” itself, by a Dutch artist.74 Since several other studies in the “Museum” also resemble Arcimboldo’s drawings, it is possible that many more birds and animals depicted in the London compendium are based on drawings by Arcimboldo for which other versions have not yet been found. Likewise, among the sources of the volumes constituting the “Museum” may have been some additional studies by Arcimboldo that either do not survive as independent drawings elsewhere or have not yet been identified.

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In addition to animals and birds, De Paduanis tried to get a flower study by Arcimboldo and also notes the existence of other plants seen in the royal gardens in Prague. Although he failed to get Arcimboldo to draw a Lilium persicum, the fact that he approached him for that purpose, and that he mentions rare plants that were being illustrated in Prague, suggests that Arcimboldo was also known for his ability in that realm of illustration. De Paduanis’s desire was also well founded: though it has been hypothesized previously, the existence of many flower studies by Arcimboldo can now be established. Several large, striking, and even beautiful studies executed in watercolor and gouache, along with many smaller studies, are found attached to folios bound in the same Vienna album (cod. min. 42) that contains some of Arcimboldo’s studies of animals and birds.75

figure 5.20 Giuseppe Arcimboldo, stag with violets. Österreichische Nationalbibliothek, Vienna. Photo: Austrian National Library / Collection of Manuscripts and Rare Books.

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figure 5.21 Giuseppe Arcimboldo, narcissus. Österreichische Nationalbibliothek, Vienna. Photo: Austrian National Library / Collection of Manuscripts and Rare Books. figure 5.22 Giuseppe Arcimboldo, iris. Österreichische Nationalbibliothek, Vienna. Photo: Austrian National Library / Collection of Manuscripts and Rare Books.

Flowers also appear on some sheets with animals and birds in this album providing the initial basis for attribution to Arcimboldo of flower and plant studies. For example, the drawing of a stag (fol. 9r; Figure 5.20) includes violets (viola odorata); that of the hare (fol. 16r top) a hepatica and asphodel; that of the moose (fol. 8r) a pond lily and probably a fleabane (erigeron, maybe a bellis). The sheet depicting a kestrel (fol. 29r top) has a lawn daisy (bellis perennis), a white campion (silene alba), and probably a cowslip (primula veris); the one with pheasants contains a marigold (tagetes erecta) and a cowslip. The drawing of a curassow (fol. 46r top; Figure 5.8) also shows a fumitory, and as remarked, the drawing of the jay (fol. 52r) shows two blossoms. This group can be augmented by the identification of many drawings in which flowers are represented independently of animals or birds. One key to their attribution is the presence of a circular mark applied in the same ink as is used for the specimens themselves: it resembles the mark found on other authentic sheets by Arcimboldo. More important, the handling of watercolor and gouache is comparable to that found on flowers included on sheets with animals or birds by Arcimboldo. Also, a pear inscribed “In Praga 1579” and a mutated rose (inscribed 1579 all’10 Augusto in Praga) (fol. 161r) can also be assigned to Arcimboldo on the basis of handwriting found on the sheets and Arcimboldo’s probable presence in Prague at this time. The pear and rose also supply other points of comparison. N at u r a l P h i l o s o p h y a n d N at u r e P a i n t i n g

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The group of autonomous flower and plant studies attributable to Arcimboldo that bear a circular mark is extensive. It includes the following drawings: a folio on which are pasted two sheets, one with several species of narcissus (including two Narcissus fazetta top center, and a Narcissus pseudonarcissus; Figure 5.21), along with perhaps some snowdrops (galanthus), the other sheet with cherry blossoms (cerasus) and strawberries (fragaria) (cod. min. 42, fol. 130r); a drawing of a lily together with a drawing of a daisy (asteracea), (fol. 136r); a folio with separate drawings of two irises (iridacae), one yellow (fol. 137r; Figure 5.22); a sheet with two drawings, one with views of a lily and of a fig (ficus. fol. 139r.); a sheet (fol. 143r) with three separate drawings–of, most likely, a wild (cranesbill) geranium (geranium phaeum, showing its roots), a rock fern (pteridophyte), and a plantain (of the musaceae family); a sheet with separate drawings of weeds, on the left probably of the ambrosia genus, and of a lamb’s quarters (Cheropodium altum) (fol. 144r); a sheet with three plants, all wild flowers, the first probably a wild orchid (of the orchidaceae family), the second a jewelweed (of the balsaminaceae family, like impatiens), the third a common weed, possibly a burdock (arctium; fol. 146r); a sheet with drawings of yellow-colored weeds of

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figure 5.23 Giuseppe Arcimboldo, tulip. Österreichische Nationalbibliothek, Vienna. Photo: Austrian National Library / Collection of Manuscripts and Rare Books. figure 5.24 Giuseppe Arcimboldo, asphodel and gladiolus. Österreichische Nationalbibliothek, Vienna. Photo: Austrian National Library / Collection of Manuscripts and Rare Books.

the mustard (brassicacea) family and of another common white-colored wild flower, most likely a marsh marigold (caltha palustris; fol, 148r); a folio displaying two drawings of members of the daisy family (asteraceae; fol. 156r); a sheet with two drawings of wild flowers, most likely a lilium perenne and calendula officinalis (left and right, fol. 158r); and a sheet with drawings of probably a Saint-John’s-wort (Hypericum perforatum) and a wild geranium (Geranium maculatum, right, fol. 159r). Several sheets are also done on two sides, enabling the drawings on the versos to be attributed as well (the drawing of the narcissus on fol. 134r; the drawing of the darker colored iris pasted on fol. 137r).76 Several more studies of flowers in Vienna can be attributed to Arcimboldo by comparison to these drawings of flowers and the pear. These include splendid drawings of a tulip (tulipa, fol. 103r; Figure 5.23); a yellow lily (lilium) and a cultivated violetpink-colored iris (iris) pasted to the same folio (104r); a chalcedonian lily (Lilium chalcedonicum) and a martagon lily (Lilium martagon; fol. 106r); two separate irises (irisae), one of them yellow (fol. 107r); another sheet with two separate drawings of irises (fol. 108r); a single purple iris (109r; a folio with a white-colored asphodel (Asphodelus ramosus) and a pink-colored gladiolus species (fol. 110r; Figure 5.24); a page with one sheet largely containing many varieties of roses, among them a Rosa chinensis (middle) and Rosa carina (lower left corner), and another with apple and peach blossoms (malus domestica and prunus persica, upper right), a spring beauty (claytonia, lower right), violets (viola), and a honeysuckle (lonicera periclymenum, in the middle; fol. 131r); a folio that features a drawing of an iris (iris) beside cherries with probably a bachelor’s button (Centaurea cyanus) and possibly a flower of the dianthus family (“pinks”) below, and another drawing with another member of the same family together with a flower of the pea (fabaceae) family and an orange blossom of a species with thorns (Citrus sinensis, possibly a China orange; fol. 133r); a folio with separate sheets of a narcissus and a lily of the valley (Convallaria majalis; fol. 134r); a folio with drawings of a lily (lilium), a flower of the gladiolus variety—possibly a Byzantine gladiolus—and an iris (iris), probably a bulb variety (fol. 138r); a lily (lilium), orange blossom (citrus sinensis), and drawings of wild flowers, including a thistle (cirsium, of the asteracae family; fol. 140r); a sheet with three drawings of spring wildflowers, including a wild orchid (of the orchidaceae family, with the root—the “orchis” or the part used for medicine—visible), an anemone (Anemone coronaria) and a Coreopsis tinctoria (fol. 142r); a fever few (tanacetum or Chrysanthemum parthenium), and a spring wildflower (perhaps a Coreopsis tinctoria or a kind of papaver or poppy; fol. 149r); two drawings of Saint-John’s-wort (fol. 152r; Figure 5.25); and a sheet with two drawings of the daisy family (fol. 154r).77 With the possible exception of the drawing of a chameleon dated 1553,78 all known nature studies by Arcimboldo that bear dates were made during his time in Central Europe. The dates indicate that he made them throughout the entire time he spent at the imperial court. His earliest dated study of an animal, that of the reindeer found in Dresden, was made in 1562, the year of his arrival in Central Europe (Figure 5.26). Other early dates on animal studies include those on the goats’ claws in Vienna (1563), on the version of the stag in Dresden (1564), and on the moose in Dresden N at u r a l P h i l o s o p h y a n d N at u r e P a i n t i n g

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figure 5.25 Giuseppe Arcimboldo, Saint-John’s-wort. Österreichische Nationalbibliothek, Vienna. figure 5.26 Giuseppe Arcimboldo, reindeer, 1562. Kupferstichkabinett, Dresden. figure 5.27 Giuseppe Arcimboldo, jerboa, 1578. Kupferstichkabinett, Dresden. Photo: Herbert Boswank.

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(1566). The versions of the leopard in Vienna and Dresden are both dated 1568, while the cheetah in both places is dated 1570. The antelope in Vienna is also dated 1570. The rabbit and elephant in Vienna are dated 1574. Other sheets with animals in Dresden are dated 1577 (the sheep, mountain goat, and coati). The jerboas in Dresden (Figure 5.27) and Vienna are both dated 1578.79 Because of the date indicated for the correspondence between De Paduanis and Bologna, however, the version of the jerboa in Bologna—like those of the antelope and other creatures there—must have been executed around 1585. The execution of these sheets on a colored ground also differentiates the studies done in Bologna from other drawings by the artist. The bird studies were executed over a similarly wide span of time. The sheet with the curassow was drawn in 1571; the albino crow was made in 1574; the aplomado falcon in 1575; the blue tit in 1576; the red footed falcon, house sparrow, bittern, goose, pheasant, and blue-headed quail dove all in 1577; the albino partridge in 1578; the mature bee eater in 1583; and the black-crowned night heron in 1585. These dates strongly suggest that Arcimboldo’s nature studies are connected with his work at the imperial court. They begin in the year he arrived there and stop approximately when he left. As noted in chapter 2, these dates supply another reason for confirming the origins of his first series of Seasons and Elements in the 1560s, the dates that of course appear on the paintings themselves. Some surviving nature studies that depict creatures appearing in these series bear dates indicating that they were done during that decade. It is unlikely that the creatures that appear in these C h a p t e r Fiv e

paintings and whose habitat is not Italy could previously have been seen by Arcimboldo in Lombardy.80 Even though the dates on many surviving sheets do not necessarily indicate when the prototype for any particular drawing may have originated, in many instances the prototypes must have been drawn before or during 1566, the date of Arcimboldo’s first versions of the Elements. Likewise, many prototype drawings of flowers must have been made just before or during 1563, the date of the Seasons.81 The range of dates, as well as the repetition of the same creatures in nature studies, also supports the assumption that Arcimboldo possessed a stock of images of animals and birds which he and possibly his assistants used over a long period of time. Although the flower and bud studies do not exist in multiple versions, similar assumptions can be made about them since several of the buds and flowers appear not only in Spring but in versions of Flora and Vertumnus as well—works done a quarter-century later than the first version of Spring. Moreover, the Bologna, Vienna, and Dresden groups of studies do not contain all of the same images, nor do drawings in the so-called “Museum” or bestiary.82 This information thus points to the existence of a collection of nature studies. From the repetition of motifs taken from nature in their works it has been assumed that other painters possessed stocks of studies that they used just as Arcimboldo seems to have done. Practices previously observed in the work of two other painters who also were active at the imperial court, namely Hans Hoffmann and Georg (Joris) Hoefnagel, are striking in this regard: they repeat the same creatures in many of their works. Arcimboldo’s surviving nature studies are, however, distinctively different from those of either Hoffmann or Hoefnagel. Hoffmann’s designs are often copies after Dürer or other artists—including, as we shall see, Arcimboldo— not studies from observed creatures. They are executed with a high finish. So are Hoefnagel’s; whatever his sources may have been, and it has been demonstrated that they were most often copied from other artists, they were also worked up into highly polished miniatures.83 In contrast, Arcimboldo’s studies may seem almost summary in execution.84 This may lead to the inference that Arcimboldo’s nature studies were preparatory drawings. Indeed many of the fauna and flora in his drawings do also appear in his composite heads. The cheetah, elephant, stag, duiker, and many other creatures are, for instance, found in Earth.85 Although the individual specimens are hard to identify, heads of many birds also appear in Air. It is likely that studies of aquatic species by Arcimboldo once existed, since at least sixty-two separate species, including many done in careful detail, are found in Water.86 Similarly, eighty specimens have been identified in the various versions of Spring.87 At least thirty-four studies for these specimens can now be identified. Similarly, buds and flowers resembling Arcimboldo’s nature studies are to be found in his versions of Flora and Vertumnus. The existence of at least one study of a fruit by Arcimboldo suggests that other studies may have been used for Summer or Autumn as well, and even others may have existed for Vertumnus. Arcimboldo’s nature studies seem, therefore, to have served as visual source material for his paintings. They provided a stock of naturalistic imagery that he worked 146

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and reworked in his composite heads, and they could also be consulted when he or members of his workshop made replicas of the Seasons, Elements, and Flora. The replication of these nature studies by Arcimboldo, and their appearance in at least three important contemporaneous collections (Aldrovandi, Saxon, imperial) suggests, however, that they were also put to other use. Most important, the total number of animal, bird, and flower studies associated with Arcimboldo is larger than what has previously been recognized or expected.88 It hardly coincides with the idea that they were just preparatory designs. While many may have been used for his paintings, it is unlikely that they were intended solely as preparatory material. Several important features in the paintings suggest something more. With a few exceptions, only the heads of the birds depicted so carefully as whole creatures in Arcimboldo’s studies are used in Air (see Figure 2.5). In Earth (see Figure 4.3), only the heads of most animals, and noticeably their horns or antlers, are used—not the entire creatures. It may be that this use of heads represents another visual conceit, in that Earth or Air feature large heads formed out of many smaller heads. Yet this does not explain why so many of the animals and birds in Arcimboldo’s drawings do not appear in his composite paintings. Nor do many flowers from his studies appear in his paintings, which instead contain mainly buds. On the other hand, some specimens found in the paintings, such as the lily of the valley which forms the “teeth” of Spring, are different in appearance from the same plants or flowers as they appear in Arcimboldo’s studies. In any case, nature studies now appear to constitute a large portion of Arcimboldo’s surviving oeuvre. However, the extent and significance of Arcimboldo’s activity as a nature painter remain to be elaborated, much as the recent discovery of so many studies needs to be interpreted more fully. Attention to these nature studies should cause revisions in the interpretation not only of the origins and the significance of Arcimboldo’s composite heads, but of his work in general. In the next chapter we will examine further the characteristics of Arcimboldo’s nature studies, and the implications of their interpretation for an understanding of his career and his composite paintings.



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rcimboldo’s nature studies can now be situated in several contexts where they served a variety of functions. Not just preparatory designs, they were closely related to the enterprise of natural history, where illustration played an important role. Printed books like those published by Ulisse Aldrovandi or Pietro Andrea Mattioli could have been used to supply an illustration when the original plant or animal was not available; they certainly were more broadly accessible than manuscripts. But the production of a book like Mattioli’s edition of Dioscurides’s Materia medica depended not just on the availability of a competent printer, which Mattioli could find in Prague, but also of a competent illustrator, as did Aldrovandi’s efforts. The cooperation of scholar and illustrator to produce a reliable herbal is known from other successful collaborations in sixteenth-century natural history, such as that which Otto Brunfels and Leonhart Fuchs had with their illustrators. More important, by the mid-sixteenth century a strong argument was being made that illustrations were essential for the presentation and interpretation of botanical information. Fuchs, for one, believed that pictures were absolutely crucial for his commentary on plants.1 The relation of animal studies to works of natural history tells a similar story. In its late sixteenth-century stage, as revealed in Aldrovandi’s largely posthumously published books with ornithological and zoological content, natural history consisted of compilation, description, and incipient classification.2 Whatever their imperfections, the illustrations of birds and animals communicated important information.3 This led to a change in natural history as a “science of describing,”4 as exemplified by the illustrations provided to Mattioli’s edition chiefly by Giorgio Liberale, among 149

other artists. Liberale was a fine nature painter from Udine who had accompanied Mattioli into Habsburg service. In a letter giving information about Liberale’s presence in Prague, where the artist had gone to serve the Stateholder Archduke Ferdinand II (“of the Tyrol”), Mattioli describes Liberale by saying that “he continuously draws big figures of plants and animals, as beautiful as nature might be able to make them, which has made my prince fall in love with this undertaking in such a way as he will not be lacking with every sort of assistance.”5 While this aspect of his work is hard to judge from his woodcuts, which may with certainty be attributed to him, Liberale was also probably an outstanding colorist and illustrator of naturalia. A series of more than one hundred large, splendid colored folios of aquatic creatures probably made for Archduke Ferdinand II, which may be the images that caused the archduke to fall in love with Mattioli’s enterprise, may be attributed to Liberale.6 Other correspondence between naturalists and physicians—and many of the figures mentioned above, including Mattioli, Carolus Clusius and De Paduanis, were also in contact with Aldrovandi—underscores the importance of illustration to the study of natural history. At one point Mattioli writes that he is sending the Bolognese scholar a plant drawn by his illustrator.7 In a letter to Clusius, Aldrovandi says that the seeds of a rare Hungarian plant Clusius has sent to Bologna have failed to grow, and he begs for an illustration of the plant.8 Illustrations stood as surrogates for plants or animals that were indigenous to other regions and thus unable to survive in a given environment. De Paduanis’s effort to get Arcimboldo to draw a flower for Aldrovandi, discussed in the last chapter, can be placed in this context: it provides a reason why Arcimboldo might have made nature studies, and indicates that such drawings were intended for the study of natural history, whatever other functions they also may have served. The animal drawings Arcimboldo actually supplied to the Bolognese scholar served the same purpose. Natural historians in the late sixteenth century found it useful and even imperative to have an image at hand if an actual plant or animal—alive, dried, or embalmed—was not available. Much as the herbal complemented the garden in which living plants could be grown, or the dry herbal complemented the places in which specimens could be preserved, so might illustrations of animals, birds, or insects complement the specimens or skeletons found in the collections of a naturalist9 like Aldrovandi—or, more rarely, the creatures living in menageries, aviaries, or gardens like those owned by the emperor. In this way, drawings or prints of animals and birds could play a role analogous to that of the illustrated herbal. While Arcimboldo’s flower and plant drawings can be appreciated for their aesthetic qualities, many of them also conform to the conventions for botanical illustration that developed in the sixteenth century. In his authoritative 1542 book on plants, Leonhart Fuchs postulated that plants should be correctly and diligently depicted with their own roots, stalks, leaves, flowers, seeds, and fruits.10 In many of his botanical designs, Arcimboldo does show single plants in that way. Like many botanical illustrations, his studies often also strip away irregularities and other details

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figure 6.1 Giuseppe Arcimboldo, wildflowers. Österreichische Nationalbibliothek, Vienna.

to achieve the greatest visual impact. For instance, one drawing shows a lily in crosssection, if not pressed (fol. 136r). Other aspects of his nature studies are also worth noting: a drawing of a strawberry shows both flowers and fruits (fragaria) (cod. min. 42, fol. 130r); a drawing of a daisy (asteracea) depicts all stages of bloom, and also the roots (fol. 136r); another sheet represents a lily (most likely a Lilium martagon) in various stages of bloom from bud to flower (fol. 139r); and an image of a wild orchid displays three stages of the flower (fol. 146r). These images thus reveal an effort to display as much information as possible.11 The depiction of wild flowers or spring blooms on the same page may also suggest how Arcimboldo thought about grouping or classifying flora (Figure 6.1). Several of Arcimboldo’s nature studies were employed by Aldrovandi as models for illustrations in his books on natural history, as has already been observed. Images in Aldrovandi’s ornithological publication, in his posthumously published book on mammals,12 and in his posthumous treatise on animals with cloven feet all draw upon Arcimboldo’s studies.13 The text accompanying the discussion of the hartebeest indicates that it is based on one of the images of “exotic animals” sent to Aldrovandi from the court of Rudolf II, which Aldrovandi says were diligently and most beautifully done—again confirming the provenance of the surviving drawing in Bologna from the Prague court.14 One purpose of Arcimboldo’s drawings thus seems clear: they played a role in the study of natural history.

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A r c i m b o l d o ’ s Na t u r e S t u d ie s a s “ E x o t i c a ” : C o lle c t i o n s a n d t h e K u n s t ka m m e r

As the description of some animals he drew suggests, many of the creatures seen in Arcimboldo’s drawings were not native to Europe but might instead be regarded as exotic. Arcimboldo’s studies included watercolors and gouaches of creatures which, like the hartebeest, were indigenous to Africa (the cheetah, leopard, duiker, and sable antelope), Asia (the elephant, blackbuck antelope, marten, slow loris, and oryx), and the Americas (the mountain coati, ring-tailed coati, puma, and perhaps the lynx). Many of the birds he depicted were also not European; some came from quite far away, like the bird of paradise, which originates in New Guinea and neighboring islands, or the lory, which is native to Australia, New Guinea, and the Moluccas, whence specimens were probably procured for Europeans. Several species (the curassow or stone hocco, aplomado falcon, blue-headed quail dove, and crested crane) were indigenous to the Americas and thus could have been regarded, as the emperor’s commission given to Arcimboldo in 1582 stipulated, as “marvelous birds from the New World.” While most animals and many birds depicted by Arcimboldo did not come from Europe, even some creatures of European provenance—like the reindeer, moose, and gerfalcon, which live in far northern climes—could also have been regarded as exotic. They may have been some of the “wonders of the north” rarely seen by denizens of Central Europe or Italy in the sixteenth century.15 Aldovrandi’s discussion of a moose that the grand duke of Tuscany had obtained, and whose image Aldrovandi possessed, emphasizes that animal’s rarity.16 The exotic character of such beasts and birds leads to consideration of some further uses for Arcimboldo’s nature studies. His first dated study, of the duiker in Dresden, is dated 1562, the same year the Liberale-Mattioli edition was published. Hence Liberale’s splendid gouaches for Ferdinand can be considered to have initiated a sequence of important nature paintings made at the Habsburg courts in mid- and late sixteenth century Central Europe—a sequence that was continued by Arcimboldo, and which included works by Italian and northern artists. One of the major repositories for such images was the collection of Archduke Ferdinand II, who was stateholder in Prague when Arcimboldo first arrived there. His original design and decoration of the Star Villa (Schloss Stern, Letohradek Hvězda) on the White Mountain west of Prague was just being completed at this time (1555–62), and it is thought that the archduke may have had his collections displayed there.17 Later removed to Ambras, these collections contained many splendid manuscripts, including the nature studies attributed to Liberale.18 Like his Habsburg predecessors, Archduke Ferdinand was a great collector of Dürer; he owned many works by the Nuremberg master. Dürer stands in the center of discussions of plant and animal depictions of the Renaissance: among famous images by him are depictions of a stag beetle, a jay or roller, a hare, several flowers, and the so-called “great piece of turf.” Dürer’s nature studies provided a source for many later artists who copied or emulated them—including, as we shall see, Arcimboldo.19 152

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figure 6.2  Jacopo Ligozzi, fish studies, c. 1578. Österreichische Nationalbibliothek, Vienna.

In addition to Ferdinand’s collections, the imperial library and Kunstkammer contained many nature studies by deceased as well as living artists. The Vienna album with Arcimboldo’s studies (cod min. 42), which was bound during the reign of Rudolf II but probably largely compiled earlier, also contains nature studies by older artists, such as Simon Marmion, as well as by contemporary figures. Rudolf II was also a great collector of Dürer’s studies.20 The imperial Kunstkammer also possessed nature studies by Jacopo Ligozzi (Figure 6.2),21 and Rudolf II owned sheets or books of nature studies by Hans Verhagen and Hans Bol, some of which are contained in the same album as some of Arcimboldo’s studies. These artists served as sources for Hoefnagel—but like Hoefnagel’s, their studies differ from Arcimboldo’s in their higher degree of finish.22 Rudolf II also owned studies by Jacques De Gheyn, whom we will consider presently in comparison with Arcimboldo. Since the volumes comprising the so-called “Museum” were found in the Kunstkammer, it is possible that this album containing drawings by Arcimboldo and other artists was also listed in the Kunstkammer’s 1607–11 inventory.23 The collecting practices of the imperial court may also have inspired others to assemble collections of natural history illustrations: this may have been one of the reasons for De Boodt’s assemblage, and for his eager search after other works.24 The presence in Rudolf II’s Kunstkammer of books containing nature studies deserves further comment.25 The Kunstkammer’s inventory was compiled during the N at u r e S t u d i e s

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years 1607 to 1611 by the imperial aniquarius Daniel Fröschl, who himself was a notable nature painter (sheets by him are also contained in cod. min. 42).26 The situation in Dresden also suggests that a Kunstkammer may have been regarded as an appropriate place for nature studies. The codex in Dresden which contains Arcimboldo’s drawings came from the Saxon Kunstkammer; they had probably been given by Arcimboldo to the duke-elector of Saxony.27 This location most likely explains the function of at least this set of drawings. This connection with the Kunstkammer may also help to explain some of Arcimboldo’s choices regarding which animals and birds to draw. On the one hand, many of the specimens were, from a European point of view, rare or marvelous creatures from faraway places. They could thus have matched the predilection expressed by Arcimboldo’s first Habsburg patron, Maximilian II, for having things “the rarer the better” (quanta rariora, tanta meliora).28 On the other hand, some of the animals Arcimboldo depicted, like the sheep and cat, seem quite ordinary. But as is suggested by similar examples (a cow, for example) in Joris Hoefnagel’s naturalistic manuscripts representing the Four Elements, even that choice may be related to a desire to represent the world in all its diversity, and thus to have samples of all creatures present in a universal collection such as the Kunstkammer.29 Some of these representations of seemingly common species—for instance, Arcimboldo’s drawings of a boar, goose, quail, partridge, and crow—are, however, appropriate for a Kunstkammer in another way. They are mutants, freaks of nature. The boar has tusks growing back into its snout; the goose and quail each have three legs; the crow and partridge are albino. These are just the kinds of rare or freakish creatures that might otherwise have appealed to a collection of naturalia for the Kunstkammer, which generically has also often been called a Wunderkammer since it contained wonders of art and nature. Arcimboldo may have drawn the very specimens—the mutant boar’s head and the embalmed bird with three legs (“hünlein”)— that are recorded in the imperial Kunstkammer itself.30 His drawing of a bird of paradise also corresponds to a specimen in poor condition that is documented in the Kunstkammer inventory.31 The Kunstkammer also records antlers and indicates the existence of a moose, noting its hooves and claws: these were also drawn by Arcimboldo.32 Even the depictions of certain kinds of flora—including some plant specimens Arcimboldo drew, like the hepatica, which seem to be mutants—may correspond to this interest in seeming freaks of nature. Arcimboldo’s nature studies could thus have complemented the other components of the imperial collections.33 In the imperial Kunstkammer they would have provided complete depictions of those creatures that either were represented by skeletons or were embalmed, much as they recorded in lasting colors the transient flowers that Arcimboldo’s imperial patrons also cherished. These visual aspects complemented the material found in the Kunstkammer. Likewise, Arcimboldo’s nature studies could have complemented the collection of the naturalist Aldrovandi, although it is important to observe that the collections of art in Vienna and Prague (and for that matter in Dresden) possessed dimensions to which Aldrovandi’s collection did not aspire. 154

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In a princely Kunstkammer, nature studies could also have been regarded as a complement to the natural specimens already gathered there, in the sense that they might also be regarded as rare or prized objects.34 They could have been seen as tokens of prestige, and as such they could have served as gifts suitable for representing the esteem of one ruler or private individual for another. Jacopo Ligozzi’s nature studies thus served as gifts from Florence to Rudolf II, as will be mentioned further below. Hence they had another role beyond their use as artistic or scientific studies. Arcimboldo’s studies of plants and flowers could also have been seen as complementing the plants and flowers in the imperial gardens and menageries in and outside Vienna, and later in and outside Prague. A lively interest in gardens was already present at the Habsburg court when Arcimboldo arrived there: Emperor Ferdinand I (died 1564) had been much concerned with them.35 Maximilian II also displayed a love for gardens before he was emperor. He had a garden laid on the Prater Island by Vienna, which was described in 1558; it was the first of many such gardens he established around the city and near his residences. He also employed many gardeners.36 Rudolf was called the greatest lover of flowers in the world, as of the arts.37 Like Maximilian, he maintained a strong interest in gardens, which he cultivated at several sites within his personal realms.38 Although we do not have a precise idea of which flowers besides tulips may actually have grown in these gardens, Arcimboldo’s watercolors and gouaches—including his depictions of relatively rare species—offer an idea of what was to be seen. Arcimboldo’s images of creatures would likewise have complemented the actual birds and animals kept in the imperial aviaries and menageries near or in the gardens. In Vienna itself, birds and animals had been seen in an enclosure since 1542: among them were a “Lebin” and “indianische Rhaben, Huener, Affen und ander Tier”—a lioness, apes, and other exotic birds and animals. Several elephants were brought to Vienna—perhaps the most famous of which had arrived there before Arcimboldo and was the first such beast to be seen in Central Europe.39 However, another elephant came to Vienna in 1563 and Arcimboldo could have depicted this creature.40 Yet another elephant was also visible in Vienna in 1571 and, as discussed above, both Arcimboldo and Strada seem to have sketched it. Maximilian maintained menageries at all his residences starting at Kaiserebersdorf,41 where he had established one already in 1552. Lions, a bear, a lynx, and an “indianischer Rabe” were all to be found there. Court payments are recorded for the maintenance of lions. In 1570 a tiger was noted in Vienna; others were recorded at Kaiserebersdorf from 1579 and the earliest reference to them suggests that they were to be seen there before that date. A keeper was installed to look after Maximilian’s lions and tiger, and also after the bears, ostrich, and creatures described as beavers. Leopards were particular favorites of Maximilian and they had their own keeper (called a Lepardtenmaister). After the construction of the Neugebäude, many of these animals were brought to its grounds.42 Fonteo mentions seeing a menagerie and a pleasure garden there.43 Rudolf kept a lion court, stags, and other animals, and had an aviary along with his gardens in Prague.44 It is known that cheetahs and leopards—it is difficult to N at u r e S t u d i e s

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distinguish between them, especially in earlier texts—were present there; a visitor to Prague records seeing cheetahs. Records of tigers also recur through the 1580s and beyond. The emperor built cages for his lions and a special place to house them that is now known as the lion’s den or lvi dvůr.45 Other “exotic” creatures could also have been seen in Vienna and Prague. Moose were unusual gifts, and several are known to have been given to Rudolf; the hooves and claws of one are recorded in the imperial Kunstkammer.46 Camels were available in Central Europe because of the Turkish presence, and several are recorded to have been at the imperial court.47 A live blackbuck antelope, or another sort of oryx or antelope, may also have been present there, because the inventory of the Rudolfine Kunstkammer reports on the presence of a head of such an animal. It is described as a gazelle from Spain—the proximate source for creatures shipped via Portugal from India—that had spiral (gewundene) horns.48 It is possible that a hartebeest was also seen at court, because hartebeest horns are shown in another illustration in the “museum.”49 Several gazelle or antelope horns are known from the collection of Archduke Ferdinand of the Tyrol, who was of course stateholder in Prague during the 1560s when Arcimboldo first came there; the archduke kept such animals at his Villa Hvězda, the Star Villa near Prague.50 A live mountain coati is also recorded as having been at Kaiserebersdorf, where it was cared for along with lions, tigers, lynxes, bears, apes, and parrots.51 In addition to animals, many birds were also present in the imperial aviaries and gardens. Rarer species of pheasant like that the one drawn by Arcimboldo could have been seen at the Fasangarten near the Neugebäude, and there were also gardens for pheasants at other imperial residences. Rudolf, for instance, possessed aviaries in Prague.52 While terms used to describe birds are often vague (e.g., “rhaben and Huener”), no doubt they describe some of the avians seen in Arcimboldo’s drawings. It is likely that Arcimboldo saw a crested crane, since he drew the bird as a whole, although it is unclear whether he drew it while it was still alive.53 An aplomado falcon and curassow he rendered are also probably seen in other contemporaneous illustrations;54 there are records of such falcons having been sent to the imperial court from Spain.55 T h e Mea n i n g s a n d I m p li c a t i o n s o f A r c i m b o l d o ’ s S t u d ie s f r o m Na t u r e

The availability of flowers and other plants in the milieus where Arcimboldo worked, and the way in which he presented them on the page, suggest that he depicted them from direct observation.56 It is indeed possible, and in many cases probable, that he painted the original versions of those studies in that way. Yet the issue is not completely clear, for it has been determined that other artists who knew Arcimboldo’s work and were active in the imperial circle, like Hans Hoffmann, marked their images as having been drawn “ad vivum” (or naer het leven, after or from the life) even though they were done not from live animals but from previous images. The claim to work

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after life has therefore been reassessed: this term is now often taken to mean something other than what one might assume.57 Arcimboldo’s activity in his official position at court highlights the problem of interpreting this term. He was employed as Conterfetter, or portraitist, and as such he would seem to have been charged with the making of likenesses, presumably of living subjects. Yet although it is said that he portrayed all the Habsburgs, only a few drawings of Rudolf II, two self-portrait drawings, and one self-portrait painting may survive to represent his oeuvre as portraitist. It is furthermore documented that the very first works Arcimboldo was ordered to complete at the Habsburg court were portraits not done from life: copies of pictures of Emperor Frederick III’s widow, and of Emperor Ferdinand I. Significantly, Frederick III’s widow was long dead, while Ferdinand was still alive and could have been portrayed directly from life.58 The replication or copying of court portraits was of course a standard practice, but it leads to consideration of another possible valence for the word conterfett: counterfeit, another contemporary term, and its relation to the concept of “after” or “from the life.”59 Peter Parshall has demonstrated that during the sixteenth century the term contrafactum and its cognates appear in various contexts concerning images and image-making.60 Parshall asserts that images which were claimed to have been counterfeited were, as such, “specially designated as bearers of visual fact.”61 This observation also pertains to studies of flora and fauna. The word counterfeit (in a German variation) was in fact used by contemporaries to describe images of naturalia—including depictions of animals, fish, birds, and plants owned by Aldrovandi, in whose collection they were presented along with natural specimens.62 Because plants decay and die and live samples vary in appearance, a challenge was presented to artists to capture them as if they were alive, as the De Paduanis story illustrates. Taking Parshall’s assertion as vital to a reconsideration of images done after life, naer het leven,63 Claudia Swan has pointed out that the trustworthiness of images was the subject of a long-standing debate. Ancient authorities had questioned the validity of fixing the mutable character of nature in images, and had put more credence in words. Hence may have arised the claim frequently made in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries that something had been represented ad vivum or naer het leven—“from the life.” Swan argues that within the context of the rapid development of illustrated natural history in the sixteenth century, the phrase ad vivum and its vernacular renderings served to assure viewers/readers of the documentary value of images so described; this was a password in the early modern period for natural historians, guaranteeing the mimetic promise of working from the life . . . the one to one relationship between the object so labeled and its subject.64

This argument helps explain why in one letter De Paduanis described Arcimboldo’s paintings as having been done ad vivum, from life, while claiming in another

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letter that he would be sending something “real, natural, and true.” Although he claimed that the studies of animals and birds Arcimboldo did for Aldrovandi were made from life, in a strict sense they were not. Earlier examples exist for all the surviving drawings, and many sheets with earlier dates which can also be identified as Arcimboldo’s correspond to other creatures in the list of animals and birds that were sent from Prague to Bologna. Nevertheless, there still may be something more literally true to the claim to represent nature, quite literally, “from the life.”65 This connotation is suggested by Aldrovandi himself, who, as Swan says, “offered the most sustained commentary on images done al vivo.”66 Since the correspondence of De Paduanis with Aldrovandi and the drawings Arcimboldo made for Aldrovandi are key for the identification of Arcimboldo’s nature studies, it is important to understand more clearly what exactly the Bolognese scholar could have understood by this concept. The story of the ill-fated Lilium Persicum resonates with Aldrovandi’s saying that “in order to depict plants it is necessary not only to be a most experienced painter; it is more necessary to have the plant fresh and almost just taken out of the ground: because dried plants can not be depicted.”67 Aldrovandi discusses painting al vivo, ad vivum, directly in this context: “Returning to the subject of images of plants, I say that they are of great utility to students, when they are painted al vivo, as are also other images, of fish and terrestrial animals and birds.”68 Hence he indicates his belief that ad vivum means lifelike—it refers to something taken directly from a living, or recently living, bit of nature. It was because of such thinking that Aldrovandi also believed that the representation of naturalia was dependent on its infinitely varied coloring. He considered color an absolutely fundamental instrument of knowledge, the best criterion for the classification of the natural sciences.69 De Paduanis’s description of how Arcimboldo’s images had been done after life can be read against this expectation: he says that they had been “delineated from life with colors.” It may have been the lack of color in the botanical study published by Clusius—who does illustrate the Lilium Persicum in his book on Hungarian plants, but in a print that lacks color and much other definition—that explains why De Paduanis may not have deemed the woodcut (Figure 5.2) in Clusius’s publication to be adequate for a scholar like Aldrovandi. While Leonhart Fuchs had advocated using simplified images that eschewed modeling and artifice—the kind of image present in the publication of Clusius—this solution might not have satisfied Aldrovandi as being an adequate illustration of a plant which was to be represented ad vivum, because it was lacking in color. A predilection for color might also explain why De Paduanis provided details of the plant’s coloring to Aldrovandi after he had failed to have Arcimboldo execute a drawing of it from life. Color was (and is) essential to understand the character of a plant—which is probably why Aldrovandi possessed many color illustrations of naturalia in his collection, as did many other collectors and naturalists of his generation.70 Aldrovandi’s praise of nature painting may also be read in this light: “There is nothing on earth that seems to me to give more pleasure and utility to man than painting, and above all painting of natural things: because it is through these things, 158

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figure 6.3  Giuseppe Arcimboldo, antlers. Österreichische Nationalbibliothek, Vienna.

painted by an excellent painter, that we acquire knowledge of foreign species, although they are born in distant lands.” A good color illustration, not merely a printed image, could be an adequate surrogate for a specimen. For this quality, among others, painting also is “the most honorable art, because it could imitate products of nature al vivo.”71 While in some cases the claim to be made after life may be regarded simply as a tactical or rhetorical assertion, in other cases it may be literally true—and this is probably so in more than a few instances with Arcimboldo. Even his representation of the dead bee eater (see Figure 5.10) was in a sense done “from the life.” Many of the antlers (Figure 6.3) drawn by him can also be understood similarly: their sketch-like quality suggests that they were observed from actual specimens. Moreover, even if Arcimboldo may ultimately have made drawings in which he combined the bodies of creatures with their horns or antlers—or made studies from stuffed or dead creatures, like the bird of paradise he drew—inasmuch as his drawings were done from observations of actual specimens, they too might be said to have been done “from the life.” Many of Arcimboldo’s nature studies were repeated in various versions—we know in the instance of the antelope that images could have been done by him or N at u r e S t u d i e s

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his assistants at least three times. Even his original, or first, illustrations of some creatures may have been made from dead creatures, embalmed specimens, or skeletal remains, filled out from antlers, or even copied from prints. Nevertheless some— even perhaps many—of the ultimate prototypes may actually have been drawn from living creatures Arcimboldo could have had occasion to observe directly. In short, the original source for Arcimboldo’s images may have been his observations of living creatures. In some cases the awkward quality of some of Arcimboldo’s animals, the large cats for instance, suggests that they were not observed from living or even stuffed specimens, and may have been executed by assistants. But in other cases the drawings seem to have been done afresh. For example, the individual studies of heads—of a goat, a stag, and a moose—are executed in brush and wash without further applications of watercolor or gouache. They possess a sketch-like quality, suggesting that they may have been taken directly from observation. There is also no reason to doubt that Arcimboldo’s representation of flowers, with their vibrant and often accurate coloring, were done “from the life”—that is, from actual plants, whether still growing or freshly plucked. It is also easy to see how Arcimboldo could have come into contact with domesticated or common creatures such as the cat or sheep or even the fox—animals also found in the head of Earth and in his drawings. Similarly, many common birds like the sparrow could easily have been observed in Europe. Deer could also have been encountered in the royal domains set aside for hunting outside Prague and Vienna, or even in the ditch made for deer (known as the Hirschgraben, jelení prikop) alongside the Hradˇcany in Prague.72 Rabbits had been introduced at an early date into the Fasangarten established at the Neugebäude near Kaiserebersdorf by Maximilian II, and are first recorded there in 1566.73 But even many supposedly rarer animals and birds might also have been seen in the menageries and aviaries in Vienna and on grounds there and nearby, as later in Prague. Many such creatures had been shipped to the imperial court from far-off lands, often via Spain and Portugal, from which frequent transports are recorded.74 Documents have been found for regular shipments of animals from one Habsburg court to the other, mentioning specifically, for example, exotic birds and large cats. As is noted above, there are many records indicating that such creatures were seen and cared for at the imperial court. Thus it would have been possible to observe many of the exotic creatures seen in drawings by Arcimboldo from the 1560s and 1570s in the gardens, aviaries, and menageries in and around Vienna and Prague. Arcimboldo’s plant, animal, and bird studies are therefore not merely to be considered naturalistic in the general sense that they depict creatures of the natural world. Something may be said of them other than that they are connected with the enterprise of natural history. In many cases Arcimboldo probably drew at least the original versions from nature. Hence the later versions may also be regarded as having their basis in nature. Since they are also demonstrably connected with the “scientific” purposes of natural history, it seems valid to apply to them a term coined

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more than eighty years ago by Ernst Kris for the work of Georg Hoefnagel: “scientific naturalism.”75 The term “scientific naturalism” might even fit Arcimboldo’s watercolors and gouaches better than it does Hoefnagel’s miniatures, since it has been established that Hoefnagel most often used images by other artists as sources for his own nature studies.76 Although, like Hoefnagel, Arcimboldo emulated Dürer and may have been inspired by his treatment of some creatures, even the one probable instance in which this occurred—his depiction of a bull moose—differs in many significant details. Arcimboldo does not seem ever to have copied Dürer (or any other artist) as closely as did Hoefnagel—nor did he have reasons for doing so, as did Hoefnagel.77 In addition, although Arcimboldo’s depiction of a bull moose seems to have been created by adding antlers to the representation of a cow moose, this representation is still much more convincing than Ligozzi’s watercolor of an animal of the same species.78 In contrast with Arcimboldo’s image, Ligozzi’s moose has elongated legs, a too-thin muzzle, and spindly antlers. Inasmuch as it applies to Ligozzi in comparison to Arcimboldo as an illustrator of nature, the meaning of naturalism may need to be reconsidered (see Figures 5.4 and 5.12). A r c i m b o l d o ’ s Na t u r e S t u d ie s , Na t u r al Hi s t o r y, a n d t h e I n t e r p r e t a t i o n o f t h e Pai n t i n g s o f C o m p o s i t e Hea d s

In his letters on sunspots, Galileo Galilei mocked his critics’ methods by comparing them to Arcimboldesque images. He said that their way of throwing together quotations from Aristotle instead of studying the book of nature reminded him of pictures by capricious painters that were composed of implements, fruits or flowers. Such pictures might be proposed in jest (in scherzo) but would be laughed at by serious painters if their manner of imitation were pursued exclusively.79 Many years ago Erwin Panofsky first called attention to this passage, interpreting it as an indication of the kind of art that formed a foil to Galileo’s own aesthetic preferences. This was the mannerist, antinaturalistic, highly intellectual art Arcimboldo was then thought to have represented. Although Galileo and hence Panofsky were talking about astronomy, treatments of natural history—including those emphasizing Galileo’s impact on this science—have also overlooked Arcimboldo as well as the milieu in which he worked. In general, connections between Arcimboldo and the development of natural history have heretofore largely been ignored by scholarship.80 Yet just as Arcimboldo’s images can be regarded as more than simple jests, much more can be determined about his involvement with the development of natural history in the period immediately before that of Galileo. The most recent account of the origins of Renaissance natural history has argued that while it is generally correct to say that during the course of the sixteenth century observation of nature replaced reliance on ancient texts, “this bird’s eye view is misleading, because it overemphasizes the resemblance between natural history and other early modern

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scientific disciplines like astronomy or natural philosophy, whose practitioners rejected ancient texts and turned to the Book of Nature instead.” The process in which the discipline of natural history developed may instead be seen as more gradual: humanists created a tradition out of ancient sources, which they combined over the course of four generations to arrive at what was a different sort of study involving the observation and description of nature.81 Whatever natural history was later to become, it only eventually developed into the enterprise of classification and observation that it was in the time and (it has been claimed) circle of Galileo during the early seventeenth century. Arcimboldo’s period of Habsburg service corresponds to that of the generation of natural historians (the third such in the Renaissance) who directly preceded Galileo. The period during which he worked in Central Europe, the 1560s through the 1590s, was a time of transition between that still inspired by humanism and that of empirical science, between medicine and natural history. Many natural historians of Arcimboldo’s generation had been trained as physicians, but became associated with collectors and patrons of gardens; they continued the process by which the bases for observation and description were established for more intense efforts at classification.82 Just as Arcimboldo was involved with humanism and poetry, so too was he concerned with the study of natural history as it would have been understood during his lifetime. His drawings facilitated that study, and in some cases—for example, in his work with Aldrovandi—they were made to do so. Although Arcimboldo’s watercolors and gouaches may not have been conceived solely or even primarily as preliminary studies for his paintings, several contemporaneous accounts indicate that his nature studies were related to his composite paintings, specifically as studies from nature. Lomazzo states (in Idea) that all the flowers and their leaves in Arcimboldo’s painting Flora were portrayed from nature (ritratti del naturale).83 Comanini says in Il Figino that all the fruits and flowers in Arcimboldo’s Vertumnus were taken from nature and diligently imitated (non c’è frutto o pur fiore, che non sieno cavati dal naturale e imitati con quell maggior diligenza che possibil sia). Comanini’s discussion of Vertumnus leads to an account of another painting of a head made of animals, identifiable with a version of Earth, in which he says that all the creatures in this picture were taken from nature (tratta del naturale; see figure 4.3).84 With the discovery and identification of Arcimboldo’s nature studies, these claims can be verified. Many of his paintings were demonstrably based on studies of nature, whether ultimately or immediately. Heads of the cheetah, leopard, antelope, tiger, lion, elephant, camel, and many other beasts seen in his nature studies are also found in the painting of Earth. Likewise, many heads of birds found in his studies reappear in Air. Flowers and buds like those in his drawings appear in Flora, Spring, and Vertumnus. We may assume that studies of fruits, like those of the pear or cherries which survive, were also used in Vertumnus and in the reversible head that is similar to it. To be sure, the naturalistic aspect of Arcimboldo’s composite heads does not exclude other possibilities of interpretation. Other allegorical and symbolic views were 162

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attached to nature in the episteme of the time, as Michel Foucault has reminded us.85 The doctrine of signatures linked macrocosm and microcosm, and nature could also be read for its allegorical and emblematic content. This is abundantly evident from nature studies done at or for the imperial court, such as Joris Hoefnagel’s emblematic images.86 William Ashworth has even argued that the emblematic world view was essential to natural history, and contained an antiquarian component.87 These arguments are certainly applicable to Aldrovandi, to whom Ashworth explicitly refers. Aldrovandi was, moreover, an antiquarian as well as a naturalist. Likewise, they fit Arcimboldo himself, who also possessed a penchant towards antiquarianism: individual fruits, flowers, and animals in his paintings may have had some emblematic significance. Whether or not such meanings are inherent in all or even many of the creatures in his composite heads, a general allegorical message is presented; paintings like the Seasons, the Elements, and Vertumnus are allegories of the imperial dominion over the macrocosm. Arcimboldo’s representations of natural creatures and their combination in his composite heads do more than complement the naturalia contained in the imperial Kunstkammer. While they relate to a more general, symbolic notion inherent in the imperial collections, their symbolism of imperial majesty also epitomizes the message of the Kunstkammer, the world in small. As the emperor rules over the body politic, so he may be seen to rule over the microcosm of his collection—which in turn mirrors the greater world, or macrocosm, that Arcimboldo’s paintings also reflect.88 While Arcimboldo’s paintings function as poetic inventions, as serious jokes that contain a serious allegorical message, they are more complex even than that: they are also composite images of nature. In a certain sense they can be regarded as compressed compilations of his nature studies that present the various seasons and elements to which those studies can be related. In this regard, they are comparable not only to the enterprise of natural history but also to the gardens and Kunstkammer. All these endeavors sought to collect and categorize the dispersed aspects of nature and assemble them in one place.89 This also suggests how natural history itself might be regarded as a mirror of the prince, and how therefore its study at the court may also correspond to the allegorical interpretation of the Kunstkammer and of Arcimboldo’s paintings. The dedication of Pliny’s Natural History, a foundational text on the subject, to the Emperor Titus establishes the inventory of nature as the province of the prince, who guarantees its profusion: it is to be compared to imperial triumphs and circuses. Pliny (Natural History 8:16–17) also traces the establishment of a political vocation for the study of nature and collection of natural phenomena to Alexander the Great’s employment of Aristotle. This connection of natural history with imperial grandeur was passed on through the Middle Ages, in the east and west, as evinced in the imperial dedications of works on natural history by Michael Psellos, Michael Scot, and Gerard of Tilbury. It was one of the inheritances of the sixteenth century.90 Consideration of the place of naturalism and natural history in relation to Arcimboldo thus leads our attention back again to Arcimboldo’s place at court. But interpretation of the naturalistic element in Arcimboldo’s art leads beyond N at u r e S t u d i e s

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concentration on his pictures. His paintings can be placed in a larger history of art, for which they have a significance far beyond his role as some forerunner of surrealism or fantastic art. Even before many of his nature studies had been discovered, Arcimboldo had been called the “first major producer of natural history illustration employed directly by Rudolf II and as a figure of larger importance for Rudolfine nature illustration as it would develop.”91 The recovery of Arcimboldo’s nature studies and the interpretation of his associations with natural history add substance to this insight. Arcimboldo was already making studies of nature during the time of Ferdinand I, and continued making them during the reigns of Maximilian II and Rudolf II. He may thus rightly be regarded as a forerunner of the later Rudolfine artists in this field, in which he anticipates Georg Hoefnagel, Jacob Hoefnagel, Hans Hoffmann, Daniel Fröschl, and Dirck de Quade van Ravesteyn.92 The images Arcimboldo made for Aldrovandi allow us, however, to situate him in a context even larger than that of the court, and beyond the connections that can be established between him and other Rudolfine artists. For example, he can be related to many other artists—Ligozzi most prominent among them—who supplied Aldrovandi with studies of plants, snakes, and other creatures.93 Like Arcimboldo, Ligozzi also executed (and often repeated) drawings of plants, snakes, and animals for different clients—for Aldrovandi, for the grand duke of Tuscany, and for Rudolf II, who received some drawings as a gift most probably from the grand duke (Figure 6.2).94 Moreover, this naturalistic impetus in Arcimboldo’s pictures, and indeed perhaps even the impact of the works themselves, led on beyond the Arcimboldesque. His nature studies and composites can also be connected with the invention of new genres of easel painting—still life and animal painting—especially as seen in his inverted heads. The composites, however, may change from views of the head to views of details, thus complicating the viewer’s concentration on their particulars. The inverted heads likewise do not allow for a stable reading, since they can be viewed in either of two ways. The fragmented and partial presentation of nature makes what might seem naturalistic unstable; it turns nature into the fantastic. How Arcimboldo’s pictures can have a naturalistic impulse, which leads to future developments in art history, while at the same time juxtaposing the fantastic and the naturalistic, the allegorical and the real, is the subject of the next chapters.

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Arcimboldo and the Origins of Still Life

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lthough Arcimboldo’s composite heads have often been regarded as eccentric freaks,1 their naturalistic aspects can be connected with some more general tendencies in the history of art. This chapter discusses Arcimboldo’s place especially in the development of still life and animal painting as autonomous genres. It traces both his sources and his impact on other artists, and discusses how, conversely, an understanding of his pictures may more generally affect the interpretation of still life. In his pioneering study of the genre, written almost sixty years ago, Sterling related Arcimboldo’s paintings to still life. Yet until recently this theme has remained largely unexplored. Sterling himself could only call the composite heads “still lifes” by setting the term within quotation marks. Like many other art historians, Sterling treated Arcimboldo as an exemplar of mannerism: Arcimboldo’s painting, which may be viewed one way as a head made of vegetables but when turned upside down becomes a bowl of root vegetables and nuts, was according to him but a “scherzo, worthy of adorning a cabinet of curiosities and of being placed beside a grotesque foetus” that “proclaims the negation of nature, the arbitrary confusion between its realms and the pride in creating unseen forms with the forces of fantasy alone.”2 Sterling’s emphases have resonated in much of the subsequent reception of Arcimboldo’s pictures, which, as noted, have often been seen as mannerist jokes and as the progenitors of surrealism and other sorts of modern fantasies. As a consequence they have not been throughly taken into account in the history of still life.3 For example, Roberto Longhi also noted how the depiction of fruits, papers, and other such items in many of Arcimboldo’s composite heads is comparable to still life. But he could not take Arcimboldo seriously as a progenitor of the genre.4 167

In the past decade, however, a different interpretation of Arcimboldo’s place in the history of still life has begun to emerge. Some recent discussions, inspired in part by the initial observations of Sterling and Longhi, have brought Arcimboldo and particularly his invertible paintings into accounts of the history of Italian still-life painting from Leonardo to Caravaggio.5 Yet even when the invertible paintings have been discussed in such accounts, they still have been discounted as experiments or otherwise granted little significance.6 Even the most recent catalogue devoted to Arcimboldo, accompanying an important exhibition that emphasized his nature studies and tried to reorient interpretation of his work, offered only brief mention of his connection with still-life painting. One catalogue essay quickly dismisses the paintings because of their ludic aspects; another treats him as a mannerist. In any event, his relation to independent animal painting goes unmentioned.7 Arcimboldo’s creation of paintings that, when inverted, could be read as still lifes took place over a long span of years; this in itself indicates that these pictures represent much more than experiments. The first invertible head is datable to the 1560s while the last such painting is probably from approximately 1590.8 And while only two invertible heads—the one with a platter of meat and that the one with a bowl of nuts and winter vegetables—were familiar to earlier scholarship, at least four such paintings by the artist now are known to have existed. Their existence suggests that they were not just occasional pieces.9 Most important, the implications of the argument for Arcimboldo’s place in the history of still life remain to be elaborated and expanded beyond the Lombard situation.10 For it was not in Italy that Arcimboldo painted the first versions of either his composite heads or his first invertible still lifes: these originated during his period of service at the imperial court, as we have seen. They can be associated with nature painting, natural history, and the cultivation of gardens and menageries in Vienna and Prague, as has been discussed in the last chapter. Arcimboldo’s paintings drew from ancient as well as Renaissance sources, from north of the Alps as well as from Italy, and had successors in both regions. The availability of many different artistic traditions at the Habsburg court, where Arcimboldo worked for twenty-five years, may, along with other factors, have provided inspiration for his own still-life inventions. The court connections may also have facilitated their impact far beyond Italy, in Central Europe, and possibly in the Low Countries. Arcimboldo’s Antecedents

Still life—in other languages stilleven, stilleben, natura morta, or nature morte—is the painting of fruits, flowers, objects, and dead animals. The broad outlines of its history have frequently been told, and thus need only to be recapitulated briefly here.11 Properly speaking, the story should be one of the reinvention rather than the invention of Western still-life painting in the early modern period (the Renaissance). Still life had been painted in antiquity, as is seen in frescoes and mosaics from Pompeii, Herculaneum, and elsewhere. Some ancient Roman frescoes depict what appear to be independent paintings of such subjects; mural paintings of still life are assumed 168

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to be copies of pictures that originally existed on tablets and panels.12 Ancient literary accounts, for instance that of Vitruvius (De architectura 6: 7, 4) also indicate that there existed pictures of chickens, vegetables, and fruit which were called xenia. Still-life details are also found in medieval manuscripts, in the margins of pages. Objects such as bird cages, tools, and the like begin to appear in Italian fresco painting in the fourteenth century. Similar items are also seen in panel painting from the fifteenth century. Many such details commonly appear in northern and central Italian intarsie (such as those of the studiolo from Gubbio, now in the Metropolitan Museum of Art) from the fifteenth century onwards. With the revival of grotesque decoration in the later fifteenth century, birds, plants, fruits and animals came ever more to painters’ attention; and by the late sixteenth century vases with flowers and other inanimate objects appeared in Italian Renaissance grotesques, as will be discussed presently. Already in the fifteenth century, elements of autonomous still life, such as skulls and vases with flowers, appear on the backs of Netherlandish portraits and also in paintings with religious subjects—for example, in works by Hans Memlinc. There are also somewhat comparable examples in Italian painting, as for example the juniper painted on the reverse of Leonardo’s portrait of Ginevra de’ Benci (Washington, D.C., National Gallery of Art). Details that are comparable to the subjects of later still lifes, such as bowls or basins of fruit, are also prominent in northern Italian, and particularly Lombard, paintings (e.g., in the work of Moretto da Brescia) of the sixteenth century.13 But these elements either remain isolated on the reverse of panels or appear at most as subsidiary elements in larger compositions. Still life does not constitute an autonomous subject in Western easel painting until the Renaissance: examples survive only from the sixteenth century, when autonomous still lifes were executed both north and south of the Alps. Jacopo de’ Barbari, a painter whose career crossed the mountain barrier, painted a panel dated 1504 which depicts a dead partridge hanging from a wall. This may be the first example of the genre, although, as is the case with other examples, it is not clear whether this virtuoso trompe l’oeil was originally viewed as an independent work.14 Apart from Barbari and perhaps some other isolated examples, only in the mid-sixteenth century does the human element become secondary and still life take over. This occurs in paintings of markets, butchers’ stalls, and other such scenes of everyday life by artists like Pieter Aertsen or Joachim Beuckelaer north of the Alps, and by Vincenzo Campi and Bartolommeo Passarotti south of the Alps. By the early seventeenth century a distinctive genre of painting with many practitioners had come into being both in Italy and in northern and Central Europe. An important offshoot was also to be found in the so-called bodegones of Spanish painters. Although the term still life, or its variants in other languages, did not become current until the seventeenth century, the autonomous genre of easel painting was already flourishing by that time. Among its subjects were representations of flowers, fruits, vegetables, and tables set with meat. Caravaggio’s famous basket of fruit (Milan, Ambrosiana), probably from the mid- or late 1590s, is often still regarded, A r c i m b o l d o a n d t h e O r i g i n s o f S t i l l Li f e

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even in very recent literature and exhibitions, as the prime example of the tradition’s origins in Italy. A painter with Lombard roots, Caravaggio is regarded as the culmination of a tradition stemming from Leonardo that involved careful attention to the depiction of flowers, fruits, trees, and other objects found in nature. The Leonardesque tradition is believed to have been combined later with a desire to emulate, or revive, paintings described in ancient texts in which artists rivaled nature. Together these strands are said to lead to the origins of modern still-life painting in Lombardy.15 Versions of this narrative have sometimes mentioned Arcimboldo, but much more can be said about his place in the history and development of still life. To recall some earlier arguments: Arcimboldo also responded to ancient texts. His paintings can be compared to ancient and Renaissance grotesque decoration and the painting of festoons. He can be associated with northern as well as southern traditions of painting naturalia, animals, birds, and plants, including scientific illustration; he can even be seen as a link between the two geographical traditions. He may now also be viewed as an important link in the development of nature study into independent still life. Arcimboldo was particularly well situated to have had access to earlier sources for still life and to respond to a variety of stimuli. Inclined to humanism, possessing antiquarian and literary interests, and consorting with humanists and other scholars, he could have been familiar with many of the ancient literary sources for still life, and possibly the artistic ones as well. Born and trained in Milan, and active elsewhere in Lombardy, he could have known many pertinent visual sources available to Lombard masters of still life; as imperial court painter he could have seen many Netherlandish and German images in the imperial collections, and those produced by his northern contemporaries as well. In the corpus of ancient literature familiar during the Renaissance a number of ancient texts—including passages in the writings of Vitruvius, Martial, Philostratus, and Pliny—have been adduced as possible inspirations for early still-life painting in Italy.16 Vitruvius defined the genre of xenia, and Martial wrote two books of epigrams (books 13 and 14) on objects given as xenia. Martial (Epigrams 13:46) seems to describe xenia as painted depictions of fruit and other similar objects. In his Eikones, the third-century author Philostratus also wrote two extensive ekphrases (1:31, 2:26), meaning in this case literary descriptions, of painted xenia: one of a basket of fruit and nuts, one of a basket with a dead hare. Pliny told a number of stories of paintings of grapes, and of a youth holding grapes, which became topoi for the competition between art and nature. He thus has been said to have inspired experiments in recreating ancient still lifes—or, as Sibylle Ebert-Schifferer has suggested, to have stimulated a kind of reverse ekphrasis whereby ancient descriptions of painting were realized in the creation of actual paintings by Caravaggio.17 Arguments for the impact of ancient texts on Italian artists can be made even more strongly in reference to Arcimboldo than they have been made in relation to other painters. Arcimboldo was a poet familiar with ancient verse, notably Ovid and Propertius, and his own poetry took the form of epigram, Martial’s favored form. In verse he referred directly to the competition of art with nature, and related this to a picture 170

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depicting grapes, which may be compared to a painting in Pliny. Several of Martial’s poems could be brought to bear on his pictures, and his painting of fruit in a basket also is comparable to the description offered by one of Philostratus’s poems. Arcimboldo’s pictures also fit the meaning, or meanings, of xenia. The term, taken from the Greek word meaning gifts, was applied in both Greek and Latin during Roman times to describe paintings of gifts—xenia, properly speaking—of fruit and other forms of food given to house guests. Arcimboldo’s Elements and Seasons were, we recall, given as gifts to the emperor: Fonteo says that this was done in emulation of Roman practice. Some of the other invertible heads that became still life also were found in the imperial collection, where they had probably also arrived as gifts. A doubled, punning, reference to xenia may thus be involved in Arcimboldo’s paintings. What could be more appropriate gifts in the Roman tradition than fruits, flowers, and small animals and birds—all of which were presented as xenia? And what more fitting gifts than paintings of such items, which were also called xenia? Another ancient reference, to the grilli or ridiculous paintings of Antiphilus, has previously been brought into relation with Arcimboldo.18 This reference is taken by Fonteo, Arcimboldo’s collaborator, to refer to pictures that are like chimeras, meaning composed of various parts. This distinctive reading may derive from another meaning of grilli, meaning ancient jewels—cut gems composed of various human and animal forms, or monsters. This notion leads to some of the possible ancient visual sources for Arcimboldo’s paintings. Grilli, or grilloi, were also composite images. Some were invertible, so that a composition could be discerned whether the gem were seen right-side up or upside down.19 Such gems were in the imperial collections, where Arcimboldo could have seen them; several now in the Vienna collections can be traced back to an early provenance. A rediscovered inventory of Maximilian II’s Schatzkammer indicates that he was a great collector of gems.20 Other ancient works of art—including Roman paintings or mosaics that have not survived to the present day—may also have inspired Arcimboldo, as they may have done other early painters of still life. Ancient mosaics with still life were collected from at least the seventeenth century.21 Arcimboldo certainly knew about ancient Roman grotesques, since he wrote a letter on them, mentioned above, in which he describes their continuing discovery.22 Grotesques are frequently associated with the fantastic, the imaginative, and the chimerical, and as such they have been related to Arcimboldo. But Arcimboldo also introduced a naturalistic element into his pictorial conceptions. When he actually came to do a grotesque design, he made drawings of silkworms and of the process of sericulture for their interstices (see Figure 3.3).23 This approach is in keeping with the Renaissance reinvention (and reinterpretation) of grotesques. Both as a form of decoration and as an element in the creation of actual spaces in grottos, the grotesque involves a continuing play of artifice, fantasy, and nature. Hence animals, plants, and shells appear both as painted motifs in grotesque decoration, as seen in the work of Giovanni da Udine in the Vatican loggie, and as real objects seen in the construction of actual grottoes, like those at the villa at Castello by Nicolo Tribolo.24 Combining natural motifs in an artificial manner, A r c i m b o l d o a n d t h e O r i g i n s o f S t i l l Li f e

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decoration of actual grottoes may uncannily even parallel, if not anticipate, the composite forms of Arcimboldo.25 It is striking, for example, that composite forms made of shells and rocks are found in the portico of the Casino of Pius IV in the Vatican Gardens where, appropriately, they represent Diana of Ephesus, the fecund goddess of nature.26 Other forms found in grotesques also anticipate autonomous still-life and animal paintings. Birds, plants, animals, and flowers are scattered throughout grotesque decoration, notably in paintings in the Vatican decorated by Giovanni da Udine during different parts of his career (Figure 7.1 ). In still later grotesques, such as those

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found in the Scala of Sixtus V, the stairway in the Vatican palace that leads from the Apartamento Borgia to the Sistine Chapel, objects are brought together to make veritable still-life compositions which may even take on a symbolic—in this instance theological or Eucharistic—significance.27 Arcimboldo could have been aware of such precedents. He could, for example, have known Giovanni da Udine’s grotesques from prints (Figure 7.2). Likewise, he could have learned about Giovanni da Udine’s prints from his own quondam collaborator, Jacopo Strada, who owned a series of drawings copied after the Vatican loggie.28 He might also have received information about such matters from the artist

figure 7.1 Giovanni da Udine, Still Life and Animals, detail, 1518–19. Loggetta, Vatican Palace. figure 7.2 Engraving after Giovanni da Udine, still-life detail in logge, Vatican Palace.

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and antiquarian Pirro Ligorio, who had designed the Casino of Pius IV. Ligorio was in contact with the court of Maximilian II; he had provided the emperor with drawings of the Villa d’Este at Tivoli, and may have provided advice on other projects, presumably when the emperor was planning the Neugebäude, with which building Arcimboldo was probably familiar (he could have seen animals on its grounds, at the very least).29 Another feature associated with grotesques and grottoes is decoration in the form of festoons of fruits and flowers. Festoons appeared in both Rome—where they were again inspired by antique painting and sculpture—and northern Italy during the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries. A few prominent examples may be cited. The fifteenth-century frescoes by Vincenzo Foppa in San Eustorgio, Milan, and in the church of Santa Maria preso San Satiro show festoons and flowers held by angels. Similarly, quattrocento stuccos with such motifs appear in the decoration of the first floor in the Palazzo Schifanoia in Ferrara. In the early sixteenth century,Giovanni da Udine introduced naturalistic festoons into his paintings in the Villa Farnesina in Rome, and later, in the mid-sixteenth century, he also contributed to the vogue for such details in his festoons painted for the Vatican Loggie of Pius IV. At about the same time, circa 1551, Francesco Salviati painted festoons around his frescoes in the Oratorio di San Giovanni Decollato, also in Rome; he also added still-life details to his grisaille paintings in other frescoes of the early 1550s at the Palazzo della Cancellaria in Rome. At mid-century Giorgio Vasari also painted festoons in the same palace. At the same time in northern Italy, Niccolo dell’Abate painted festoons of fruits around his frescoes at the Palazzo Fava in Bologna; Girolamo Romanino painted similar motifs in his work of 1551–53 in Brescia. In Milan itself, angels with festoons appear in the paintings of the 1540s at Santa Maria preso San Celso, where Gaudenzio Ferrari was active. At least some of these examples, certainly the Milanese ones, would probably have been known by Arcimboldo, in whose early oeuvre, as noted in chapter 1, festoons are frequently found.30 These images can be added to the previous discussion of Arcimboldo’s relation to Lombard predecessors or his possible stimulation by other Italian nature painters, whose work he would have been able to see at the imperial court. As discussed in chapter 5, these included Liberale and Ligozzi. Strong impulses for the creation of still life also existed north of the Alps. Arcimboldo could have known many of these sources. Copyists and imitators of Dürer were abundant in sixteenth-century northern Europe. The availability of Dürer’s nature studies and their attraction for princely collectors, along with the continuing interest in natural history, sparked a revival in the later sixteenth century that is often called the “Dürer Renaissance.” This term refers to the copying or emulation of Dürer’s drawings and watercolors, including his nature studies by later artists. Several prominent representatives of this tendency, including the nature painters Hans Hoffmann and Georg Hoefnagel, worked for the imperial court (Figure 7.3).31 Arcimboldo can also be counted among the imperial artists who emulated Dürer. His self-portrait drawing may be related to Dürer’s famous self-portrait of 1500 (Munich, Alte Pinakothek),32 and he also emulated Dürer’s nature studies. As we have noted, the stance and form of the legs seen in Arcimboldo’s depictions of a moose 174

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figure 7.3  Joris Hoefnagel, page from Terra with copy after Dürer’s Hare, c. 1575. Washington D.C., National Gallery of Art.

seem to have been derived from a drawing by Dürer (see Figure 5.12).33 Although details of the body of Arcimboldo’s moose differ from those of Dürer’s, and tend to indicate—especially in comparison with Ligozzi’s study of a real (or at least stuffed) animal that he may have been able to observe directly—that he studied a real creature, the proximity in pose of Arcimboldo’s treatment of the animal to Dürer’s suggests that Arcimboldo knew Dürer’s study either directly or through a copy. The comparison with Dürer also raises the possibility that several of Arcimboldo’s flower studies—specifically those of irises and roses, which place long, meticulously drawn specimens on the page while cutting them off at their roots—might also be related to a German tradition represented by Dürer, which goes back through him to Martin Schongauer.34 During the sixteenth century, the tradition of nature studies was continued by other artists in Germany, where it led to the creation of the earliest autonomous still lifes. These works, which may be the earliest such autonomous works that survive in any tradition, are paintings by Ludger Tom Ring which depict flowers in vases: the earliest bear the date 1562. Tom Ring also painted pictures with other sorts of still lifes that are dated 1565. Preliminary studies exist, moreover, for still-life details found in other paintings by Tom Ring, including a kitchen scene (formerly in Berlin, now lost) which was executed in 1562. Tom Ring’s studies of individual fruits and flowers and of fruit on plates are remarkable—especially two oil sketches on paper, one with flowers in a vase and one with flowers in a basket (Figure 7.4).35 These studies are pasted onto pages in the Vienna codex (cod. min. 42) from the imperial collections, which includes nature studies by Arcimboldo.36 This codex was assembled probably at the end of the sixteenth century, and bears a green binding which is distinctly Rudolfine. Tom Ring’s oil sketches have a terminus ante quem of A r c i m b o l d o a n d t h e O r i g i n s o f S t i l l Li f e

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figure 7.4 Ludger Tom Ring, Still Life, 1562. Österreichische Nationalbibliothek, Vienna. Photo: Austrian National Library / Collection of Manuscripts and Rare Books.

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1562, and thus are earlier than any of Arcimboldo’s dated nature studies. It is thus possible that Arcimboldo was familiar with Tom Ring’s studies, or with the paintings made after them.37 If works by Tom Ring were already available in Vienna in the 1560s, they may have provided a source of inspiration for Arcimboldo, whose earliest invertible still lifes probably date from later in that decade. Netherlandish paintings may be considered, along with possible Italian and German sources, as inspirations for Arcimboldo in both their conception and execution of still-life elements. Even earlier examples of paintings with still life on their verso, such as those by Memlinc, may also be included in such a discussion. While these paintings are not close to Arcimboldo in handling or composition, the idea of making a two-sided picture, in which a still life is perceived if the picture is reversed, seems suggestive of his conception of an image that when inverted becomes a still life.38 The connection with Netherlandish paintings is less hypothetical in the case of pictures by Pieter Aertsen and Joachim Beuckelaer, which can be directly connected to the imperial court. Some paintings by these artists have been said to be inverted in a different manner, in that a scene with figures, which presumably is the subject of the painting—for instance the Flight into Egypt—is set in the background where it is hardly discernible, while still-life elements are prominently placed in the foreground. Pictures by Aertsen of a butcher shop (Uppsala University Museum) and a kitchen (Vienna, Kunsthistorisches Museum) dated 1551 and 1552 are some of the first post-classical paintings in which the figural motif is entirely subordinated to Chapter Seven

the still life. They show meats, utensils, and baskets. Significantly, at least six, and probably as many as nine, pictures by Aertsen and Beuckelaer are recorded in the 1621 inventory of the contents of the Prague castle, where they would have been the remains of the collection of Rudolf II. 39 Such works were no doubt known to Arcimboldo, and if paintings of such subjects by these artists were already in the imperial collections before 1565, they may even have influenced his own still-life inventions. Certainly they have been regarded as inspiring depictions of market scenes by Campi, Arcimboldo’s Lombard contemporary.40 This comparison takes us to a consideration of Arcimboldo’s place in the development of still life in relation to his contemporaries. A r c i m b o l d o ’ s Pla c e i n a n d I m p a c t o n t h e Hi s t o r y o f S t ill L i f e a n d A n i m al Pai n t i n g

Whether or not he drew from any of the possible sources mentioned so far, Arcimboldo’s own paintings of invertible composites, which in one view can be seen as pictures of still life, may now be considered to be among the earliest, and possibly the very earliest, extant examples of still-life painting by an Italian-born artist. Arcimboldo certainly painted a basket of fruit before Caravaggio did: this is a composite head which when turned upside down becomes a still life with a basket of fruit (Figure 7.5). Several features of Caravaggio’s still life that are often regarded as special to him are also anticipated by Arcimboldo. For example, a close examination of the fruits in Arcimboldo’s still life reveals that they, like those in Caravaggio’s more famous painting, are not in perfect condition. In any case, Arcimboldo’s invertible flower still life and his other invertible heads also antedate the other Lombard sources that are sometimes discussed as Caravaggio’s precedents. His invertible pictures of flowers, vegetables, and cooked meat also correspond to subjects of ancient xenia; likewise, he may be considered to have anticipated the revival of such forms, whose reinvention has since been credited to other artists, like Caravaggio. The 1573 account of the invertible picture that was probably hung as a still life is not only the earliest documented reference to such a picture by Arcimboldo, but also helps to determine the approximate date of his original conception of the idea. The composite head seen in the inverted view of this still life was a ridiculous portrait of the imperial jurist Johann Ulrich Zasius. Since Zasius died in 1570, the picture could have been painted no later than that year. The identification and the terminus ante quem of 1570 provided by the 1573 description thus establish that this invertible head was painted close in time to Arcimboldo’s original versions of the Seasons and Elements, which were painted in 1563 and 1566 respectively. As has been mentioned in chapter 4, Zasius was mocked in several pictures by Arcimboldo, among which is probably to be identified a painting that once bore a signature and the date 1566 (see Figure 4.2).41 The man’s face in this work is made of meat in a mocking manner that may be meant to suggest the ravages of disease; the body, meanwhile, is made of papers and law books.42 Unlike the Seasons and Elements, it is painted more freely: its manner of A r c i m b o l d o a n d t h e O r i g i n s o f S t i l l Li f e

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execution corresponds to that found in another invertible painting a composite head made of various kinds of cooked meat, which when turned upside down becomes a pair of hands holding a platter of meat (see Figure 2.11).43 The conception of the face in both these works is similar, and the treatment of the eye, doubled by employing an eye of a small cooked bird, is identical in each.44 The invertible meat platter/composite head should thus probably be dated close in time to the putative caricature of Zasius seen as a head made of cooked birds. Its clumsier treatment of the invertible effect—the hands lifting the platter interfere with the illusion when the picture is inverted—also suggest that it was probably painted before the floral still life that becomes a composite head of Zasius.45 Hence Arcimboldo’s earliest invention of this type, the head with a plate, can be dated circa 1566. The invertible head with the flower vase would thus date a little later. Both the documented reference to Arcimboldo’s invertible floral still life and his probable invention of the type in the mid-1560s precede all other Lombard examples of still life, including paintings that have sometimes been treated as antecedents of Caravaggio’s fruit basket. All authentic Italian examples adduced heretofore, most notably pictures by Ambrogio Figino and Fede Galizia, date probably from the 1590s at the earliest.

figure 7.5 Giuseppe Arcimboldo, Invertible Head as Basket of Fruit, c. 1590. Invertible. Private collection. figure 7.6 Antonio da Crevalcore(?), Fragment with Still Life of Grapes, c. 1520. Private collection.

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If we take them as independent still lifes, Arcimboldo’s pictures may thus be the first such extant paintings by an Italian-born artist. Earlier examples may have once existed, and may have been represented in prints, but that is uncertain. Moreover, other candidates proposed as the earliest still-life paintings simply do not stand up to scrutiny as independent works. According to Vasari, the Ferrarese painter Antonio da Crevalcore (d. 1525) painted pictures of birds and animals, and a painting of a bird with grapes has been attributed to him (private collection; Figure 7.6).46 Even if this attribution is correct, however, the image does not seem to have been designed as an independent composition; it instead most likely functioned as a panel in some sort of interior decoration, much as did contemporary intarsie or frescos with similar subjects, as noted above. So too may also have functioned the trompe-l’oeil painting, depicting a bird, by Jacopo de’ Barbari (Munich, Alte Pinakothek), whose name may imply he was not an Italian anyway. Still-life paintings attributed to Giovanni da Udine also fall out of contention. While Giovanni da Udine painted grotesques and festoons with naturalia, which may be counted among important predecessors to still life,47 and also did studies of birds,48 the still-life easel paintings that have been attributed to him are creations of the seventeenth century and can not be considered copies after his works. One such painting published by Charles Sterling as a copy after Giovanni da Udine seems, for example, rather to be by an anonymous master, perhaps a follower of the elusive Tomaso Salini, one of the painters known as the Masters of the Vases with Grotesque Ornament. Pictures of this sort can be demonstrated to have been executed in the mid-seventeenth century.49 It is also unlikely that another contender, Vincenzo Campi, ever painted an independent still life. Even if the attribution of the unique still life given to him is correct, its date can not be established being as earlier than that of Arcimboldo’s first still lifes. More important, his picture appears to be a fragment excised from a larger composition of a fruit market, of the sort Campi is known to have painted; in all such works vendors also appear, as they do in comparable scenes by northern artists like Aertsen. Seen as an independent work, this picture appears unbalanced and awkward; the edges of items have been cut off. All this leads to the impression that the existing picture has been cut out of a larger work by the artist.50 Nevertheless, it is possible to suggest a connection between Campi and the imperial court, and hence with his Lombard contemporary Arcimboldo. It has been overlooked that Campi’s market scenes seem to have corresponded to imperial taste. Two such paintings of market sellers are listed in the 1621 inventory of objects found in the Prague castle.51 It is tempting to regard Arcimboldo as the intermediary for these acquisitions, a role that he was to play for other masters of still life. Could Campi have known his works too? We need not subscribe to what John Shearman used to call the “world-premiere fallacy” and argue that Arcimboldo painted the first extant still life by an Italian artist simply so that we can claim that he deserves more attention in any account of the genre’s history. Such a claim is already supported by his likely impact on subsequent developments in still-life and animal painting both in Italy and in the north. 180

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Beyond the question of Campi, Arcimboldo associated directly with several Lombard artists who have been related to the early development of autonomous still-life painting. Among them were Fede Galizia and Ambrogio Figino—both of whom, like Caravaggio, painted still lifes depicting bowls full of fruit. Giacomo Berra has emphasized that after his return to Milan in 1587, Arcimboldo would have been a prominent personality on the local artistic scene; he bore the title of imperial painter, had been ennobled, and had been made a count palatine. He was painting his Vertumnus and Flora in a studio in Milan, where they could have been seen while he was working on them. The comments by Lomazzo and Comanini on Arcimboldo’s pictures, and the many other poems written on them, indicate that the pictures attracted a lot of attention from writers, and it is likely that they were seen by other local artists in addition to Lomazzo as well.52 It was during this time in Milan that Arcimboldo probably painted the head which when inverted became a basket of fruit (Figure 7.5). Arcimboldo had contacts with both Fede Galizia and Ambrogio Figino, and it is possible that the three artists circulated in the same circles. The connection between Arcimboldo and Galizia is established in a book published in 1598 by the literato Gherardo Borgogni. At the beginning of the decade Borgogni had written a poem on Arcimboldo’s Flora which was included in the compendium sent to the emperor along with the Flora and Vertumnus. Borgogni also wrote poems on Figino. Another, hitherto unnoticed poem by Pomponio Barbarito was dedicated to Borgogni and Figino, in which Barbarito calls them a “rara coppia e gentil.”53 In his 1598 dialogue, Borgogni writes that several years earlier Galizia had sent paintings to Rudolf II, who had much appreciated them and ordered Arcimboldo to procure more such works by the artist.54 Morigia confirms that Rudolf was pleased to have pictures by Galizia.55 It has been hypothesized that one of the pictures might have been a still life.56 In addition to their common relation to the heritage of Leonardo, both Arcimboldo and Figino wrote poems and shared associations with Milanese literati. They both knew Borgogni and were linked together in a poem by Baldini, who also wrote poems on them separately—as did the writers Foliani and Lomazzo. The artists themselves both wrote poems. Comanini, who wrote poems on Arcimboldo’s Flora and Vertumnus, also wrote one on Figino’s picture of peaches, which Borgogni published in 1594.57 In his dialogue Il Figino, Comanini tellingly places much of the discussion of Arcimboldo in the mouth of the character Figino himself. Arcimboldo and Figino definitely knew each other. In a letter of 1 March 1600 to the imperial stone cutter Ottavio Miseroni, who was acting as Rudolf II’s agent, Figino says that Arcimboldo had encouraged him to send a work to the emperor.58 The picture he finally sent, a representation of Jupiter and Io, is distinctive in his oeuvre for containing a prominently displayed cow. This naturalistic aspect, along with the mythological content and presence of a nude, was an element that might have appealed to the emperor, and Figino’s description of his work as one with “mysterious but long meaning” is apposite for Arcimboldo’s work as well.59 Caravaggio was living in Milan at the time that Arcimboldo returned home from Central Europe. It has been recognized that his painting of a fruit basket, executed in the 1590s, not only represents the same subject as is depicted in Arcimboldo’s A r c i m b o l d o a n d t h e O r i g i n s o f S t i l l Li f e

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work, but shares many similarities with its naturalistic thrust.60 The possibility of an association between the two artists or their works can be emphasized. In the late 1580s Caravaggio was working in the atelier of Simone Peterzano, who possessed a nature study by Leonardo and was therefore susceptible to the influence of the same tradition as was Arcimboldo. In 1572 and 1573 Peterzano had painted in the Monastero Maggiore in Milan (the church of San Maurizio), where, as has been discussed in chapter 1, Arcimboldo had worked twenty-five years earlier. A painting by Arcimboldo could still be seen there, and it is quite likely that it would have been noticed by both Peterzano and his assistant Caravaggio, especially since Arcimboldo had recently returned to Milan and would already have been celebrated as a court painter. In any event, although the evidence has often been overlooked, a connection existed between Caravaggio and the imperial court: a painting by Caravaggio, now lost, of Joseph and Potiphar’s wife was to be found in the imperial collections.61 Arcimboldo’s pictures also antedate all examples of still-life painting produced by other artists working for the imperial court. Arcimboldo was important for the development of nature painting both there and elsewhere north of the Alps, just as he was for Lombardy. Several drawings in the British Museum (Department of Prints and Drawings, Sloane Manuscript 5219) demonstrate the importance of Arcimboldo’s nature studies for northern artists. It has been noted that the source of one such drawing (Sloane Manuscript 5219 fol. 39r), a copy of a boar’s head in Vienna (Österreichische Nationalbibliothek, cod. min. fol. 6r),62 can now, as discussed in chapter 5, be assigned to Arcimboldo. Drawings in this London volume have also been regarded as studies for the “Museum” or Tierbuch63 of Rudolf II, but their quality— in relation both to the finished works and to known drawings by Dirck de Quade van Ravesteyn,64 to whom the paintings in this book have been attributed—suggests rather that they are copies by another Netherlandish artist. This provenance is confirmed by the color notes in Dutch on the drawing of the boar’s head.65 The so-called “Museum,” also called the bestiaire or Tierbuch, of Rudolf II is a central object for discussion here. Rather than being a compendium of works by many hands, much of the book can be attributed to the imperial artist Van Ravesteyn.66 Regardless of the question of attribution, however, the execution seems uniform— and, more important, the sources of many of its images can now be determined. These have been recognized as stemming probably in good measure from materials found in the Vienna manuscript (cod. min. 42) and from related drawings discussed in chapter 5. In other words, the depictions of animals and birds in this volume seem to derive in good measure from what are now identifiable as nature studies by Arcimboldo.67 Since Van Ravesteyn is first recorded in imperial service in 1589, two years after Arcimboldo had retired to Italy, he (if he is the artist) must have been using drawings that Arcimboldo had left at, or given to, the court (Figure 7.7). Arcimboldo’s studies were also used by other nature artists active for the imperial court around 1590. First among them was Hans Hoffmann, the noted painter of naturalia and imitator of Dürer, who came into imperial service in 1585 but must have died by 1591 or 1592 at the latest. A painting of the expulsion of Adam and Eve from Paradise has been recognized as having used several images of animals and 182

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figure 7.7 Dirck de Quade van Ravesteyn, Leopard and Cheetah, c. 1605. Österreichische Nationalbibliothek, Vienna. figure 7.8 Bartholomeus Spranger, Bacchus and Venus, c.1591. Niedersächsische Landesgalerie, Hannover.

birds in the Vienna codex (cod. min. 42) that have now been determined to be the work of Arcimboldo. Among them are, to the right of Eve, the blackbuck antelope and above it the bee eater; in the center the gerboa; and to the left of Adam, the moose and duiker.68 A duiker and the cheetah taken from Arcimboldo’s prototypes also appear in a painting by an imperial artist not otherwise known for his paintings of animals: Bartholomeus Spranger’s Venus and Bacchus. Although the date of this picture has not yet been unanimously determined, scholarly consensus would put it in the 1590s (Figure 7.8).69 More complicated is the question of Arcimboldo’s relation to another prominent nature painter, Joris (Georg) Hoefnagel, who is recorded as having been in imperial employ during the year 1590. Hoefnagel is said by the historian Karel Van Mander, who was a friend of Spranger and thus well informed, to have visited Prague often, and these visits are confirmed by his depictions of that city. Hoefnagel decorated A r c i m b o l d o a n d t h e O r i g i n s o f S t i l l Li f e

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several manuscripts and painted several nature studies in miniature; he also made designs based on them which were assembled in prints published by Jacob Hoefnagel in the series known as Archetypa in the early 1590s.70 He could have seen Arcimboldo’s pictures and studies in Prague or in Vienna, which he also visited and drew. He also worked for Archduke Ferdinand of the Tyrol, who resided in Innsbruck, a city he also visited, and where he might have become familiar with Arcimboldesque images. Hoefnagel might, moreover, heave learned of Arcimboldo’s work from Carolus Clusius, who was present in Frankfurt when Hoefnagel was resident there circa 1590, working on his nature studies. The two Netherlandish exiles were most likely acquainted with each other since Hoefnagel knew many people in Clusius’s circle; this hypothetical acquaintance has also been seen as important for Hoefnagel’s illuminations.71 Clusius had also previously worked in the same milieu as Arcimboldo, who was commissioned to represent a flower Clusius had discussed, and it is possible that Arcimboldo knew him too.

figure 7.9  Joris Hoefnagel, Mira Calligraphia Monumenta, c. 1596. J. Paul Getty Museum, Los Angeles. Photo: J. Paul Getty Museum.

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During the years 1590 through 1594, Hoefnagel illuminated the calligraphic manuscript written by Georg Bocskay known as Mira Calligraphiae Monumenta (Los Angeles, J. Paul Getty Museum; Figure 7.9). This work has been described as “distinctive among Hoefnagel’s manuscripts for its extensive illustrations of the plant world.” Its depiction of the flowers, along with several other similar miniatures with flowers and their related Archetypa (the prints made after his nature studies by his son Jacob) that were executed by Hoefnagel during the 1590s, are comparable in some regards to Arcimboldo’s nature studies. They are done in the same media, watercolor and gouache, and include many of the same flowers—roses, lilies, and the like—are arranged similarly on the page and depicted in a similar manner, with cut stems and accompanied by buds. The 1590s have also been suggested as the period in which Hoefnagel illuminated the series of four manuscripts depicting the four elements (Washington, D.C., National Gallery of Art) which offer extensive representations of animals, birds, fish, and insects that are frequently represented with great ambiguity. Hoefnagel’s images often play with the status of the page, suggesting a location in nature but undercutting it—either by trompe-l’oeil devices, in the instance of insects, or by framing the scene and numbering the specimens that appear in it. Arcimboldo’s nature studies themselves create similar games. Both artists suggest a location in depth by placing creatures on a fictive patch of ground on which they cast shadows and yet leave the rest of the paper blank. In any case, trompe l’oeil is comparable to the paradoxical games in Arcimboldo’s composite images. Furthermore, although Hoefnagel’s nature studies seem to be done after life, they are in many instances copied from or inspired by studies made by other artists. In 1589,72 1592, and 1594 Hoefnagel produced miniatures in watercolor and gouache depicting flowers in a vase (Figure 7.10). These pictures represent a new turn in his oeuvre, toward the invention of independent still life. Arcimboldo’s floral still life may have provided a stimulus for Hoefnagel, although it is not clear that he could have seen it before he did his own work. Just as Arcimboldo plays with the paradox of perception in his inverted still lifes, whose positions in space are unclear, Hoefnagel plays with the paradox of illusion in these miniatures, which give the appearance that the vases—particularly those in the 1592 work—are three-dimensional but then undercut the illusion. Whether or not Hoefnagel can be demonstrated to have taken inspiration directly from Arcimboldo, he certainly worked in the same spirit of serious play that informed Arcimboldo’s serious jokes. This theme of serio-ludere is directly enunciated by the epigram Hoefnagel inscribed on one of his emblematic miniatures, depicting a medallion of Venus and Cupid surrounded by plants, insects, and small animals (Hamburg, private collection; Figure 7.11). Dated 1590, and thus a work produced on the cusp of his entrance into imperial service, it reads “Est puer ille quidem multo sed providus astu//Ludit sed interdum ludendo seria tentat.”73 (“That boy is indeed of much cunning but prudent in its use: he plays, but attempts the serious, playing.”) Anselmus de Boodt, as is suggested above, has now emerged as a prolific painter and collector of naturalia on a large scale, and although he does not seem to have A r c i m b o l d o a n d t h e O r i g i n s o f S t i l l Li f e

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copied Arcimboldo directly, he—like Hoefnagel—may have drawn inspiration from him. Certainly he knew the Milanese artist’s compositions. An Arcimboldesque personification of Air is found amongst De Boodt’s compendia.74 Could Arcimboldo have also inspired some of De Boodt’s own studies of animals and other depictions of nature? Arcimboldo may also be related to the tradition of flower books and those painters whose works can be connected to them. These works are seen in prints, miniatures, and still-life painting. One example of the first category is the book of flower prints assembled by Emmanuel Sweets and dedicated to Rudolf II.75 A celebrated example of the second category is the book of miniature nature studies that also entered the 186

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figure 7.10  Joris Hoefnagel, Vase with Flowers, 1594. Ashmolean Museum, Oxford. figure 7.11  Joris Hoefnagel, Venus and Cupid, 1590. Private collection, Hamburg.

possession of Emperor Rudolf II, which contains a number of flowers, and animals. Significantly, this book also contains a depiction of flowers in a pot. In 1600, De Gheyn finished both this miniature, with a still life, and an independent still life easel painting executed in oil paint. De Gheyn’s miniatures have also been compared to the work of Hoefnagel, and his still lifes have been related to Hoefnagel’s compositions. However, behind or along with Hoefnagel may stand Arcimboldo. Clusius once again may have provided a possible conduit of information about Arcimboldo and Hoefnagel to De Gheyn. After residing in Frankfurt, Clusius assumed the directorship of the university gardens in Leiden in 1592 and moved there in 1593. De Gheyn also moved to Leiden, and it was there that he carried out his nature studies. De Gheyn made a portrait of Clusius, and Clusius has recently been regarded as having had a large impact on the artist.76 Much has been made of the fact that De Gheyn did his early floral studies as miniatures.77 But it seems significant that Arcimboldo’s flowers are done in a similar technique, whether or not they can be described as miniatures. De Gheyn’s manner of painting still lifes has been distinguished from Hoefnagel’s, and it is true that his known works of this genre in both oil and gouache and watercolor feature subjects that have been placed on ledges, and whose forward edges are depicted in such a way so that they appear to cast shadows. Nevertheless, the space in which De Gheyn’s paintings stand remains unclear. Their background is sometimes dark, as in his oil paintings, or an undifferentiated neutral color, as in his works on vellum. In both media, the rear edge of the ledge trails off. These features are also comparable to the earlier still lifes by Arcimboldo, a point to which we will return in the conclusion to this book. A r c i m b o l d o a n d t h e O r i g i n s o f S t i l l Li f e

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Finally, Roelandt Savery’s still-life paintings merit discussion. His earliest extant still lifes date from 1603, the year he came to the imperial court in Prague. Along with DeGheyn’s, they are thus some of the earliest dated extant easel paintings of still life by a Netherlandish artist. Like Hoefnagel’s works, they show flowers in vases but undercut the pictorial illusion by placing the flowers inside niches, upon whose exterior surfaces insects land. They also locate the roemers, the vessels in which the 188

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figure 7.12 Roeland Savery, Flower Still Life, 1603. Private collection.

flowers are placed, in an uncertain space (Figure 7.12). These effects are comparable to similar ones in Arcimboldo’s works. Although Savery may have been inspired by still-life compositions painted by his brother Jacob Savery which have survived in print copies, may he also have been influenced by Arcimboldo’s earlier still life, which he could have seen at the imperial court?78 Soon after Savery’s arrival in Prague he also began to paint pictures in which animals constituted the main subject—for example, a stallion with a groom.79 This sort of painting, though anticipated by De Gheyn in the Low Countries, was to develop into a genre of independent animal painting in the Netherlands during the course of the seventeenth century.80 In addition to these Netherlandish types, however, Central European forerunners exist in representations of freestanding animals depicted in profile, as seen in Hoefnagel’s miniatures and in Arcimboldo’s nature studies. A tantalizing reference in the 1621 inventory of the Prague collection suggests that Arcimboldo may have provided a precedent for the independent painting of animals. This painting is described as a kitchen scene in which a cat is eating fish.81 Could he have progressed from making studies of animals to combining them in his composite heads, and then to making autonomous paintings featuring animals? The origins of still-life painting have been located in a number of sites: in Milan, in Antwerp, and to some extent in Frankfurt am Main.82 Although the number of these locales could be broadened—for instance, to speak more generally of Netherlandish centers rather than just Antwerp—we now see that Vienna and Prague need to be added to the list. In any case, Arcimboldo was active in Vienna, Prague, and Milan and had direct or indirect contacts with colleagues in the Netherlands and Frankfurt. He left a legacy in Milan, where Federico Borromeo pursued many of the interests in naturalia and still life that Arcimboldo had anticipated. Borromeo patronized Jan Brueghel, master of still life and landscape as well as fine painter of animals. Could Arcimboldo have had an indirect impact on that important artist, too?83 In any case, Arcimboldo must now be considered seriously in any discussion of the origins of modern nature painting and still life, and he must also be related to autonomous animal painting. Yet the presentation of his still lifes as invertible composite heads that seem to resolve into comic faces seems to represent a stumbling block to this recognition. For these paintings deny the possibility of a univocal reading; according to one recent interpreter, they seem to suggest a game of hide and seek.84 But while the pictures cannot all be interpreted identically, they can nevertheless be read as still lifes—at least when they are inverted. Arcimboldo had reasons for presenting them as invertible heads. In the next chapter we will see what these reasons were.

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Arcimboldo’s Paradoxical Paintings and the Origins of Still Life

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rcimboldo’s paintings of composite heads combine the artificial with the natural. This coupling, especially evident in his invertible heads, not only is intrinsically involved in the origins of Arcimboldo’s conception of still life, but also has implications for the interpretation of his oeuvre.1 Arcimboldo has long been regarded as an artist of the artificial, the fantastic. His complicated, witty pictorial composites have most often been connected with the style that supposedly represents these aspects: mannerism. Sterling treated him this way, for example, in his account of still life. Consequently Arcimboldo’s art has until recently seemed remote from, if not antithetical to, naturalist currents. This has even led to a reluctance to realize the implications of connecting Arcimboldo with the development of still life.2 For still-life painting is associated with artistic tendencies that in turn are linked with realism or naturalism. As these notions have been treated in the literature of art since his time, they are supposedly antithetical to artifice, fantasy, and—in terms of the art-historical style identified with such qualities—to mannerism. The artificial and the fantastic have, however, long been deemed the signal features in Arcimboldo’s art. In Il Figino, Comanini directly invoked the concept of the artificial in reference to a painting by Arcimboldo—a head made of animals, now identifiable as Earth—in which various creatures were used to correspond to the parts of the face: the elephant for the cheek, the wolf for the eye, and so forth. Lomazzo, another of Arcimboldo’s Milanese contemporaries, reacted similarly when he said that Arcimboldo’s pictures of composite heads were all “made with the greatest artifice.”3

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Comanini related his understanding of artifice directly to questions of artistic imitation and the fantastic. He linked sprezzatura artificiosa—meaning artful artlessness in a sense related to Baldassare Castiglione’s discussion in the Book of the Courtier—directly with fantastic imitation (imitazione fantastica). In this way of thinking, the artfully natural becomes the spectacularly artificial.4 But Comanini defines fantastic imitation with terms taken from Plato’s discussion of the arts of imitation, the mimetikai technai, in Book Ten of the Republic, and also in the Sophist, both of which dialogues he cites. While Plato was critical of painting as a form of imitation, against him Comanini defends painting as a mimetic art.5 According to Comanini’s peculiar understanding of Plato, in which he closely follows the Renaissance critic Jacopo Mazzoni, icastic imitation is that which imitates things that exist, and fantastic imitation is that which makes (finge) things that do not exist.6 While Comanini offers a portrait as an example of icastic imitation, he employs Arcimboldo’s paintings of Flora and Vertumnus to exemplify fantastic imitation. He specifically calls Arcimboldo an artificer of fantastic imitation (artefice di fantastica imitazione). Arcimboldo’s paintings provide examples of his caprice (or whim, capriccio) and invention (invenzione). It is for such inventions that Comanini calls him a most ingenious fantastic painter (ingegnosissimo pittor fantastico). This language was picked up in the seventeenth century, when Arcimboldo’s paintings were referred to as capricci by Francesco Scanelli.7 Comanini elaborates these notions in terms that frequently appear in Renaissance discussions of the imaginary.8 Arcimboldo’s composite heads might be compared to various imaginary creatures, such as chimere—the mythical beings composed out of the fore parts of a lion, the middle of a goat, and the hind parts of a dragon. They might also be compared to the monster described by the Roman poet Horace at the beginning of his Ars Poetica: the creature with a human head on the body of a horse whose limbs are covered with feathers, and who looks like a beautiful woman at the top but has a fish’s tail below.9 Horace’s simile became a commonplace reference for the fantastic, for painters and poets to create what they might imagine. Comanini also compares Arcimboldo’s creations directly to the images found in dreams.10 He says that the ministers of dreams must be his familiars. He refers to a little-observed passage in Ovid’s Metamorphoses which mentions Phantasos, or fantasy. According to Ovid, Phantasos is versed in different arts: he turns himself into rocks, waves, and wood—whatever deceives the mind.11 For Comanini the art of Phantasos seems to be surpassed by that of Arcimboldo.12 Comanini’s description is exceptionally extensive and idiosyncratic in its philosophical orientation, but it may be taken as being close to the painter’s work because its descriptions correspond to paintings by Arcimboldo that are formed out of parts. However, Arcimboldo’s art combines natural particulars in ways not found in nature itself. Hence his pictures may be regarded to be examples of fantastic artifice. Comanini’s terms, as well as his manner of expressing them, implicate Arcimboldo in a central and long-standing discussion about artistic imitation and the role of the imaginary in art. He also uses words echoed by several other contemporaneous descriptions of the artist’s work. For example, in his poems of the late 1560s 192

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Arcimboldo’s collaborator Giovanni Baptista Fonteo referred to Arcimboldo’s Seasons and Elements as chimerae, deriving the word from the mythic composite beast. As remarked above, his notes to his poem also called them grilli, here also understood as whimsical creatures made of composites. In his biography of Arcimboldo, Morigia called the composite heads invenzioni and bizzarrie, even though the latter term needs to be treated with caution, meaning more or less the same as the former.13 Lomazzo refers to Arcimboldo’s invenzioni and capricci, and says that he was always prepared to do something capricciosa for his patron.14 These sources are all significant because these writers probably all knew Arcimboldo personally and communicated about paintings directly with him. Their discussion seems to resonate in the next generation as well. As has been noted, Galileo calls a painter who must be Arcimboldo capricious, and refers to his composite heads as a manner of imitation. Arcimboldo’s composite heads and the language used to describe them also bring to mind the Renaissance discussion of another composite, the grotesque, as mentioned above. Lomazzo himself defined the grotesque as combined of diverse things (confuse of diverse cose). Again, the grotesque was regarded as a characteristic product of the fantasia understood as the inventive imagination—inventive in the power to produce something not found in nature. Hence A.F. Doni describes grotesques as fantasie, sogni, and chimere, fantasies, dreams, and chimeras, all words that were used to describe Arcimboldo’s paintings.15 The capricious quality of Arcimboldo’s paintings is also what characterizes them as works of art. They are artificial because they can be distinguished from that which is natural: they are products of art which result from the painter’s play of wit or intellect. Hence they may also be, and indeed were, called jokes (scherzi) already during the artist’s lifetime: the notion of the joke evokes their playful, witty character. Arcimboldo’s metamorphoses are new forms of images, however, because they take features of nature and recombine them into works of art, rather than transform nature into some other aspect of the natural.16 While good reasons thus exist to pay attention to the artificial, capricious, and fantastic elements in Arcimboldo, as well as to the humorous features of his art, those qualities are again bound up with the genesis of the forms in his painting in what may be called a serious manner. The artificiality and joking qualities of his pictures are in most instances inextricable from their naturalistic qualities. For far from being a painter who negated nature in his art, Arcimboldo made many studies from nature. His close observations of nature are related to the study of natural history, And many of his paintings of composite heads rely on these studies. The definition of Arcimboldo’s paintings as a form of fantastic imitation, or simply as a joke, therefore does not even completely coincide with Comanini’s description of how they were made and what they mean. Although Comanini may give license to the interpretation of Arcimboldo’s paintings as products of fantasy, we may recall that he also says that Arcimboldo’s painting of a head composed of animals sent by the emperor to the king of Spain some years earlier was entirely painted from nature, because Arcimboldo had been given the chance to study natural creatures, having A r c i m b o l d o ’ s P a r a d o x i c a l P a i n t i n g s a n d t h e O r i g i n s o f S t i l l Li f e

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been allowed to see all the animals that constituted that head in the imperial menagerie.17 Comanini’s description of how this painting employed studies of creatures taken from nature has a basis in reality, because Arcimboldo did paint a head made of animals that were observed and recorded in what have now been identified as his drawings after nature. Several other paintings by the artist composed of plants, flowers, birds, and fish also used his nature studies. We also now know that a picture resembling that described by Comanini was in fact sent to Philip II of Spain circa 1580. Among his other characteristics, Arcimboldo must now be seen as a nature painter who depicted birds, plants, and animals from what he could see—or, to put it another way, to make it seem as if they had been taken from nature. To use Comanini’s words, Arcimboldo must therefore be regarded not only as a master of fantastic imitation, but as a master of icastic imitation as well. Comanini had defined icastic imitation with reference to portraiture—and this too is applicable to Arcimboldo, who held the role of court portraitist. But Arcimboldo can be said not only to have done portraits of human beings; he also did portraits in the sense of counterfeits (a term of the time) or depictions of animals.18 The notion of the portrait or counterfeit is integral to his depictions of nature. Part of the paradox of Arcimboldo’s paintings thus consists in their doubling of two seemingly antithetical ideals of imitation—in Comanini’s terms—in the same image. The depiction of individual items taken from nature in the composite heads may be regarded as exemplifying icastic imitation, as is demonstrated by Arcimboldo’s Earth, Air, Spring, Flora, and Vertumnus, most probably by Water, and possibly by Summer and Autumn as well. On the other hand, if the heads are apprehended as wholes, as images composed of the parts taken from nature that make them up, they may be regarded as examples of fantastic imitation. The invertible feature seen in some of Arcimboldo’s pictures thus intensifies their mimetic paradox. In one inversion they may be seen as composite heads, and thus exemplify fantastic imitation. Turned around, they become still life compositions, which exemplify icastic imitation. A r c i m b o l d o ’ s C o m p o s i t e Hea d s a s Ca p r i c e s o f A r t a n d o f Na t u r e

Once the naturalistic aspect of Arcimboldo’s paintings has been recognized, their character as whimsical or capricious images can also be reconsidered. For instance, Comanini’s discussion of Arcimboldo’s paintings can also be read as allowing an interpretation of these pictures not just as caprices of art but also as caprices of nature. That is because while Comanini regarded these works as exemplars of fantastic artifice, he simultaneously related them to the close depiction of nature. The double meaning of caprice is evident in Comanini’s descriptions of Arcimboldo’s picture of Vertumnus (see Figure 0.3), on which he had written an extensive poem.19 Comanini says that the sight of this new monster (nuovo monstro) brings delight (allegrezza) and wonder to the viewer; the image seems a monster (un monstro) that hides beneath it a portrait of Rudolf II.20 This description of the monstrous as 194

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a form of the joke has been discussed in relation to the conception of Arcimboldo’s serious jokes. But the use of the word “monster” also has a further dimension which is related to the notion of natural artifice. A monster is an aberration in the natural order. As such, it is a joke of nature. Consequently a natural monster may also be compared to a joke of art, or a caprice. In fact the treatment of the monster in writings on natural history is “derived from a literature which personified nature as an ingenious craftsman and monsters as her most artful works.”21 Hence, since Arcimboldo’s paintings of composite heads can be brought into the sphere of the naturally monstrous, they may be regarded as caprices of nature as well as caprices of art. In speaking of the painting Vertumnus as monstrous, Comanini also further explained how closely Arcimboldo’s images, though fantastic, were related to the

Figure 8.1 After Hoefnagel(?), Hairy Family, c. 1590. Kunsthistorisches Museum, Vienna.

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natural. As we have seen, Arcimboldo was directly involved in the search for wondrous creatures; he drew many such birds and animals; he prepared studies of creatures for Aldrovandi and for other recipients such as the Duke-Elector of Saxony; and finally he included in his own oil paintings (the head of Earth, for example) animals like the cheetah and many other beasts which, from the central or southern European perspective, were rare and could have been regarded as wonderful. Moreover, Arcimboldo’s pictures were also specifically described by Comanini as wondrous. Hence Arcimboldo may be linked not only with artificial wonders—as suggested by his composite heads—but with the category of the naturally wondrous, a concept closely related to the naturally capricious.22 When Comanini says that the application of the parts to the whole in Arcimboldo’s painting was so ingenious that it was wondrous, he indeed ties this reaction of wonder specifically to the painting of nature.23 It has been remarked that the “tendency to frame the concept of nature in terms of the wondrous was common throughout Europe during the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, but it seems to have had especially pointed meaning with Rudolfine nature painting . . . which is populated by actual natural wonders.”24 In addition to paintings by Arcimboldo, who can be associated with his patron Rudolf II, miniatures by Joris (Georg) Hoefnagel and paintings by other artists who worked for Rudolf II can be considered similarly. A good example is the depiction of hirsute people by Hoefnagel, who himself describes such subjects as a wondrous work of nature (opus mirum naturae; Figure 8.1).25 Sixteenth-century Europeans characterized exotic animals and hirsute people as curiosities, marvels, and wonders, things which existed outside the bounds of the normative, and such things were also called caprices of nature.26 The collections of the emperor and other princes, notably the Kunstkammer, contained many such objects along with Arcimboldo’s paintings. Arcimboldo’s own paintings may in many ways be linked with the world of the Kunstkammer, but this issue can be reconsidered in several ways.27 Such an explication can inform a deeper understanding of how the paintings may work as caprices of nature. Tellingly, the Kunstkammer was often called the Wunderkammer. This double terminology (sometimes compressed into the notion of the Kunst- und Wunderkammer) expresses the duality of its holdings: works of art and wonders of nature. As we have seen, Arcimboldo pursued both kinds of objects for the imperial collections. Moreover, his paintings not only lie on the borderline of art and science but, like the Kunst- und Wunderkammer, combine elements of both. As has been observed, “while they may be extreme examples of the genre, Arcimboldo’s works can also be considered characteristic hybrids of art and nature.”28 Other hybrids, such as Anton Schweinberger and Nikolaus Pfaff’s carved rhinoceros horns or Seychelles nuts mounted in elaborate gold fittings (Figure 8.2), also set natural items in fantastic mounts, so that the two are conjoined inseparably in one object.29 Arcimboldo’s composite heads serve as tropes for the collection and its contents in several more ways. Picking up on a passage in Plato’s Laws, Comanini argues that imitation is a kind of game or joke (gioco) that brings pleasure. As he says, “whoever imitates, does he not make a joke of sorts?”30 Arcimboldo’s “fantastic visions of 196

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figure 8.2 N. Pfaff and A. Schweinberger(?), carved rhinoceros horn, 1611. Kunsthistorisches Museum, Vienna. Photo © KHM-Vienna. figure 8.3 Giuseppe Arcimboldo, albino crow, 1574. Österreichische Nationalbibliothek, Vienna.

nature and art” are therefore comparable to the lusus naturae or joke of nature, the extraordinary objects which, as the product of nature’s freakishness, provided stock for many a contemporaneous collection.31 These were the rare beasts, dwarfs, freaks, and monsters to which Arcimboldo’s paintings have sometimes been compared, and which seem to have had a particularly conspicuous place in the imperial collections. The 1607–11 inventory of the Prague Kunstkammer lists, for example, such things as pigeons and pheasants with two heads, a quail with three claws, snakes with branches growing out of their tails, and so forth.32 As is discussed in chapter 6, some creatures of this sort were depicted by Arcimboldo in his drawings, and others are seen in the Vienna compendium which contains some of his nature studies (like that of an albino crow, Figure 8.3). In fact it is likely that this volume, enclosed in a binding characteristic of Rudolf’s books, was also located in the imperial Kunstkammer if not in the ruler’s personal library. In the Kunstkammer it would have served as a complement to the naturalia and freaks of nature found elsewhere in the imperial collections. The extraordinary items in the Kunstkammer also included flowers, stones, and shells that seemed to contain forms or shapes of other objects. These could be compared to Arcimboldo’s pictures in which he formed composites out of distinct parts of nature—a shark becoming a mouth in Water, for example, so that within the composite head, individual fish can be discerned. Another sort of invented image is reproduced in a woodcut attributed to Hans Meyer labeled Inventio Arcimboldi, after which several other paintings and prints were copied or imitated: this is a landscape in which a face could also be read.33 Although it has been said that, when carefully considered, Arcimboldo’s landscape faces are objets projétés into the world rather than objets trouvés in it34—meaning forms projected onto the world rather than found in it—they nevertheless can also be compared to a specific type of object avidly collected in the Kunstkammer: the so-called Arcimboldesque. Arcimboldesques were compositions made of various stones or shells arranged to resemble Arcimboldo’s composite heads. One contemporary illustration labels them monstruous physiognomies—just the words that could be applied to Arcimboldo’s own paintings. The use of the term monster here for this sort of composition indicates again that this kind of image can be thought of as a natural caprice.35 Paula Findlen has pointed out that there existed a penchant for Arcimboldesque objects in sixteenth- and sevententh-century collections. In addition to Arcimboldo’s own paintings, or painted copies after them, Arcimboldesque objects were to be found in many a Kunstkammer or Kunstschrank all over Europe. Findlen adds that “not surprisingly many of the museums that contained lusus naturae often displayed arcimboldesques, reworking all of the constituent elements of the collection into these figurines.” Particularly popular were figurines of men made of shells. These are depicted in earlier books, and several still survive today (examples are in the Ambrosiana, Milan, and in the Walters Art Museum, Baltimore). Findlen has said that the “use of lusus naturae, as shells certainly were, to create a lusus scientiae, that was an image of the ultimate lusus, man, set in motion a chain of operations that playfully inverted (or even subverted) nature’s ability to mimic and ultimately transform 198

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herself.”36 Thus taken as monstrous caprices of art Arcimboldo’s paintings also could be compared to the lusus naturae, the joke of nature. Ultimately they may be said to epitomize the lusus or caprice of nature. Arcimboldesque images also approximate the grotesque because they combine disparate elements to create a monstrous appearance. The grotesque in art is thus pertinent to the discussion of caprices of nature, and the artificial grotesque can be compared directly to the natural caprice: both conjoin objects that are not normally conjoined. Furthermore, the grotesque and the natural historical were closely connected in Arcimboldo’s own thinking. This is seen in his drawings of sericulture, which work like books on natural history that elaborate the uses of animals and insects. Arcimboldo, however, planned to have his designs of the silk-making process set in the interstices of a grotesque framework.37 Findlen has remarked that Renaissance virtuosi incorporated both components of playfulness—aesthetic and scientific—into a larger philosophical framework, but she leaves the discussion of lusus naturae largely with the joking side of the concept of serio-ludere, playful or joking seriousness. Yet the serious is inextricable from the playful in Arcimboldo. Even if his paintings are understood as caprices of art, they can also be taken seriously in that regard. They work much like fantastic dream images or hieroglyphs: they can contain a hidden meaning. This meaning, for instance in the case of the Seasons and Elements, involves their import as imperial allegories.38 Arcimboldo’s pictures conceived as monsters or caprices of nature work similarly, and a comparable line of thinking was applied to them in this very setting. Comanini specifically equates the two sides of Arcimboldo’s caprices, namely the artificial and the natural, in his poem on the artist’s picture of Rudolf II in the guise of Vertumnus: he says first that the painting of Vertumnus is like a Silenus, and then that it is like a monster, hiding a regal image within.39 This treatment of the monstrous as revelatory is consistent with discussion of the topic in early modern literature, as is recounted most thoroughly by Katherine Park and Loraine Daston. Monsters could be regarded as natural wonders because they evoked wonder. They could also be regarded as sports or jokes of nature because they evoked delight. Comanini specifically supposed the viewer would have both these reactions to Arcimboldo’s new monster, Vertumnus. But monsters could also be portents of major events. They could foretell what was to come.40 Part of what makes Arcimboldo’s Vertumnus a serious joke is that while it is fanciful or fantastic, it also conveys a serious message. On the one hand this message is related to the fact that as a serious joke, the picture can be regarded as a caprice of art. But it can also be read as more than that. Arcimboldo’s images may work as serious jokes of nature as well. The paintings of seasons and elements, and most notably the image of Rudolf II as Vertumnus, may thus also be regarded as monstrous portents. They are prodigies that foretell the beneficent reign of the Habsburgs. And as has been noted, the painting of Rudolf II’s image as Vertumnus foretells the Golden Age that comes with his reign.41 Hence Arcimboldo’s paintings can also be regarded as artistic monsters. As such, they may be interpreted as were natural monsters. Long considered caprices of art, A r c i m b o l d o ’ s P a r a d o x i c a l P a i n t i n g s a n d t h e O r i g i n s o f S t i l l Li f e

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Arcimboldo’s composite heads may also meaningfully be viewed as caprices of nature. This understanding of Arcimboldo’s pictures helps us to understand how his composite heads may work as invertible images. Like the Kunstkammer, his composite heads which represent the elements and seasons, or his heads of Vertumnus and Flora, they bring together features of nature and of art. They may be related to natural history, and thus to the world of nature. But they also are independent easel paintings, which were hung in private chambers or in collections, and as such they are works of art. Hence they anticipate the development of animal painting and still life as depicting subjects worthy of independent representation. A decisive step toward this type of painting, which ultimately came to be regarded as the independent category of still life, is taken when some of Arcimboldo’s composite heads are inverted. Then the caprice of nature, which at the same time may be seen as a caprice of art, becomes an image of nature which can be regarded not as a fantastic image but as a representation of a bit of nature seen at rest: still life, natura morta. T h e C o n t e s t o f A r t a n d Na t u r e i n A r c i m b o l d o ’ s I n ve r t i b le I m a g e s

There is still more to be said about Arcimboldo’s invertible heads in relation to the origins of independent still-life painting. Let us turn again to his involvement with humanists and poets, and attend in particular to some more poems on his paintings. Some of these poems appear in the booklet compiled by Giovanni Filippo Gherardini, Arcimboldo’s long-time friend, beneficiary, and housemate, which was meant to accompany his Flora and Vertumnus when they were sent to the imperial court. One is a madrigal praising Arcimboldo’s painting of Vertumnus;42 the other a sonnet praising his paintings in general.43 Both poems are signed with the monogram “G.A. da Milano,” who may be identified with Arcimboldo himself. Like the poems written by Arcimboldo’s Milanese contemporary Figino in praise of Figino’s own paintings, Arcimboldo’s poems also praise his own paintings. They may be regarded as another display of clever wit. But Arcimboldo’s wit also again has a point. The first of these poems has already been discussed in chapter 4, but here it can be explicated further. As noted, it supports the idea that Arcimboldo was thinking of Propertius when he painted his picture of Vertumnus, and that the picture was a serious joke. Arcimboldo indicates that while the image of Vertumnus might cause reactions of stupor and laughter, and merely be a bunch of fruits and vegetables (un mucchio di frutti e di verdura), there is actually more to it. Arcimboldo is thus implying that his picture is more than just a joke: it is the product of Arcimboldo’s ingegno, which jousts on equal terms with nature. The poem then alludes to the divine theft of the great son of Japeth, who is better known as Prometheus, the titan who stole fire and also created man.44 Arcimboldo, the creator of works like Vertumnus, a man made out of bits of the natural world, is thus compared both to nature itself as a creator and to Prometheus as the creator of man who competed with nature and the gods. Hence the artist’s creation of a form of man made out of natural elements in art 200

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competes with the creation of man by nature itself. Arcimboldo’s second poem applauds his powers of mimesis. It says that painters are praised for representing just one object, but Arcimboldo does more since he succeeds in representing many forms, composing them out of parts. Hence he accomplishes more even than did Apelles, the famed ancient painter. The viewer of his work stands astonished, not knowing whether the creation is the work of art or of nature. Arcimboldo thus surpasses even the greatest ancient artist in his ability to replicate what is seen in nature. Among other issues, these poems introduce a theme that was broadly current in Arcimboldo’s circles in Milan, as elsewhere in the Renaissance. This was the competition between art and nature, which was echoed in other poems on the artist. A poem by Bernardino Baldini, “On the Painter Giuseppe Arcimboldo,” is especially suggestive and explicit in this regard. It reads (in translation):45 The Divine goddess is able to form men from human members, and she clothes fields with leaves and flowers; but she has not learned how to weave human limbs with fronds and verdant leaves; in this the unique ability of Arcimboldo has been able to succeed, in which he has surpassed the work of nature.

This response to Arcimboldo inserts the artist into a debate over another conception of artistic imitation, in addition to that over fantastic versus icastic imitation. In antiquity Aristotle, Cicero, and Seneca, among others, had already established the terms of the debate. As stated in Aristotle’s Physics and elsewhere, art does not only imitate what nature (physis) has produced, in a process that may be defined as mimesis; it is like nature in that its process of creation is comparable to that of nature.46 Arcimboldo’s notion of the imagination may accordingly be regarded not merely as creating that which might be found in nature, through his fantasy, or that which is not found in nature, in the form of his art. The artist’s paintings might be considered to be the products of artifice, but Arcimboldo’s art does something more, because it employs a power which resembles that possessed by nature itself: it brings new, natural creations into being. Arcimboldo’s paintings thus present visual arguments that contradict other views about imitation. These views had been repeated frequently since antiquity, when they had been advanced by such authors as Cicero (De Natura Deorum 1:92; 2:35; 2:57–58; 2:82ff) and Seneca (Epistulae Morales 90). Cicero argued, among other things, that “no art can imitate the cunning of nature’s handiwork,” that nature is superior to all forms of art or artifice, and that nature does things with far more skill than does human craftsmanship. Seneca argued that the Golden Age occurred when man followed nature, and said that contemporary artifice was unnecessarily degenerate. However, the discussion of Arcimboldo runs against the current of these arguments, since Arcimboldo is said to demonstrate the capacity of art to equal and even surpass the power of nature. The visual response to Seneca may seem even sharper and more direct when one recalls that the painting of Vertumnus, the subject of many of the poems on Arcimboldo, betokens the Golden Age.47 A r c i m b o l d o ’ s P a r a d o x i c a l P a i n t i n g s a n d t h e O r i g i n s o f S t i l l Li f e

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The poems written on Arcimboldo further elaborate the topos that art is a form of emulative competition. This is suggested by a phrase in a poem by Baldini on Figino and Arcimboldo that is found in the British Library compendium of poems which are largely on Figino, including the one written by Figino himself. In his poem Baldini refers specifically to Arcimboldo’s paintings Flora and Vertumnus, and describes the painter as sparkling even more Parrhasiusly among artists (Talis parrasior micat Arcimboldius inter Artifices).48 This turn of phrase alludes to the well-known story told by Pliny (Natural History 35:65–6) of how the ancient painters Parrhasius and Zeuxis entered into a competition. Zeuxis produced a picture of grapes which was so successful that birds flew up to it, but Parrhasius produced such a realistic picture of a curtain that Zeuxis, although proud of the verdict of the birds, then requested

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figure 8.4 Hans von Aachen, Boy with Grapes, c. 1605–7. Kunsthistorisches Museum, Vienna.

that the curtain covering Parrhasius’s painting should be drawn—only to learn that the curtain was itself a painting. Zeuxis then yielded the prize because while he had deceived birds, Parrhasius had deceived him, an artist (artificem). Baldini’s reference to Parrhasius treats Arcimboldo’s work as one of artifice, and the poem calls him an artificer, also evoking Pliny’s language. Along with the power of one artist to deceive another, however, the reference also invokes the power of art to deceive nature itself. Thus it invokes not only the idea of competition of one artist against another, but also the competition of art against nature. These topoi were certainly known in the circles around Arcimboldo: Comanini also compares Arcimboldo favorably to both Zeuxis and Parrhasius with reference to the ancient story.49 The poems by Baldini and Arcimboldo both refer specifically to the latter’s paintings of heads composed of parts taken from nature; they also help us to see Arcimboldo’s approach to the painting of nature as leading to the invention of still life. First, Figino is a painter of still life, and Baldini praises him for his mimetic abilities. Other poems on Figino also single out his still-life paintings and portraits. Hence, when Baldini links Figino with Arcimboldo, it is most likely the painting of nature, still life, that sparks his praise. Second, the story of the contest between Parrhasius and Zeuxis was frequently used during the early modern era (fifteenth to eighteenth century) to allude to the painting of still life. This topos, and a related story told by Pliny (Natural History 35:67) about a deceptive image made by Zeuxis of a child carrying grapes, were known by the imperial court painters, as by many other sixteenth-century artists who alluded to them in their own drawings and paintings. Artists, including those in imperial service such as Hans von Aachen (Figure 8.4), seem to be playing with these themes when they paint children holding clusters of grapes.50 The most famous of these is of course Caravaggio, whose picture of a youth holding a basket of grapes has been related to this tale.51 Third, groups of grapes are also prominent in Arcimboldo’s painting of Vertumnus, conspicuously displayed in his hair and cascading over the sides of his face. This detail is obviously significant, because Vertumnus is the subject of the poems. Fourth, the Vertumnus painting must have been closely associated in Arcimboldo’s mind with what we would call his painting of a fruit still life in which grapes are also prominent. This is a recently discovered invertible head which, when inverted, becomes such a still life. It possesses features very similar to those of Vertumnus (pear for a nose, apple and peach for cheeks, and so forth), and grapes in its hair. It must have been painted close in date to the picture of Vertumnus.52 When we reflect upon these ideas, another reason comes to mind why Arcimboldo may have painted what can be seen as still lifes in the form of invertible heads. Because of the probable proximity in time of the two paintings’execution, it seems likely that Arcimboldo’s ideas about Vertumnus were connected in his mind with his picture of a composite head that when inverted becomes a basket of fruit (see Figure 7.5). Seen one way, the head made of fruit that resembles Vertumnus rivals nature, as does Vertumnus himself, in creating a new form of creature which nature has not A r c i m b o l d o ’ s P a r a d o x i c a l P a i n t i n g s a n d t h e O r i g i n s o f S t i l l Li f e

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itself created. Inverted, this picture rivals nature in replicating natural forms. One image thus sets both forms of imitation and competitive emulation into play. Viewed one way, Arcimboldo’s art involves a naturalistic approach to the creation of a fantastic artificial head. Viewed another way, the process is simply inverted. In carefully representing nature in the form of fruit, Arcimboldo is also supremely artful, as the comparison with Parrhasius suggests. In this way his pictures can also be seen to work as both caprices of art and caprices of nature—that is, as natural caprices and capricious naturalia. S o m e Cla s s i c al S o u r c e s f o r A r c i m b o l d o ’ s I n ve r t i b le Pai n t i n g s

An important locus classicus further illuminates Arcimboldo’s invention of invertible paintings that contain naturalistic elements. Several ancient Greek writers describe a invertible painting which was the work of an artist named Pauson. Pauson had received a commission to paint a horse rolling on the ground. Instead, he presented a picture that seemed to represent the horse galloping. In Plutarch’s version of the story (Moralia, 396 E–F), when the indignant patron charged Pauson with breach of contract, the painter laughed and turned the canvas upside down. The horse now appeared to be not galloping but rolling on the ground. The same story appears in Claudius Aelian’s Historical Miscellany (known in Latin as Varia Historia 14:15), and in Lucian’s praise of Demosthenes (now believed to be Pseudo-Lucian: 24). Pauson’s laughter in the story is in keeping with what else is known about him in ancient Greek literature. In a famous passage in the Poetics (1448a) Aristotle says that Polygnotos depicts men better than they are, Pauson depicts them worse, and Dionysios depicts them as they are. In his Politics (VIII, 1340a: 33–60) Aristotle advises against letting young people look at the works of Pauson, while also suggesting that they may look at Polygnotos. Since Aristotle believes that comedy is a representation of inferior people and that the laughable is a species of the base or ugly (Poetics 1449a), it is likely that Pauson was a comic artist. Aristophanes seems to indicate as much, since in several passages he seems to suggest that Pauson was a caricaturist. The tale of Pauson told by Plutarch, Aelian, and (Pseudo-)Lucian is not to be read simply as a joke, however, because in each case it is deployed in a significant context. In Plutarch’s dialogue concerning the oracles at Delphi an interlocutor quotes Bion saying that what happened to the painting of the horses “happens to some arguments when they are inverted,” and then compares this to the sayings of the oracles, which seem carelessly wrought but are the god’s. Aelian begins his version saying, “A tradition was current according to which Socrates’s statements were like Pauson’s paintings.” He explains the point of the story thus: “Similarly Socrates was not clear in his conversations, but if one turned them on their head they would be perfect.” In the text attributed to Lucian, Pauson is brought into a conversation in which the issue has been raised of how one can “turn aside from the beaten tracks and make new paths.” This way of turning things around is compared to Proteus, who “exhausted every shape of beast, plant and element.” 204

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These comparisons also pertain to Arcimboldo, who also painted jokes that had a meaning, who might well be compared to Pauson as an innovative painter who “turned aside from the beaten tracks and made new paths,” and who in his pictures might be said to have “exhausted every shape of beast, plant, and element,” as in his varieties of naturalistic imagery. The idea that Pauson was a caricaturist may also have had an appeal to Comanini and Lomazzo, since they suggest that some of Arcimboldo’s heads are also caricatures—of Zasius, for instance.53 Significantly, the three comparisons—to oracles, to Socrates, and to Proteus—are all made by Comanini directly in reference to Arcimboldo’s work. Comanini alludes to the oracular nature of the artist;54 he says that Arcimboldo’s painting of Vertumnus is like Socrates.55 He also likens him to Proteus as a good painter. These comparisons may have had Pauson in mind; Comanini certainly knew about Pauson, since he cites Aristotle’s remarks from the Poetics.56 By the mid-sixteenth century all the ancient texts that told the story of Pauson and his invertible picture of a horse were readily available in Latin editions and had also been translated into Italian. Italian translations of Plutarch’s Moralia were published in 1543, 1559, 1560, and 1567. Aelian’s Varia Historia was available in Latin translations of 1545, 1548, and 1550, and in an Italian translation published in Venice in 1550.57 Lucian’s dialogues had been translated into Latin numerous times by, among others, Erasmus (in a publication of 1516), and they were available in several Italian translations of 1527, 1535–36, 1541, 1543, and 1551). By the mid-sixteenth century the ancient story of the invertible painting could therefore have been known not just to humanists who were capable of reading Latin, but even to artists and others whose literacy might have been limited to Italian. In any case, the story of Pauson’s painting was cited in writings on the arts in Italy in the second half of the sixteenth century. Michele Mercati alludes to the story in Metallotheca, an account of the papal collection of minerals which is also important for the insights it allows into collecting practices in general.58 Although Mercati’s text was not published until the eighteenth century (and in the printed book the artist is called Passon), the author had probably begun writing it in the 1570s. Mercati’s book is also relevant to our concerns not only because it is a history of a collection and an account of its contents, or because it relates to the history of the papal collections and of the pope, or because it is comparable to Aldrovandi, who we now know associated with Arcimboldo, but also because it was illustrated by the German artist Anton Eisenhoit, who produced objects that ended up in various Kunstkammers, among them that of the Habsburg emperor.59 Still more pertinent is that texts containing the story of Pauson were circulating directly in Arcimboldo’s milieu. They were known by his close collaborator Fonteo during the same period in which Arcimboldo was conceiving of his first invertible heads. Fonteo’s dialogue De risu, dated 1570, refers to his peregrinations while in imperial service at a time during which he was collaborating closely with Arcimboldo.60 De risu is written in a dialogue form derived from such antique antecedents as Plutarch, Lucian, and Aelian. More important, it cites all three authors who tell the story of the painting of the horse, even if it does not tell the story itself. Plutarch is A r c i m b o l d o ’ s P a r a d o x i c a l P a i n t i n g s a n d t h e O r i g i n s o f S t i l l Li f e

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of course the source for many stories about ancient characters, including a tale of Alexander that Fonteo recounts. Fonteo (De risu fol.31v) also quotes Lucian on the virtue of laughter. The Lucianic reference to Pauson as a kind of Proteus may also have been significant in regard to Arcimboldo. In his well-known mythographic handbook Natale Conti attributed a variety of meanings to Proteus, which were in fact shared by other commentators. Proteus was celebrated as a scholar, as an authority in natural science, and as a writer of many treatises on plants, the nature of beasts, and the mutation of the elements. All are pertinent for Arcimboldo: we have seen that he consorted with scholars and had a good deal of learning. He was treated as an expert in natural science, he depicted plants and animals, and he painted pictorial metamorphoses.61 Most tellingly, Fonteo cites Aelian in a context which suggests that he was also aware of the tale of Pauson. He says that Aelian wrote that Anaxagoras of Clazomenae never laughed in his life (Scribit Aelianus Anaxagoram Clazomenum nunquam in vita risisse [De risu fol. 33r]). This anecdote is found in Aelian’s Historical Miscellany (8:13). Since this text complements Aelian’s story of Pauson, and Aelian treats laughter positively while Anaxagoras treats it negatively, it is likely that Fonteo may have had Pauson in mind when he was speaking of Anaxagoras. Aelian, although he is now relatively unfamiliar in comparison with Plutarch and Lucian, had been published and translated and was generally well known during the Renaissance. In any event, he was very familiar to Fonteo. As we recall, Fonteo was the nephew and student of Primo Conti (“nipote del nostro venerabile Primo Conti & suo alleuo fino da sua fanciulezza,” Morigia calls him).62 Morigia mentions Fonteo on the page immediately following the one on which he talks about other members of the Conti family: among them are Marco Antonio Maioragio, a major Milanese intellectual and another relation of Fonteo whose name was also originally Conti. Maioragio had also been a pupil of Primo Conti, as has already been discussed. The last title in the list of works Morigia cites as having been written or edited by Maioragio is “Aeliani de varia historia libri,” the historical miscellany containing the story of Pauson. Aelian therefore was of much interest to the circle and family of Conti, which included Fonteo. There are several more reasons why the story of Pauson and its source in Aelian might have been connected with nature painting and still life. First, the tale of Pauson’s painting is about the painting of a horse. Second, the name Pauson may have been conflated with that of another painter, Pausias, who according to Pliny (Natural History 21:4; 35:40, 125) made paintings of flowers, which would have made the connection with still life stronger. Pliny also says that Pausias was stimulated to do such paintings by the work of his lover Glycera, and in painting a picture like hers there resulted a contest of art and of nature (certamen artis ac naturae). Again this text resounds with what was said about Arcimboldo. The connection with nature painting also might readily have led to an interest in Aelian. In addition to his Historical Miscellany, Aelian wrote a treatise on the charac-

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teristics of animals, which is often known under its Latin title as De natura animalium. Aelian’s Historical Miscellany also contains a story about early painters of nature who were so inept that they had to label their pictures “this is an ox, this is a horse, this is a tree” (Varia historia X:10). Significantly, Aldrovandi, the natural historian, humanist, and patron of Arcimboldo, echoes this passage from Aelian when he argues for painting from life and not deviating from the model found in nature. He says that if one so deviates, one will be “like those crude painters of antiquity, so inept, who depicted animals in such an unrefined manner that it was necessary to write below the pictures: this is a donkey, this is an ox, this is a horse, and so forth.”63 Since, as we have seen, Aldrovandi’s discussion of painting from life, ad vivum, is closely related to Arcimboldo, whose drawings were in fact sent to Aldrovandi, it is not hard to trace a connection between Aelian and Arcimboldo in this way as well. In Arcimboldo’s time the story found in Aelian of ancient painters’ ineptitude in the depiction of animals may even have become a commonplace, another locus classicus. Cardinal Paleotti, the Bolognese prelate and contemporary of Aldrovandi and Arcimboldo, cites it in his important Discorso sopra gli imagini. Significantly, he does so in his chapter on ridiculous jokes, inserting the story just after a sentence discussing visual jokes, facetiae.64 This, too fits a consideration of Arcimboldo’s naturalistic images, which were also regarded as ridiculous, and for whom Paleotti’s texts are relevant; this again suggests the pertinence of Aelian to Arcimboldo. One more proverb about inverted images conjoins several of these sorts of readings: this is the notion of the inverted Silenus. This phrase appears, appropriately for Arcimboldo, in a book entitled Paradoxa, a well known work by the sixteenthcentury German Christian humanist Sebastian Franck. A telling comment by Franck has been regarded as epitomizing the message of his whole book.65 At the end of his ninety-first paradox, he discusses how appearance fights with truth: “For this reason appearance and truth are at odds, with the world retaining appearances while God has the truth. Therefore nothing in God’s sight can truly be as it appears to the eyes of the world. Rather, everything is the reverse and a reversed Silenus. More on this under ‘Inversus Silenus omnia.’”66 Franck had translated Erasmus’s Praise of Folly into German, and it has been noticed that this passage reflects directly upon the metaphor of the Silenus that Erasmus had forged into his famed adage of the Sileni of Alcibiades, which has been discussed as a key to the conception of Arcimboldo’s pictures as serious jokes. This image of the inverted Silenus recalls Plato’s language in the Symposium which in turn seems to provide the basis for Aelian’s interpretation of Pauson’s painting. To repeat—and one may again keep Arcimboldo’s invertible pictures in mind here—Alcibiades says in comparing Socrates to Sileni, “If you choose to listen to Socrates’s discourses you would feel them at first to be quite ridiculous . . . but when these are opened, and you obtain a fresh view of them by getting inside, first of all you will discover that they are the only speeches which have any sense in them and secondly, that none are so divine, so rich in images of virtue, so large—nay so completely —intent on all things proper for the study of such as would attain both grace and worth.” (Symposium 221

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E) This thought is encapsulated in the pregnant image of the inverted Silenus, which suggests an inverted image. Indeed, painting or other real images may well have been at least somewhere in Franck’s mind, because Franck was the brother-in-law of the renowned German artists Hans and Sebald Beham. In any event, Arcimboldo painted his first invertible heads most likely during the years in which Fonteo was closely collaborating with him, when the two would have been discussing various matters. Coming from an Erasmian milieu in Milan—where it is even possible that Franck’s text was known, and where it is even possible that Franck may have met Arcimboldo or that Arcimboldo heard about him when the painter visited his birthplace and stayed there for a while from 1566—Fonteo had arrived in Central Europe, where he is evinced from at least 1568 until 1571 or 1572. Arcimboldo must have invented his invertible images relatively soon after first conceiving of making pictures of composite heads—the earliest of which, the first series of Seasons, is dated 1563 while the initial series of Elements is dated 1566. Arcimboldo’s invertible head of nuts and vegetables has been dated circa 1566. Even if the dating of this particular image is not exact—and it may have been done somewhat later, after he had definitely returned to Vienna in 1568—the extra sophistication involved in applying a greater paradox in inverting paintings suggests that some time may have been needed to gestate this new pictorial conceit. The first invertible heads may therefore have originated in the late 1560s.67 The earliest documented reference for an invertible head establishes the year 1573 as the terminus ante quem for the invention of the type. It describes a painting shown on the occasion of a visit in that year by Elector August of Saxony to Emperor Maximilian II in Vienna.68 As previously discussed, this was a picture of the face of Doctor Zasius formed out of documents, and also of flowers, some dried. According to the description, it seemed to be a vase of flowers when seen upright, but a ridiculous face when seen inverted.69 Most likely this picture was by Arcimboldo. Arcimboldo was court artist to the emperor; his paintings, as we know from Fonteo’s account, were hung in the emperor’s private chambers;70 the type of composite picture described in the reference is known as his; and other circumstantial evidence also speaks strongly for the connection. Quite soon after the visit, Arcimboldo provided paintings—ultimately as many as ten—to the Saxon court, and his nature studies also found their way to the Saxon Kunstkammer.71 All of this points to Arcimboldo’s conception of invertible heads at a time and place where many of the ideas here discussed were certainly known to his associates, and may well have been known to him as well. S o m e Mea n i n g s o f A r c i m b o l d o ’ s Se r i o u s J o ke s a s I n ve r t i b le S t ill L i f e s

But if Arcimboldo’s invertible paintings are not simply ridiculous faces, may they have a further meaning, as do many of his other composite heads? Another contemporaneous text by Comanini gives license to think so. In a commentary on the Song

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of Solomon, Comanini calls Solomon the most high “icastic poet” (altimissimo Poeta Icastico), who works like those who under metaphors and marvelous hyperboles have hidden profound secrets and sung of not fables but truths.72 Comanini explicitly says that in his commentary he is following the way of working exemplified by Arcimboldo.73 What then might Arcimboldo’s images mean in their inverted, icastic form? What might be the serious side of their existence as serious jokes? In the light of arguments advanced here, credence can be given to an insight of Giacomo Berra, who noticed that the idea of representing the season of autumn with a basket of fruit had already been diffused by a series of images in which three of the seasons were personified by fruits or flowers in containers. Thus they are seen in a 1567 Basel edition of Piero Valeriano’s popular book on symbols, aptly named Hieroglyphica and first published in Florence in 1556. This book was widely known at the time when Arcimboldo was conceiving his own images.74 Berra suggests that Arcimboldo’s painting of a fruit basket may have belonged to a series of four seasons. There is merit to this idea—that Arcimboldo’s paintings of invertible heads may denote the seasons—even though Berra does not elaborate the argument, overlooks an important point, and does not get one important detail correct. A large span of time intervenes between the probable dates of the invertible head as a vase of flowers, circa 1570, and the invertible head with fruits, circa 1590, so it is unclear whether Arcimboldo conceived of such paintings as constituting a series, or whether others that may have been painted have been lost or are not yet identified. Moreover, while in Valeriano’s text spring and summer are depicted as fruit or flowers in baskets, autumn is represented by grapes and apples in a cornucopia that seems to overflow with all kinds of fruits. None of these images, including that of autumn, is quite like the sort made by Arcimboldo, who, for instance, in the image that might be associated with autumn shows fruit in a basket, rather than in the cornucopia which in Valeriano’s book distinguishes the autumnal image from the other seasons.75 Nevertheless, if we make allowances and consider a cornucopia as a kind of basket, Berra’s description of the image might still fit. Furthermore, although Berra does not draw the comparison, with a bit of license (a vase replacing a basket) spring might even be seen as represented by flowers in a vase, known from the documented picture of an invertible head. The series might then be rounded out by the head with nuts and root vegetables that grow in wintertime, if license be given for the substitution of a basin for a basket, and for a description that is not in Valeriano. According to Valeriano’s suggested conception of the seasons, winter is signified by a table prepared next to a fire and is represented by a feast in the accompanying illustration.76 However, it is possible that this season is also signified by one of Arcimboldo’s invertible pictures: his composite head made of meat that seems to wear a metal helmet but when turned upside down becomes a platter of meat held by two hands.77 This image is suggestive of Valeriano’s description of the preparation of a table, and by the accompanying illustration that shows a person with his hands beside a plate of meat.

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Though not directly represented by him, there is a way in which the image of the cornucopia containing fruit is extremely apposite for Arcimboldo. The cornucopia is a symbol of nature’s abundance. Many of Arcimboldo’s pictures, which brim with flowers, plants, and animals, immediately offer us an image of the copiousness of nature. But the basin and basket containing fruits and vegetables seem overloaded, overflowing, unable to carry what is in them, when they are inverted and allowed to be discerned as such. Finally, the concept of abundance or copiousness again closely approximates the thinking of that writer who may have been the spiritus rector behind Arcimboldo’s inventions: Erasmus, author of the adage Sileni Alcibiades, which was applied to Arcimboldo and which provides a key to his idea of the serious joke. Erasmus was the guiding light for Primo Conti and his disciples Maioragio and Fonteo, who—espeically Fonteo—create a link from the humanist and related sources for invertible images to Arcimboldo. Erasmus was, moreover, an inspiration for Emperor Ferdinand I, Maximilian II’s father, who was the head of the imperial court when Arcimboldo made his first inventions. It was thus in a milieu permeated by Erasmianism that the composite invertible heads were made. And among the most important works of Erasmus was his De copia verborum, a text meant to help supply that variety and copiousness which was the goal not only of the humanistically inspired writer but also, it seems, of an artist like Arcimboldo.78 To judge from the application of terms derived from rhetoric in works such as Alberti’s De pictura, this writer’s ideal became an ideal for the painter as well. The ideas were certainly applied by artists at the imperial court.79 However, there may be something more to the ideal of copiousness when it is understood in a horizon informed by Erasmianism, as it was in Arcimboldo’s circles in Milan and at the imperial court. Copiousness may also reflect the plenitude of creation. Its freezing, as it were, in a still life is itself a paradox since it captures the eternity of creation in an image of transience. How, or whether, these last notions might apply to Arcimboldo may be speculative. Yet they coincide with what has been said about the genre of still life, a point to which we will presently return. One more comparison may also be brought into consideration. It has been said that the lack of coherence in the world after the Fall, Expulsion, and Babel may be mitigated by the meticulous collection and categorization of all phenomena in one place—in a collection like the Kunstkammer, or in a garden.80 Arcimboldo’s pictures, which are comparable to the Kunstkammer and to a garden, may strive to achieve the same effects, especially in his series of paintings of Seasons and Elements, or in his Vertumnus. We can conclude by reiterating what we have come to understand about how Arcimboldo’s seemingly fantastic paintings are intimately involved with the origins and development of the new genre of still-life painting, and in particular about why they take the peculiar form of invertible heads. Arcimboldo’s invertible images can be regarded as caprices of nature as much as caprices of art. They engage icastic and fantastic imitation simultaneously. They also evoke both mimetic and productive

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conceptions of imitation. They compound the paradoxical approach of serio-ludere, serious jokes, and they employ numerous seeming contradictions together in one image. Thus they turn seemingly fantastic composite heads, which might be regarded as the height of artifice, into compelling visions of nature’s copiousness. Seen as heads made of composites, they appear to represent living creatures. But viewed differently, they reveal containers full of dried and cut flowers (documented as fiori sechhi), dried nuts, root vegetables, plucked fruit, and cooked meat—all representative of what later came to be regarded as natura morta, still life.

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conclusion

Arcimboldo in the History of Art

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rcimboldo’s composites are singular images, but they do not stand isolated in the history of art. This book has recounted the artist’s biography in relation to the social, intellectual, and artistic contexts in which he worked. It has discussed the origins of his inventions, indicating where his paintings of composite heads were created and what their sources may have been in art, humanism, and science. A major question is how these pictures and their creator can be interpreted, how they may be related to general traditions of the history of art, and consequently what implications they may have for the interpretation of these traditions. The introduction to this book noted how Arcimboldo has long been treated as a jokester in paint, and how after a long period of neglect he was recuperated (in the twentieth century) for art history. Then and since, he has often been regarded as a forerunner of the surreal and the fantastic, which his composite heads are thought to have anticipated. His composite heads were introduced into art history scholarship as scurrilous images, and his paintings came to be seen as typical expressions of mannerism—another impression that has abided. One powerful interpretation of mannerism sees it as a stylish style appropriate to the sophisticated sixteenthcentury courts that fostered it,1 and Arcimboldo has been taken to be emblematic of the “Prague Mannerism” of the court of Rudolf II.2 Arcimboldo’s composite paintings have subsequently been revealed as rich distillates of a court milieu—that of Maximilian II and Rudolf II—into whose character they provide many insights.3 As remarked above, they have been connected with other aspects of court culture that are not only pastimes but also may contain political messages and have allegorical aspects. Arcimboldo made tournament designs and paintings that were imperial allegories, and his paintings were comparable to many 213

epistemic and symbolic aspects of the Kunstkammer. These areas of activity were not just pastimes; they could be full of political and other messages.4 Approaches taken by the most recent exhibition devoted to Arcimboldo indicate that these themes have become staples of interpretation of the man and his work.5 This book has also emphasized, however, that beyond its fantastic, political, or even allegorical features, much naturalistic content abides in Arcimboldo’s art. The concern with natural history and its expression in art were furthermore fostered at the imperial court as well as by private scholars. Arcimboldo executed numerous studies of plants, animals, and birds as well as probably fishes and other aquatic creatures. These could all be related to the study of natural history, and they served scholars as important as Ulisse Aldrovandi. Thus there is also a significant element of naturalism, as well as fantasy or humor, in Arcimboldo, and it is also integral to his composite heads. Naturalism has emerged as an aspect of Arcimboldo’s art in the recent monographic exhibition devoted to him,6 but its significance has not heretofore been elaborated sufficiently, nor have the consequences of recent discoveries been taken fully into account. Significantly, the naturalistic element in Arcimboldo presents an obvious problem to a view of his art that would treat it as “mannerist” or even as a form of virtuoso court entertainment. It can be demonstrated, however, that Arcimboldo’s images have important implications for the interpretation of painting “after nature” or “after life.” Arcimboldo can now be situated in a lasting pictorial tradition that is conceptually antithetical to fantastic art. He has previously been displayed in an exhibition presenting the tradition of “painters of reality” in Lombardy,7 but here the case is made further for his significance in the development of still life and animal painting not only in Italy but in central and northern Europe as well. Most important, these seemingly antithetical qualities of the fantastic and the realistic are combined in Arcimboldo’s art. His paintings link the artificial and the natural, the symbolic and the scientific, as they do the learned with the ludic. Hence they can be regarded not just as paradoxes in their natural artifice, or as examples of artificial naturalness, but as serious jokes. This book has sought to explain what the significance of these seemingly paradoxical combinations may be. The conjunctions found in Arcimboldo’s art, if not their exact forms, are not unique. Their complex character can be compared to other forms of artistic creation. Arcimboldo’s composites thus have ramifications for a reconsideration of the tradition of still life, and this goes beyond the artist’s connections with some of the genre’s earliest practitioners or the place of his paintings in its chronology. Further reconsideration of the role of paradox in his art, and its meaning for this tradition, suggests why this is so. The introduction to this book described how Arcimboldo’s composites embody the rabbit/duck paradox of the psychology of perception. The invertible heads compound the paradox because they present in one aspect a fantastic head, but in another a still life. The paradox becomes even more intense because Arcimboldo provides no clear indication of how the paintings are to be seen, nor do we know this with certainty. Early inventory references may suggest that they may have been hung as if 214

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they were pictures of vessels containing other objects—hence like paintings of still life—but it is not clear that they were were always presented in this way, nor that the references indeed refer to invertible paintings, nor even whether it was always understood that they were to be inverted. Some recent exhibitions of these pictures have responded to the problem by using mirrors to show both views simultaneously, or by employing a device that continuously rotated a painting.8 Moreover, while Arcimboldo’s invertible pictures may be apprehended as heads when seen upright, the groupings formed by some of them do not allow for a stable reading when they are turned upside down. As in all the artist’s composite images, the individual objects in these invertible pictures have been carefully depicted, modeled with graded tones so as to suggest they are palpable solids. They seem to possess weight of their own, just as do, for instance, the fruits in Summer. But when the pictures are inverted, the basins or baskets holding fruits or vegetables appear to be overloaded, with only a vague indication of the space or surface where the containers are located. The objects seem to lack gravity, to float in space.9 The visual elements in Arcimboldo’s paintings are thus quite complex, and these complexities may be related to several other issues of interpretation. Much as the paintings engage paradoxes of perception, so do they transgress the border between art and reality, art and nature. They also blur the boundaries between descriptive naturalism and symbolic representation. In these regards Arcimboldo deserves more attention, because the paradoxes in his paintings cast light on the interpretation of northern (and especially Dutch) still-life painting. More than four decades ago, Rosale Colie introduced Arcimboldo into a masterful treatment of the epidemic of paradox. Colie argued that paradox is the essence of still life. Even the term still life is oxymoronic—and is so in several languages. The artistic performance involves a coincidentia oppositorum, a harmony of opposites, in which the transient is captured and the momentary is memorialized. Life is celebrated in pictures that often express a message of the vanity of existence. Flowers, fruit, and plants perish, yet they remain for the ages in depictions on canvas or panel. At the same time, exquisite artistic technique is employed to suggest that which is most natural. The convincing depiction of nature, however, often calls attention to the very artifice of painting.10 The paradoxical nature of still life has resounded in more recent scholarly treatments of the subject, especially of its progenitors. Reindert Falkenburg has averred that still-life paintings by Pieter Aertsen and Joachim Beuckelaer present humble materials—meat, vegetables, fish—in compositions that take over the forms of earlier paintings of religious subjects. Falkenburg interprets this transformation as the pictorial equivalent of paradoxical literary encomia—the praise of a fly, the epic of frogs.11 Claudia Swan contends that Jacques de Gheyn oscillates between the naturalistic and the fantastic; in his depictions of still life and in other paintings he employs seemingly contradictory approaches that represent two antithetical aesthetic attitudes.12 In De Gheyn’s drawings, a witch may appear on the same page as a creature drawn from nature, suggesting that these tendencies cannot be disentangled from each other. A r c i m b o l d o i n t h e Hi s t o r y o f A r t

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Like Aertsen, Beuckelaer, DeGheyn, and other artists, Arcimboldo was one of the progenitors of still life. Significantly, the works of several of these painters can also be associated with the imperial court where Arcimboldo was active. The emperor owned paintings by Aertsen and Beuckelaer. De Gheyn and Joris (Georg) Hoefnagel also provided him with paintings.13 The seeming paradoxes found in their art can be related to those found in Arcimboldo. These tendencies are, however, even more inextricably interlinked in Arcimboldo’s composite heads, where they appear simultaneously within the same image. This conjunction of elements in Arcimboldo bears on some other debates concerning still life. One such debate has been about the genre’s sources and origins. According to one view, still-life painting arose from the internal development of several pictorial media. Hence its history can be traced to its origins in depictions of flowers and other naturalia in portraiture, miniatures, and illustrations in printed books.14 According to another interpretation, still life may be related to the study of nature and to scholarship in natural history, and book illustrations must accordingly be related to the publications of natural history. Hence still life is connected with horticulture and the pursuit of natural history as carried out in gardens and other sites such as the Kunstkammer.15 Consideration of Arcimboldo might support both arguments and reconcile them. Arcimboldo was familiar with floral depictions in other media, and his studies of flowers and other creatures certainly resemble those carried out by other artists, as seen in the books in Vienna, Dresden, or Bologna into which they were placed. These books themselves may have found their home in the Kunstkammer, however, and the studies have served the pursuit of natural history, as we have seen most clearly in Arcimboldo’s association with Aldrovandi. In fact, Arcimboldo’s studies served not only as designs for still life, but as illustrations in Aldrovandi’s publications. Arcimboldo’s images also shed light on another debate about the meaning and general character of still-life painting. According to one side of the argument, still life might be described as exemplifying an “art of describing.” It is concerned with the representation of nature, especially the careful replication of the surface of things, and this approach has even been seen as characteristically Dutch. According to the other point of view, the surface may hide depths beneath, as it were. Still life— like other apparently naturalistic forms of representation, including landscape—is accordingly claimed to present emblematic or symbolic meanings.16 Besides demonstrating that careful depiction after life is obviously not limited to any particular national tradition, Arcimboldo’s pictures suggest that these apparent polarities can be reconciled. Like some other works of his time and later, Arcimboldo’s paradoxical Sileni embrace two poles simultaneously. They are not only careful studies of nature based on studies made after life, but also may have symbolic or allegorical content, especially in those paintings by the artist that function as imperial allegories. This apparent conjunction of opposites leads to yet another large question that has been raised in discussions of Netherlandish painting. Traditionally painting, like poetry, might be said to serve the purposes of instruction and delight.17 Arcimboldo,

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Conclusion

a poet himself, would have been well aware of the Horatian dictum behind this principle. After all, Horace had provided one of the topoi for artistic hybrids of the sort found in his painting. Arcimboldo’s hybrid approach is one of content as well as form. While his composite heads employ wit in the way they operate, they also can present a serious message. As serious jokes, they harbor no contradiction between their use of paradox for entertainment and, as in an Erasmian function, for other purposes. Finally, this observation leads us back to a basic question of interpretation that has recently been raised. As discussed in the introduction to this book, a challenge has been presented to an earlier interpretation of Arcimboldo’s pictures as serious jokes.18 It is surely right to stress that their deployment of visual paradoxes is a display of virtuosity. The play of the mind that Arcimboldo’s paintings reveal is exceedingly complex and fascinating, and this fascination is part of their attraction. Nevertheless, the pictures possess naturalistic content as well as specific philosophical connections, and these would have been reinforced by the specific Milanese and Central European contexts in which they were made and first received. Poetic and rhetorical elements no doubt entered into the composition of Arcimboldo’s heads, but consideration of these elements leads farther than critics of the idea that they are serious jokes might have wished to take them.19 As the introduction to this book initially suggests, and as was reinforced by the milieu in which Arcimboldo worked, it is surely anachronistic to regard the paradoxes in Arcimboldo’s paintings as presenting an eternal recourse, a mise en abyme. To describe the way they work as logical, structural, or epistemic is inadequate because this description does not take into account the expression of ideas, content, and knowledge that is also evidently embodied or reflected in many of the paintings. Given what is now known about the importance of natural history to an understanding of Arcimboldo—as well as what has now been discovered about the importance of the Erasmian tradition, and patrons with Erasmian sympathies, for his work—it seems incorrect to argue that Arcimboldo’s composite paintings are Sophistic rather than Socratic paradoxes. As we have seen, they were certainly understood in the latter way, as Erasmus himself would have done, because they were embedded in an Erasmian context that also incorporated a view of nature and allegory pertinent to the nature studies used to compose them.20 Arcimboldo may rightly be regarded as a virtuoso entertainer and an artificer of fantasy, but he was surely also something more. He was a learned painter with literary aspirations who was also a scrupulous imitator of nature. He used his imagination to make intriguing images, some of which present political allegories. At the same time, his composite images often rely on studies of nature, and can thus claim a place in the development of the naturalistic genres of animal painting and still life. Arcimboldo’s composite paintings can be regarded as serious jokes, some of which have messages, but even this was only part of the reason whey they were done.21 Arcimboldo’s jokes are fascinating, virtuosic compositions that engage many concepts of art and nature. They offer insights into some key questions involving imitation,

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fantasy, art, and nature in relation to the origins of genres of painting. Part of their attraction is that they continue to provoke interpretations and evoke reactions. No doubt they will continue to do so in the future, when still more may be learned about this fascinating artist of the sixteenth century.

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Conclusion

appendix  1 Arcimboldo, the Facchini, and Popular Culture

In 1560 some prominent poets and artists in Milan founded the Accademia di Val di Blenio, named after a valley in upper Lombardy, now in Italian-speaking Switzerland. This academy, over which the painter-theorist-poet G.P. Lomazzo presided, espoused identification with porters called facchini who came to Milan from northern Lombardy. The academicians adopted a form of their dialect, which was used in some poems and other writings in a compilation by Lomazzo known as Rabisch.1 Through his association with the facchini, Arcimboldo has been linked with the “grotesque” and with the popular culture that inspired artists and poets of the Accademia di Val di Blenio. Arcimboldo is connected with the facchini before he left Milan, and is said to have associated with members of the academy later, upon his return to Italy. Because of the significance ascribed to this argument and the divergent interpretations presented in this book, it is worth examining the evidence in some detail. The Milanese facchini were organized into corporations, to which the porters of the northern district (rione) of Porta Ticiniese made an annual offering on the third of August to the Opera del Duomo which was called an “oblation” or sacrifice. These facchini have been singled out from other corporations because of their appearance at the Duomo on another festival day (Mosgett) on which they offered the Milanese populace a wooden horse stuffed with meats. This horse is thought to have resembled Arcimboldesque inventions, and is thus said to prove that popular sources inspired Arcimboldo’s composite heads.2 Arcimboldo’s supposed association with facchini has thence been used to support the contention that his art has sources in the carnivalesque and “grotesque,” supposedly also expressed by the Accademia di Val di Blenio. While the carnivalesque, the grotesque, and the Accademia di Val di Blenio and its members are all pertinent to considerations of Arcimboldo, this particular thesis 219

does not have much merit. The documents in question do not refer exclusively to facchini, nor are they the unique examples of their kind to be found in the archives of the fabbrica of the Duomo, the administrative organ concerned with the cathedral works. The first relevant document dated 31 October 1553 is for a payment to Arcimboldo for ten cartoons made pro oblationibus factis per fachinos brentatores mensuratores et zauatinos (for oblations made for the facchini, brentatores, and zavatini): it thus specifically mentions other groups along with the facchini.3 On 2 September 1555 Arcimboldo was paid for paintings of maiestatum, possibly representations (the plural of maiestas is used) of the maiestas, which are described as being pro oblatione brentatorum et zavatinorum (for the oblation of the brentatores and zavatini), thus again mentioning other groups.4 On 5 September 1556 he was paid for eight cartoons (cartonis) painted by him pro oblatione brentatorum et zavatinorum.5 Finally on 11 September 1557 he received remuneration for eight pictures of maiestatum—the number indicating multiple representations of a maiestas—said to have been made pro oblatione brentatorum et zavatinorum, as well as for painting and gilding 522(!) batons (pro pictura et adoratura bachetorum no. 522) and some paintings (signalum).6 The documents of the fabbrica consequently indicate that facchini constituted but one corporation among several who were involved in sustaining the ongoing projects of the works of the cathedral, and they are mentioned just once in connection with Arcimboldo. References to them and to other groups come under the rubric capitulum oblationum generalium—that is, payments connected with “general oblations.” The procedure of using various offerings including oblations for the fabbrica, the cathedral works, which had been made by groups organized into corporate bodies, seems to have been a widespread practice in Lombardy: it is found at the cathedral of Como, for instance.7 Significantly, other groups in addition to the facchini were active in Milan, and Arcimboldo was involved with them along with the facchini—indeed, with them as much or even more than with the facchini. Among the groups mentioned in the documents are brentatores or wine carriers, a distinctive occupation related to the facchini. The zavatini were shoemakers (the term comes from a word related to the Italian ciabatta, for shoe). The mensuratores were most likely estimators or assessors (their connection with the broleto, or municipal palace, in a document cited below suggests this). These groups’ offerings occurred on different days than did those of the facchini. While the document for 1556 refers in general to the month of August, the one for 1555 specifies that the oblations of the brentatores and zavatini were made on 15 and 16 August, and the one for 1557 says they were made on 8 August. Other previously published documents involving Arcimboldo which have not hitherto been considered by supporters of the thesis that he was connected with the facchini help further to clarify some details concerning oblations to the cathedral. On 3 October 1555, Arcimboldo was paid pro pictura majestatum pro oblatione mensuratorum (for the painting of maiestatum for the oblation of the mensuratores). The date of this payment suggests a time for the offering of the mensuratores close to that of the other groups. On the same day that Arcimboldo was paid for doing work for the brentatores and zavatini, 11 September 1557, he also was paid in a sepa220

App e n d i x O n e

rate document for the painting of cartoni mensuratorum broleti, which may also refer to the paintings of maiestatum for the municipal palace (broleto). The use of the word maiestates in the context of the cathedral may refer to representations of the maiestas domini, the depiction of Christ in majesty with the symbols of the evangelists,8 although Silvio Leydi interprets these paintings as being representations of the Virgin in Majesty.9 The frequent appearance of payments to tubicines and pifferi—horn blowers and pipers—on the same pages where payments to Arcimboldo are also cited gives the impression that the objects Arcimboldo designed were used in processions that also employed visual arts and music: all could have added to the splendor of the ceremony. It can be inferred that the objects made by Arcimboldo were banners and gilt and painted batons, as are stated in the sources and also imaginable in such events. It might also be noted that Arcimboldo was paid on 22 December 1552 for silvering the baton for the lamps of the high altar of the cathedral.10 One may also imagine that the paintings described were most likely painted standards or banners of the sort that might be used in processions: they may have resembled the sort of standard, or gonfalone, of Saint Ambrose that Arcimboldo designed with Jusepe Meda for the Commune of Milan, discussed in chapter 1. In short, Arcimboldo was probably employed by the fabbrica (not by the sodalities or corporations such as the facchini themselves) to prepare materials to be used in connection with ceremonies. As much, indeed more, justification exists for associating him with shoemakers or mensuratores as with facchini. The connection made with facchini misinterprets the meaning of the documents associating Arcimboldo with porters; his relationship with them was no more distinctive than with any of the other groups he served in the context of arranging what were basically fund-raising groups for Milan’s cathedral. Nor can it be said that the particular processions with which he was involved could have been compared to a carnival. It is more valid to stress Arcimboldo’s connection with formal ceremonies, which would indicate that he was already experienced in designing or collaborating in such events before he went to the imperial court to design tournaments and other pastimes. There is also no indication that Arcimboldo belonged to the academy of the Val di Blenio, whatever it may have promoted—and anyway it should be emphasized that the academy was not founded until shortly before he left Milan; and Lomazzo was not elected as its president until 1568.11 While Arcimboldo’s association with Lomazzo deserves more attention, more can and has been said about this (incomplete and faulty) interpretation of Lomazzo’s Rabisch, attitudes, and relation to Arcimboldo. In any case, the hypothesis that the associations with facchini and Bacchus expressed in the Rabisch are popular in inspiration seems to misread Lomazzo seriously.12 Referring to other sources, however, and eschewing humanist readings of Arcimboldo,13 Francesco Porzio has also emphasized other popular sources in Lombardy including the appearance of the wooden horse that disgorged various meats. Porzio relates this horse to prints by Ambrogio Brambilla, entitled Lent and Carnival, in which such meats are evident, and he compares these pictures to the work of Arcimboldo. He relates Arcimboldo’s creations accordingly to the carnivalesque, which he T h e F a c c h i n i a n d P o p u l a r C u lt u r e

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compares to Rabelaisian imagery, to the image of Aretino composed out of phalluses, and to the commedia dell’arte. While Porzio’s critique of the many disparate sources proposed for Arcimboldo is well taken,14his vein of interpretation is, like Berra’s readings, problematic. As mentioned in the excursus to chapter 1, there is no great visual similarity between constructions made of food, as they are reported to have been (as opposed to the many later ones inspired by Arcimboldo)—especially those contained entirely within objects, as seen at the Milanese festival—and Arcimboldo’s pictures. Moreover, Brambilla’s images postdate Arcimboldo’s and, given Arcimboldo’s reputation in Milan, most likely derived from them. In any case, there are no real grounds for assuming that they replicate the ideation of his images. Some aspects of popular culture may perhaps be related to Arcimboldo’s art.15 Nevertheless, their possible pertinence needs to be weighed against other factors such as learned discourse and court culture, all of which have been emphasized in this book. As chapters 2 and 4 have demonstrated, Arcimboldo was connected with some of the first propagators of the commedia dell’arte north of the Alps—but these actors appeared in a court, not popular, context. They did not represent some sort of carnivalesque inversion of the hierarchy. They were engaged in tournaments designed by Arcimboldo in which their antics as acrobats and actors helped to reinforce, not undermine, the foundations of the existing social and political hierarchy. Thus it might better be said that, as in other aspects of his hybrid forms of serious jokes, Arcimboldo mixed the high with the low.

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appendix  2 Arcimboldo and Meda at Monza

A series of tapestries depicting the life of John the Baptist now in the treasury of Monza Cathedral are mentioned first in a letter of 1569 by Carlo Borromeo, where it is noted that they had been lent by Monza to Milan on previous occasions.1 Older scholarship has raised the possibility that the tapestry depicting Saint John baptizing now assigned to Arcimboldo from this series was made on commission from Carlo Borromeo to replace one that had been borrowed and damaged in a fire.2 It is also possible that a document in the Monza archives dated 1566, mentioning a tapestry made in Milan, refers to the work now attributed to Arcimboldo. However, it has subsequently been argued that the date 1566 must refer to an earlier tapestry, and that the actual weaving was done between 1566 and 1581. In any case it is likely that the tapestry of the Baptist baptizing was designed in the later 1550s, and it has been dated circa 1560.3 Further attributions of tapestries in Monza to Arcimboldo do not seem warranted, however.4 This group of other attributions is much too diffuse to be by one hand, and the works are also too different in character from the Milan windows and Monza frescoes attributable to Arcimboldo. While the present author’s proposal has been accepted that the tapestry depicting Saint John baptizing, from the series Life of the Baptist, is a work by Arcimboldo, efforts to identify the specific hands of Jusepe Meda and Arcimboldo in other works in Monza have been rejected.5 Yet both the documentation and the visual evidence allow for more specific attributions. A reading of the gonfalone controversy in Milan reveals that Arcimboldo was responsible for the original inventions, and that at most Meda modified the designs at a moment that must have come late in the process of execution.6 The major role in the frescoes in the south transept of Monza cathedral, which were painted at an earlier date when Arcimboldo was a much more prestigious artist 223

than his younger colleague, also most likely did not fall to Meda. Meda’s style can, moreover, be definitely identified on the basis of documentary evidence that he was responsible for seven frescoes in the upper row of paintings on the wall of the north transept in Monza cathedral—the transept opposite that with the Tree of Jesse (see Figure 1.5).7 The still extant frescoes in the north transept establish a firm basis for the determination of Meda’s participation in the south transept, because the artist who painted them cannot be same as the person who invented (as perhaps distinct from executing, or actually applying paint to) many of the figures in the south transept. Nor, for that matter, can the invention of many of the figures in the tapestry of Saint John baptizing described above and ascribed to Arcimboldo be attributed to Meda. Beyond superficial similarities that exist between the faces in the south and north transepts, the physiognomies in Meda’s paintings are not as thickly fleshed, nor do they possess such pointed features, as do most in the Tree of Jesse or John the Baptist tapestries. It is thus reasonable to assume that if any similarities exist between Meda’s north transept fresco and Arcimboldo’s windows—another point of comparison that has been suggested—they result either from a general stylistic direction in Lombard painting, or even from the younger artist, Meda, having taken the lead from Arcimboldo. More significant, Meda’s figures as seen in the north transept in Monza have different proportions than the more robust types that predominate in the Tree of Jesse fresco in the south transept and in much of the tapestry of Saint John baptizing. They are also less correctly constructed anatomically, and more awkward: the tops of their bodies seem almost to be stuck on their bottoms, and their poses are also somewhat clumsy. Meda’s figures reveal a marked rigidity of form and a certain graceless articulation in comparison not only with Arcimboldo but also Bernardino Campi,8 and the same comparison of works attributable to Meda with certainty can also be made with Arcimboldo’s window designs. Furthermore, regardless of any questions of execution or condition, repeated visual examination reveals that two separate styles are clearly evident on the ceiling and wall of the south transept. The two sets of angels flanking John and Luke, and perhaps also the evangelists themselves, are not made according to the same designs as are the angels flanking the other evangelists. Some account must be given for these stylistic discrepancies. It seems reasonable to infer that Arcimboldo was largely responsible for the frescos in the south transept, but that where stylistic discrepancies exist, traces of two artists can be found, thus pointing to the presence of a second hand who is most likely Meda.9 Comparison of the physiognomic type of broad face with large eyes and blocky body splayed across the composition in Meda’s David Playing the Harp on an organ shutter in Milan cathedral10 with similar figures at the bottom of the fresco on the wall, such as Amon, thus seem to point to Meda rather than Arcimboldo.11 While the question of division of labor may seem moot in such a collaborative project, the issue has received lengthy reconsideration here because the attribution of hands in the Monza tapestry and fresco has consequences for the evaluation of

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other works that might be by Arcimboldo. In any instance, the fact that Arcimboldo is documented as having painted frescoes early in his career supports the attribution of a work in this medium in Milan’s Monastero Maggiore. The attribution of the tapestry in Monza can also be related to another commission Arcimboldo received at about the same time, to design a tapestry for the cathedral at Como.

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appendix  3 Concordance of Arcimboldo images from the Aldrovandi Letter, Bologna, Biblioteca Universitaria, Dresden Kupferstich-Kabinett CA 213, Vienna (cod. min. 42), and the “Museum” of Rudolf II (Österreichische Nationalbibliothek, cod. min. 129 and 130)

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Aldrovandi

Bologna

Dresden

Vienna

“Museum”

L’asino d’Africa

 orth African hartebeest, 27r N Tavole di Animali V, 20r top (Alcelaphus buselaphus)

24r, cod. min. 129

Tasso marino

Mountain coati, Tavole di Animali VI, 87r bottom (Nasuella olivacea)

70r

53r, cod. min. 129

Capriolo d’Africa

Male red-flanked duiker, Tavole di Animali VI, 87r top (Cephalopus rufilatus)

35r

19r bottom

25r, cod. min. 129 “cabrillas de Indias”

Mus indicus (ratto d’India, equel del Faraone)

Desert jerboa, Tavole di Animali V, 86r (Jaculus orientalis)

71r

18r bottom

63r, cod. min. 129

43r

21r top

21r, cod. min. 129

“La capra del Bezar” Blackbuck antelope, 20r bottom (Antilope cervicapra)

Oryx beisa or Oryx taurotragus, 26r Chamois (Rupicapra rupicapra), 29r

20r bottom, 22r top

Feral/wild goat (Capra aegagrus), 30r

Very similar to 20r bottom

Lioness (Panthera leo), 1r

23r, cod. min. 129 3r, cod. min. 129(?)

Female water buffalo, (Bubalus bubalis), 66r Lion (Panthera leo), 5r Puma (Puma concolor), 8r Lynx (Lynx pardinus), 19r Coatimundi / ringtailed coati (Nasua nasua), 69r

Similar to 13r, 3rd image

Similar to 6r, cod. min. 129 (Felis lynx) 55r, cod. min. 129 (lacks collar)

Antelope / female waterbuck (Kobus ellipsiprymnus), 38r Male water buffalo (Bubalus bubalis), 65r Reindeer (Rangifer tarandus), 39r

Similar to 20r, cod. min. 129

Aldrovandi

Bologna

Dresden

Vienna

Reindeer (Rangifer tarandus), 48r

19r, top

26r, cod. min. 129 (similar)

Argali or wild sheep (Ovis ammon), 10r

10r

29r, cod. min. 129

Angora cat (Felis catus or Felis silvestris), 82r Leopard (Panthera pardus), 12r

50r, cod. min. 129 13r, second image

Cheetah (Acinonyx jubatus), 13r, first image 11r

L’ alce

La tigre

“Museum”

5r bottom, cod. min. 129 5r top, cod. min. 129

Head of a boar (Sus scrofa), 6r bottom

32r, cod. min. 129

Dromedary camel, 7r, bottom (Camelus dromedaris)

15r, cod. min. 129

Asian elephant (Elephas maximus), 7r top

Similar to 8r, cod. min. 129

39r

Moose (Alces alces), 8r top

18r, cod. min. 129

42r

Moose (male of Alces alces, top), 9r Rabbit (Oryctolagus cuniculus), 16r bottom

57r top, cod. min. 129

Hare (Lepus capensis), 16r top

57r, bottom, cod. min. 129

Grey mongoose (Herpestes edwardsi), 128r upper right

64r, cod. min. 129

Tiger (Panthera tigris), 13r, 4th image, 12r and 19r 5th image 13r unidentifiable Leopard devouring prey (Panthera pardus), 13r last image Head of a stag (Cervida), 20r top Goat, 21r top; 22r bottom (Capra)

Aldrovandi

Bologna

Dresden

Vienna

“Museum”

Head of a fox (Vulpes vulpes) 14r, 1st image Dog (Canis lupus), probably Dalmatian, 14r, 2nd image Four images of monkeys, 14r Three rabbits (Oryctolagus cuniculus) 14r, 6th image Dog (Canis lupus), 14r, last image Bear (Ursus), 14r Camel (Camelus), 17r

Perhaps a copy of cod. min. 42, 7r bottom

Wild dog (Canis lupus), 18r Antler designs, 11r Colombo d’India

Blue-headed quail-dove cyanocephala (Starnoenas), 41r bottom

63r, cod. min. 130

La grue cerra o crestata

Black crested crane (Balearica pavonina), 36r top left

34r, cod. min. 130

Il falcon d’India

Aplomado falcon (Falco femoralis), 28r

10r, cod. min. 130

Gallo della Pietra (Gallina indica)

Helmed curassow, (Crax pauxi pauxi), 46r top

55r, cod. min. 130

Avis ex gruum genere

Black-crowned night heron 41r, cod. min. 130 (Nycticorax nycticorax), 36r top right Ringneck pheasant 46r, cod. min. 130 (Phasianus colchicus) 41r top Gerfalcon (Falco rusticolus) 27r top Bird of paradise (Paradisaea 27r, cod. min. 130 apoda), 27r bottom Kestrel (Falco tinnunculus) 29r top European kingfisher (Alcedo atthis), 29r bottom

80r top, cod. min. 130

Aldrovandi

Bologna

Dresden

Vienna

“Museum”

Shrike (Lanius cinereus), 30r bottom

54r bottom, cod. min. 130

Dead juvenile bee eater (Merops apiaster), 34r bottom

77r, cod. min. 130

Little bittern (Ixobrychus minutus), 37r top left

42r, cod. min. 130

Little owl (Athene noctua), 37r top right Great tit (Parus major), 37r second from top Albino crow (Corvus frugilegus), 37r bottom

75r bottom, cod. min. 130

Bittern (Botaurus lentinogus), 38r top Blue tit (Parus caeruleus), 38r bottom Purple-capped lory (Lorius domicellus), 30r top

22r, cod. min. 130

Male and female pheasants (genus Phaisanus), 40r top and middle Bee eater (Merops apiaster), 76r top, cod. min. 40r bottom 130 Ring necked-pheasant (Phasianus colchicus), 42r top

54r, cod. min. 130

Goose (Anser anser), 44r bottom

66r, cod. min. 130

Albino partridge (perdix), 36r bottom

75r top, cod. min. 130

Quail with three legs (Coturnix coturnix), 46r bottom

76r bottom, cod. min. 130

Red-footed falcon (Falco vespertinus), 49r top

11r, cod. min. 130

House sparrow (Passer domesticus), 49r bottom Kingfisher (Alcedo atthis), 51r middle

Aldrovandi

Bologna

Dresden

Vienna

Crossbilled finch (Loxia curvirostra), 51r bottom

“Museum”

80r bottom, cod. min. 130

Male rock ptarmigan (Lagopus mutus), 51r top Jay (Garrilus glandarius), 52r top

very similar to 79r, cod. min. 130 w/o flowers

L’Ardilla

Striped ground squirrel (Xerus erythropus), 54r, cod. min. 129

L’Hurone

Nilgiri marten (Martes gwatkinsi), 54r, cod. min. 129

Items on Aldrovandi List but not found elsewhere: Faggiano d’India macchiato di bianco Papagallo di Germania La Regina Il rinoceronte Ichneumon (vide abunde obser) Tauris unicornus. forsan rangifer Caesaris vel unicornis Plini

notes

introduction 1. It is also possible that they represent other sorts of caricatures described in older texts, or that the bookman is Wolfgang Lazius, for example. For Lazius, see chapter 3. 2. See for these pictures Giuseppe Arcimboldo 1526–1593, ed. Sylvia Ferino-Pagden, Paris, Vienna, Milan, of which pp. 144–46, cat. IV-15, is particularly the best source for the last described painting. 3. Raymond B. Waddington, Aretino’s Satyr. Sexuality, Satire, and Self-Projection in Sixteenth-Century Literature and Art, Toronto, Buffalo, London, 2004, p. 220 n. 5, says that these pictures, like a mosaic, are made up of “smaller component parts, which themselves present recognizable images, independent yet relevant to the larger one.” However, the definition of such pictures as composite portraits is not correct. Only a few of Arcimboldo’s composite heads—not the Seasons and Elements—may be regarded as portraits. 4. New York Times, 10 October 2007. The article by Michael Kimmelman beginning on the first page of the arts section mentions the crowds at the exhibition at the Palais Luxembourg, Paris. For this exhibition see the catalogue Giuseppe Arcimboldo 1526–1593. 5. The exhibition was widely reviewed in the French and Italian press and periodicals. For an exceedingly positive review in English see David Platzer, “Emperor of Fruit,” Apollo, February 2008, pp. 104–7, which refers to the show as a “triumphant exhibition.” 6. Recent exhibitions of his work have also inspired renewed attention by painters. See, e.g., n. 10 below. 7. My thanks to Joshua Weiner for pointing this out to me. 8. My thanks to Marilyn Lavin for showing me a medal of this company with an Arcimboldesque design. 9. Of course in Arcimboldo the image only remains “hidden” in one of its possible resolutions. For the impact of Arcimboldo on the twentieth century, see Effetto Arcimboldo: Trasformazioni del volto umano nel sedicesimo e nel ventesimo secolo, Milan, 1987, which also includes a useful compendium of texts by twentieth-century authors mentioning Arcimboldo. Arcimboldo is nevertheless still considered in relation to the tradition of the hidden image, as presented in an exhibition held at the Grand Palais, Paris, in 2009, Une image peut en cacher un autre. 10. Most of the criticism of the Effetto Arcimboldo exhibition attacked the connection with twentieth-century art. Most trenchant and far reaching is Charles Hope, “Sight Gags,” New York Re233

view of Books 34, no. 14, 24 September 1987, p. 44. Nevertheless, many contemporary artists draw upon Arcimboldo. For an example, see the exhibition of Czech artists assembled by Jaroslav Andl, Oˇcima Arcimboldovýma / Through the Eyes of Arcimboldo, Prague (ex. cat. Národní Galerie), 1997. This exhibition can be related to contemporaneous art historical interest because Arcimboldo was also presented in Prague at the important 1997 exhibition Rudolf II and Prague: The Court and the City, Prague, Milan, London, 1997. 11. The most recent of these exhibitions to include Arcimboldo with later art was Une image peut en cacher un autre, Paris, 2009. The major undertaking presenting Arcimboldo in this manner was Effetto Arcimboldo, shown at the Palazzo Grassi, Venice, in 1987, which enjoyed a huge response from visitors. 12. These are approximately the words in which Philip Fehl, for instance, described him to me in conversation in Rome in 1974. 13. The Kunsthistorisches Museum in Vienna, for instance, seems not to have displayed its four important paintings by Arcimboldo until circa 1930. See, for this point, André Pieyre de Mandiargues, Arcimboldo the Marvelous, New York, 1978, pp. 50–52. Even after the appearance of the first monograph on the artist, Benno Geiger, I dipinti ghiribizzosi di Giuseppe Arcimboldi. Florence, 1954, where it is illustrated in plate 27, Arcimboldo’s painting Earth, which came from the imperial collections, was sold by the Johanneum in Graz, reportedly to acquire funds to buy a painting by Paul Troger (hardly a rare master in Austria)! De Mandiargues also reports correctly that at the time of the writing of his book the artist’s series Four Seasons, acquired by the Louvre, was not hanging in that museum’s galleries. Since the 1980s it has, however, graced the Grande Galerie, where the paintings are hung opposite works by Pontormo and Bronzino—thus signaling their place in the history of mannerism. 14. Hope, “Sight Gags,” p. 44. 15. See the entries and catalogue text in Arcimboldo 1526–1593 for a view of the artist’s corpus. Because of this recent catalogue, the present book dispenses with a catalogue raisonnée. 16. See Silvio Leydi, “Giuseppe Arcimboldo in Milan: Documents and Hypotheses,” in Arcimboldo 1526–1593, pp. 37–38, for the newest information on Arcimboldo’s ancestry, and for the fact that he actually had to be raised to this status, since he did not in fact come from an old noble family as he had claimed. 17. Paolo Morigia [Morigi], Historia dell’antichità di Milano, Venice, 1592, p. 567: “Tutti quei disegni che si veggono in stampa di ramo, di queste inventione e bizzarie, tutte sono inventione di questo nostro Milanese . . . .” 18. G.P. Comanini, “Il Figino, overo del fine della pittura,” in Paola Barocchi, ed., Trattati d’arte del Cinquecento, Bari, 1962, vol. 3, p. 270. 19. Loc. cit. 20. Lomazzo, Scritti sulle arti, ed. cit., vol. 2, pp. 304–5. 21. See for example La natura morta al tempo di Caravaggio, Naples (ex. cat. Rome), 1995, p. 123, cat. no. 21, ill. 22. These images have been discussed ever since the publication of some of the first monographs on Arcimboldo, often with mistaken attributions to the artist himself. See, for example, Benno Geiger, Arcimboldo, 1954; Francine-Claire Legrand and Felix Sluys, Giuseppe Arcimboldo et les arcimboldesques, Aalter, 1955. 23. See especially Legrand and Sluys, ibid. The catalogue for the like-named exhibition, Effetto Arcimboldo (ex. cat. Milan, 1987), provides the most extensive evidence for the later impact of Arcimboldo. 24. S. J. Freedberg, Painting in Italy, 1500 to 1600, Harmondsworth, 1971, p. 410. 25. This summary repeats comments made in Thomas DaCosta Kaufmann, “Arcimboldo’s Imperial Allegories,” Zeitschrift für Kunstgeschichte 39, 1976, pp. 275–76, to which the reader is initially directed for further references. The texts quoted here will be discussed in subsequent chapters in the present book. 26. Platzer, “Emperor of Fruit,” p. 107. The title of the review also suggests some of this jocular reaction. 27. What has been said about anamorphoses also applies here to Arcimboldo: “the pleasure of finding a satisfactory form is often doubled by the discovery of meaning.” Michel Jeanneret, Perpetual Motion: Transforming Shapes in the Renaissance from da Vinci to Montaigne, trans. Nidra Poller, Baltimore and London, 2001, p. 258. 234

Notes to Pages 6–10

28. In this regard, the statement by Norbert Schneider, Still Life Painting in the Early Modern Period, trans. Hugh Beyer, Cologne, 2003, p. 131, that “the individual elements as such do not have any mimetic properties: they only receive them when they co-occur with others,” represents a fundamental misunderstanding. This is because, among other reasons, it does not take into account how the depiction of the individual components might also be related to the development of still-life painting. 29. For example, the author has had the experience of noting that some members of the audience at a lecture given in 2004 in Nijmegen could not apprehend that Arcimboldo had painted heads, rather than conglomerates of objects, until the heads were pointed out. Others, meanwhile, could make out the heads but did not realize that they were composed of discrete objects. 30. See the comments in Jeanneret, Perpetual Motion, p. 259. 31. This image seems to have been first identified and discussed by Joseph Jastrow, Fact and Fable in Psychology, Boston, 1900. Hope, “Sight Gags,” p. 44, first mentioned this as the essence of the visual paradox—a term he used—in Arcimboldo. Wittgenstein devoted a number of pages in his Philosophical Investigations to what he called this “picture-puzzle,” discussing it in relation to what he called the problem of perception involved in “seeing as.” See Ludwig Wittgenstein, Philosophical Investigations / Philosophische Untersuchungen, trans. G.E.M. Anscombe, Malden, MA, and Oxford, 2001, pp. 166–68. 32. Comparison of Arcimboldo’s paintings to anamorphoses was first made by Erwin Panofsky, “Galileo as a Critic of the Arts. Aesthetic Attitude and Scientific Thought,” Isis, 47, no. 1, pp. 6–8. Jeanneret, Perpetual Motion, pp. 258f, relates Arcimboldesque landscapes to anamorphoses. Jurgis Baltruˇsaitis, Anamorphoses; ou Thamaturgus Opticus, Paris, 1984, provides the most comprehensive treatment of the topic. Anamorphic paintings present an undecipherable image when looked at from straight ahead, but when seen from an angle—from a predetermined fixed point—they reveal an identifiable representation. They are demonstrated most familiarly by the depiction of a skull found in Hans Holbein the Younger’s The Ambassadors (London, National Gallery), which can only be seen properly when the viewer stands at an extremely oblique angle. Anamorphoses were also known in the past as “turning pictures” (see Allan Schickman, “‘Turning pictures’ in Shakespeare’s England,” Art Bulletin 59, no.1, 1977, pp. 67–70), and in this respect one may think of them as being further comparable to Arcimboldo’s invertible images. The paradox is perhaps even more acute in Arcimboldo because no single reading of the images is “correct,” and the viewer alternates between two ways of resolving the visual problem. In this regard Arcimboldo’s composite heads, especially the invertibles, are also comparable to another sort of painting as represented by a picture by Paulus Roy of the emperors Rudolf II, Maximilian II, and Ferdinand I, which was contemporaneous with Arcimboldo: the painting is done on a surface with vertical rather than horizontal grooves, and painted on both sides,so that from one side one sees Rudolf II, and from the other Maximilian II and Rudolf II. See Rudolfinská Praha/Rudolfine Prague 1576–1612. Pr°uvodce / A Guide, ed. Jaroslav Pánek, Prague, 2007, p. 106. Again, however, in Arcimboldo—and especially in his invertible pictures—resolution remains unstable. 33. Sybille Ebert Schifferer, “Trompe l’Oeil: the Underestimated Trick,” in eadem, ed., Deceptions and Illusions: Five Centuries of Trompe l’Oeil Painting, Washington, DC, 2002, p. 17. 34. See Ebert Schifferer, ibid.. 35. For a discussion of how all these forms call upon the observer, see Jeanneret, Perpetual Motion, pp. 257ff. For the various manifestations see Ebert Schifferer, “Trompe l’Oeil”; Baltruˇsaitis, Anamorphoses. 36. See Sigmund Freud, Jokes and their Relation to the Unconscious, trans. and ed. James Strachey, London, 1961; E. H. Gombrich, “Verbal Wit as a Paradigm of Art: The Aesthetic Theories of Sigmund Freud,” in Tributes: Interpreters of Our Cultural Tradition, Ithaca, NY, 1084, pp. 93–115; Jacques Lacan, Speech and Language in Psychoanalysis, trans. with notes and commentary by Anthony Wilden, Baltimore and London, 1981, pp. 33–35, 268; Mary Douglas, “Jokes,” in Implicit Meanings: Essays in Anthropology, London, 1975, pp. 97, 101. See further Henri Bergson, Laughter: An Essay on the Meaning of the Comic, trans. Cloudesley Brereton and Fred Rothwell, New York, 1911. These are discussed briefly in Thomas DaCosta Kaufmann, “Arcimboldo’s Serious Jokes: ‘Mysterious but Long Meaning,’” in The Verbal and the Visual. Essays in Honor of William Sebastian Heckscher, ed. Karl-Ludwig Selig and Elizabeth Sears, New York, 1990, pp. 62–4. 37. Ted Cohen, Jokes: Philosophical Thoughts on Joking Matters, Chicago and London, 1999. 38. See Kaufmann, “Arcimboldo’s Imperial Allegories.” Notes to Pages 10–11

235

39. Roland Barthes, Arcimboldo, trans. John Shepley, Milan, 1980 (first ed. 1978). The commentary at the end of Barthes’s book cites this author’s articles. 40. See Philippe Morel, “Arcimboldo’s Composite Heads, Grotesques, and the Aesthetics of Paradox,” in Arcimboldo 1526–93, pp. 221–31, whose opinions are summarized and quoted in this and the following paragraphs. 41. Lucien Febvre, Le problème de l’incroyance au XVIe siècle: La religion de Rabelais, Paris, 1947, addressed a similar problem in interpreting the religion of Rabelais sixty years ago. However that problem may be resolved, just as Febvre demonstrated that it was anachronistic to suppose the existence of twentieth-century beliefs (or rather, disbelief) in sixteenth-century literature, so is it anachronistic to find a parodistic, quasi-existentialist solipsism expressed in sixteenth-century painting. 42. David Summers, Real Spaces:World Art History and the Rise of Western Modernism, London and New York, 2003, pp. 592–601. chapter 1 1. For Arcimboldo’s fame, and his critical fortunes, see Andreas Beyer, “‘Il gran pitore Giuseppe Arcimboldi: On the Construction of Arcimboldo’s Fame,” in Arcimboldo 1526–1593, ed. Sylvia FerinoPagden, Vienna, Milan, 2007, pp. 25–31. 2. This year falls into the period of time when Arcimboldo was working for the Habsburgs. This seemingly incontrovertible piece of evidence has nevertheless been challenged or ignored by some scholars, who have claimed not just that Lombard sources and inspirations led to his inventions and that his pictures are connected with popular culture there, but that his paintings of composite heads originated in Lombardy. For a sample of such arguments see Sven Alfons, Giuseppe Arcimboldo (Symbolister 3), in Tidskrift för Konstvetenskap 51 (1957), p. 30; Francesco Porzio, “Fonti carnevalesche del naturalismo nel Cinquecento milanese: Alcune ipotesi su Giuseppe Arcimboldi,” Arte Lombarda, 1993, especially pp. 37–8; Giacomo Berra,“Arcimboldi: Le teste ‘caricate’ leonardesche e le ‘grillerie’ dell’Accademia della val di Blenio,” in Rabisch: Il grottesco nell’arte del Cinquecento: L’Accademia della Val di Blenio Lomazzo e l’ambiente milanese, Lugano, 1998, pp. 57–67; Charles Hope, “Sight Gags,” New York Review of Books 34, no. 14, 24 September 1987, pp. 41–44, who also however calls Arcimboldo’s beginnings as an artist “entirely conventional.” The question of dating is considered more thoroughly in the next chapter. 3. Arcimboldo’s death date is determined by a document first published in Carlo Casati, “Giuseppe Arcimboldi, pittore milanese,” Archivio Storico Lombardo, ser. 2, vol. 2, 1885, p. 93, where he is said to have been about sixty-six years old. 4. See Giacomo Berra, “Un Autoritratto cartaceo di Giuseppe Arcimboldi,” Arte Lombarda 116, 1996, pp. 53–62. 5. Recently Silvio Leydi, “Giuseppe Arcimboldo in Milan: Documents and Hypotheses. Summary of Documents related to the Milanese Period,” in Arcimboldo 1526–1593, ed. Sylvia Ferino-Pagden, Paris, Vienna, Milan, 2007, pp. 297–302, has compiled most—but not all—of the early documents pertaining to Arcimboldo, though without offering transcriptions. Nevertheless, since the documents are readily available in this publication, I have not thought it necessary to repeat his citations. In most instances I have consulted, and in some cases had independently discovered, the same documents (previously unpublished documents in Leydi are indicated in boldface in his publication). Some of these, however—in particular the documents pertaining to Como—were pointed out to Leydi by the present author. Leydi, “Giuseppe Arcimboldo in Milan: Documents and Hypotheses,” in ibid., pp. 37–52, also offers an overview of the artist’s early career, with emphases and hypotheses different from those presented here. 6. Leydi, “Arcimboldo...Summary,” reads this term as reported here. Caterina Galli Pirina, Le Vetrate del Duomo di Milano dai Visconti agli Sforza, Florence, 1986, has another interpretation. 7. See E. Brivio, “Vetrate,” in Il Duomo di Milano, Milan, 1973, 1, pp. 280ff. 8. In addition to Leydi, “Arcimboldo in Milan,” see Brivio, ibid., p. 282, and Caterina Galli Pirini, “L’Arcimboldi non ‘ghiribizzoso,’” Commentari 15, no. 1–2, 1964, pp. 77–81, for attributions also discussed by Brivio. Geiger, Dipinti ghribizzosi, p. 21, already advanced attributions of windows to Giuseppe.

236

Notes to Pages 11–20

9. The key document for attribution is a payment of 15 September 1551 to Giuseppe Arcimboldo for six window designs. Although previous scholars have said that this payment was for the window of Saint Catherine, the name of the subject is not mentioned. What is noted is that the drawings were for the window of the porta maggiore of the cathedral. Since the present west facade of the cathedral was not completed until the late nineteenth century—the cathedral of Milan took six centuries to complete—in the sixteenth century the main entrance was through the portal in the present south transept. The window of Saint Catherine of Alexandria, number 14 in the current system of counting used by the cathedral, is to be found over this portal. Dates of 1556 are to be found on this window. Thus the inference that this window was designed by Giuseppe is indeed correct. Since he was paid for numerous other drawings for windows in 1551, continued to be paid for many drawings through 1556, and on 23 February 1552 was compensated for drawings made for Corrado de Mochis, who is known to have made this particular window, it is probable that many of the drawings so documented were for panels in the window depicting the life of Saint Catherine. Nevertheless, since Biagio is also mentioned in the cathedral documents, some of the window panels have also often been attributed to him. Critics who have found stylistic differences among the panels have generally assigned to Biagio the more “Luinesque” designs—those supposedly resembling more the style of artists of the older generation to which Bernardino Luini, who died in 1532, belonged—while attributing to Giuseppe those scenes that are said to resemble the work of later artists in Milan. There are good reasons for associating Biagio with the Luini, as we shall see, but no document exists to link Biagio directly to this or any other specific window in the Cathedral, and the only document listing a specific location is that of 15 September 1551. It may even be that Giuseppe executed the lion’s share of the designs for the Saint Catherine window. Regardless of the exact resolution to such questions, the attribution of the window is important for providing a basis for further attributions to Giuseppe Arcimboldo. The attribution to the Arcimboldi of some of the panels in the third window from the west in the south aisle, depicting scenes from the Old Testament, has been advanced on the basis that the number of drawings provided by Biagio and Giuseppe—the latter made almost 150 for the cathedral—far exceeded what was probably necessary for just the Saint Catherine window. This suggestion can be supported by stylistic comparisons. The blocky, large forms with large foreheads of the executioners in the scene with the Execution of Saint Catherine usually given to Giuseppe may, for example, be compared to the figures in the scene of Lot and his Daughters in window three, that with Old Testament scenes. Further comparisons might also be adduced. Since more drawings for the cathedral are by Giuseppe than by Biagio, it is more likely that these scenes would have been by Giuseppe—and if it is accepted that the Old Testament panels are by Giuseppe, this would in turn reinforce the attribution of some of the Saint Catherine windows to him. 10. On 17 June 1551 Giuseppe was paid for painting the image of the Virgin with the facade of the cathedral in a space above the pharmacy near the wall of the ducal court: this would have been located at a spot to the west of the present cathedral. On 28 November 1551 he was paid for the painting of five banners (insigniarum) of the king of Bohemia, who was at the time Ferdinand I Habsburg: this began his association with the Austrian branch of the dynasty, which would have great consequences for his career. On 23 February of the following year he was remunerated for drawings for windows, for painting a cartoon with a tabernacle for Christmas (cum uno tabernaculo pro festo nativitatis), and for a drawing of the territory of Volpedo. On 22 June 1552 he was also paid for the image of the “most Blessed Virgin Mary” on a wall of a house outside the east gate of Milan. In 1554 he received payment for sundry services: on 28 February for painting the shutters of the organ; on 19 July for painting the platform (or stand palchum) hall, and portico of the church; and on 21 August for painting the canopy (capocoelum) over the high altar. He was paid on 17 November for painting two insignias of the king of England (presumably meaning King Philip II of Spain, who was ruler of Milan at this time, and who could legitimately claim the title of king of England since he was husband of Queen Mary of England) as well as for drawings for windows and two stools for the altar. On 3 October 1555 he was paid for ducal arms (insignis) and other items for the feast day of Saint Mary. On 11 September 1557 he was paid for a painting of the Virgin and for painting the arms of governor Figarola. Finally on 1 March 1558 he received compensation for painting a new wall outside the second door of the cathedral opposite the

Notes to Page 21

237

ducal palace, and for painting on the choir of the cathedral the arms of the archbishop of Milan, who since 1555 had been Filippo Archinto. See for references (but not the Latin) Leydi, “Arcimboldo . . . Summary.” 11. The hand is the same in five of the scenes in the chapels on the north side: the stoning of Saint Stephen in one of the Carreto chapels is based on a painting by Giulio Romano in Genoa, where Evangelista is documented in 1544, and the festoons and grotesque decorations correspond to G.P.Lomazzo’s description of Evangelista Luini’s fresco. See Valerio Guazzoni, “I figli del Luini,” in Bernardino Luini e la pittura del Rinascimento a Milano: Gli affreschi di San Maurizio al Monastero Maggiore, ed. Sandrina Bandera and Maria Tersa Fiorio, Milan, Skira, 2000, p. 80. 12. Nello Forti Grazzini, “Gli Arazzi,” in Monza: Il duomo, Milan, 1988, p. 134, first attributed the Naming to same artist who painted the other scenes in the chapel, whom he identified with the Arcimboldi, on the basis of a vast expansion of the notion of the possibilities of Arcimboldo’s style. In his analysis of mid-century painting in San Maurizio, Valerio Guazzoni has also placed this fresco in the ambit of the Arcimboldi “Figli di Luini,” p. 81. The attribution is accepted without reservation by Leydi, “Arcimboldo in Milan,” p. 43, mentioning, however, the possible participation of Biagio. Leydi mistakenly attributes the Decapitation on the right-hand wall to the same artist. Whoever the artist may be, these pictures are not by the same hand. The attribution to the Arcimboldi, and most importantly to Giuseppe of the Naming of the Baptist, can nevertheless be sustained. The face of Zachariah, who is writing in the foreground of the fresco, while resembling a portrait of Francesco Carreto on the side wall of the adjacent chapel, can also be compared to that of Samson in a glass panel belonging to the Old Testament window in Milan cathedral, and to the representation of Caleb (or Joshua) in the scene of Moses and the Amalekites from the same window. The man on the left at the bottom in the Saint Maurizio fresco may be compared to one of the executioners in the scene of the Execution of Saint Catherine and also to other figures in panels in the Saint Catherine window. Most important, the facial features of females closely resemble those of the Virgin in the Annunciation and of many other female figures and angels in this window as well. This attribution is important not only for establishing the earliest datable painting by Giuseppe Arcimboldo, but also for determining that he worked alongside members of the Luini family. 13. See for example Giacomo Berra, “Arcimboldi: Le teste ‘caricate’ leonardesche e le’grillerie’ dell’ Accademia della Val di Blenio,” in Rabisch: Il grottesco nell’arte del Cinquecento: L’Accademia della Val di Blenio. Lomazzo e l’ambiente milanese, Milan, 1998, p. 63. For the refutation of arguments connecting Arcimboldo with the facchini, see appendix 1. 14. For archival information regarding Meda as well as Arcimboldo in Monza see Robert S. Miller,”Note su Giuseppe Arcimboldo, Giuseppe Meda, Giovanni Battista della Rovere detto il Fiammenghino ed altri pittori milanesi / Notes on Giuseppe Arcimboldo, Giuseppe Meda, Giovanni Battista della Rovere detto il Fiammenghino and other Milanese pianters,” Studi Monzesi 5, 1989, pp. 3–25. I wish to thank Roberto Conti for supplying me (2004) with information not published by Miller, including that related to Meda’s birth and death dates. 15. For Bernardino Campi in general, see I Campi e la cultura artistica cremonese del Cinquecento (ex. cat.), ed. Mina Gregori, Milan, 1985. 16. While the 1567 documents pertaining to payment are referred to by Leydi, “Arcimboldo . . . Inventaire,” p. 301, Leydi does not mention the key previous document from 1564, which had already been published by Benno Geiger, I dipinti ghiribizzosi di Giuseppe Arcimboldo, Florence, 1954, p. 116. See further Giulio Bora, “Milano nell’età di Lomazzo e San Carlo: Riaffermazione e difficoltà di sopravvivenza di una cultura,” in Rabisch: Il grottesco nell’arte del Cinquecento: L’accademia della Val di Blenio Lomazzo e l’ambiente milanese, Lugano and Milan, 1998, p. 41. 17. The complicated history of this object, with thorough documentation, is presented in Mariaebe Colombo Fantini, “Il gonfalone di Milano,” Raccolta delle Stampe A. Ertarelli; Raccolte di Arte Applicata; Museo degli Strumenti Musicali: Rassegna di studi e di Notizie 14, 1987/1988, pp. 197–249. 18. Giulio Bora has on a number of occasions described these events. See “Milano nell età di Carlo Borromeo,” p. 41 and p. 54 n. 20, for further references. 19. The triumphalist interpretation is the suggestion of Robert Miller , who treats this material in “Gli affreschi cinquecenteschi: Giuseppe Arcimboldo, Giuseppe Meda e Giovanni Battista della Rovere detto il Fiammenghino,” in Il Duomo di Monza: La storia e l’arte, Milan, 1989, 2, pp. 216–30. 238

Notes to Pages 21–22

This piece of information is among other things overlooked by Carmen Bambach, who in Arcimboldo 1526–1593 attributes a drawing now in the Metropolitan Museum of Art as a design by Arcimboldo for the gonfalone. Bambach relies on circumstantial evidence and on the opinions of Giulio Bora (cited in the sales catalogue, Christie’s, London, 4 July 1995, lot 37, and in “Milano nell’età di Carlo Borromeo,” especially p. 55 n.24, fig. 4) and Giuseppe Cirillo, Carlo Urbino da Crema: Disegni e dipinti (Quaderni di Parma per l’arte), 2005, p. 58, n. 97. However, neither Bora nor Cirillo offers any specific stylistic arguments for the attribution, nor does Bambach in her inconclusive entry. Comparison to known authentic drawings by Arcimboldo, including those from the period, that were visible in the exhibition for which Bambach wrote the catalogue entry indicate that this drawing can not possibly be by Giuseppe Arcimboldo. This was previously pointed out by the present author, orally, to Bambach while viewing the drawing in the Metropolitan Museum of Art—including both sides, neither of which can be in any part by the artist. It is in any case evident that more than one hand is involved in the Metropolitan Museum drawing. 20. For the recent recovery of this information, see Leydi, “Arcimboldo in Milan,” p. 41, indicating Arcimboldo’s activity at San Francesco and Santa Maria delle Grazie. 21. The documents are published and analyzed in Miller,“Note su Giuseppe Arcimboldo.” 22. See first Thomas DaCosta Kaufmann, “A Tapestry Design by Giuseppe Arcimboldo,” The Burlington Magazine 130, no. 1023, 1988, pp. 428–30. I have discussed this issue and the general question of his work in Monza more completely in “Le Opere di Arcimboldo a Monza e la carriera iniziale dell’artista” (also in English: “Arcimboldo’s Work in Monza and the Artist’s Early Career”), Studi Monzesi 3, July-August 1988 (published winter 1989), pp. 5–17, [1]–[8]. See also the lengthy discussion in Leydi, “Arcimboldo à Milan,” pp. 41–3. 23. See appendix 2 for an extended discussion of the question of attribution. 24. A review of the documentation allows for further explication of the commission of a tapestry Arcimboldo designed for the cathedral in Como. It has previously been assumed that this tapestry was executed in 1558 on the basis of a document found in a listing under the category pani de razo per l’ornato del domo (tapestries for the decoration of the cathedral) for 19 December 1558; on that date a payment of 158 lire 9 soldi was authorized to Master “Gioseph Arcimboldo pittor in Milano” for the tella that was the disegno (drawing) of a piece, together with 9 soldi to buy the tela (meaning the material for the drawing itself). In other words, Arcimboldo was paid to draw a design for a tapestry to adorn the cathedral. But documents dating from the end of 1558 for promised (promessi) monies do not indicate that Arcimboldo finished this project in that year. In fact, he received another payment of 57 lire 10 soldi at the end of the next year, on 14 December 1559. This payment is noted in several places, including a record which appears directly underneath the 1558 entry in the Mastro Biancho of the libri contabili, the accounts payable of the Como cathedral, thus suggesting that it was for the same project. Moreover, on 18 March 1560 another payment of 6 imperial scudi was authorized to magistro Gioseph Arcinboldo pictor de Milano (Master Giuseppe Arcimboldo, painter of Milan) with 9 soldi for the material for his business pinger la tella per li panni de raza—meaning that he was paid for painting the cartoon for a tapestry. This cartoon must have been for the tapestry representing the Transit of the Virgin (figure 1.7), which is dated 1562 by an inscription that also indicates it was made in Ferrara. Payments of that year to Giovanni (Johann) Karcher indicate that his workshop wove the tapestry. This review of documentation is important because it allows us to complete the account of Arcimboldo’s activity up to 1560. On the basis of this author’s indications, the documents for this material were also published and in part discussed by Leydi, loc. cit. 25. See Simonetta Coppa, “La diffusione di modelli leonardeschi in Alta Lombardia: alcuni esempi,” I Leonardeschi a Milano: fortuna e collezionismo, Milan, 1991, pp. 108–19. 26. Paolo Morigia, Historia dell’antichità di Milano, Venice, 1592, p. 547. 27. Václav B°užek, Ferdinand Tyrolský mezi Prahou a Innsbruckem. Šlechta z ˇceských zemí na cestˇe ke dvor°um prvnich Habsburk°u, Cˇ eské Budˇejovice, 2006, p. 75, suggests that Ferdinand I got to know (poznal) Arcimboldo in Milan; but there is no evidence for this assertion, which is probably based on a misinterpretation of the payments for banners, as mentioned above. 28. Leydi, “Arcimboldo in Milan,” pp. 43–46, hypothesizes that Arcimboldo had been involved in festival designs already in Milan, and it was for these skills that he was called north. There is, however, no documentation for such early involvement, and in fact the earliest evidence Notes to Pages 22–25

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for his activity as a tournament designer dates only from 1570. While he thus was engaged in planning celebrations, it seems significant that he came to this activity only after some years in Central Europe; had he been expert in festival designs, it is likely that he would have been engaged in preparing them earlier for the count. 29. See, for a good discussion of the general issue of the meaning of naturalism in this context, Andrea Bayer, “Defining Naturalism in Lombard Painting,” in Painters of Reality: The Legacy of Leonardo and Caravaggio in Lombardy, New York, New Haven, and London, 2004, pp. 3–21. Bayer goes back only as far as Leonardo, but the point can be extended to an earlier period. See the classic article by Otto Pächt, “Early Italian Nature Studies and the Early Calendar Landscape,” Journal of the Warburg and Courtauld Institutes 13, no. 1–2, 1950, pp. 13–47. 30. See in particular Painters of Reality. 31. See Forti Grazzini, “Gli Arazzi.” 32. See already the efforts to identify Arcimboldo’s sources in Geiger, I dipinti ghiribizzosi. 33. As Geiger, I dipinti ghiribizzosi, p. 22, first noticed. 34. Heinrich Zimmerman, ed. “Inventare, Acten und Regesten aus der Schatzkammer des Allerhöchsten Kaiserhauses,” Jahrbuch der Kunsthistorischen Sammlungen des Allerhöchsten Kaiserhauses 10, 1889, ccvii, no. 6253: p. 54 n. 58, “Ein mittieres bruststuck von garten früchten zusamengesezt, aus des Leonardi da Vinci seiner schul, von Arcimboldoff.” Geiger, I dipinti ghribizzosi, p. 19, called attention to this reference without, however, citing it completely. 35. See The Arcimboldo Effect: Transformations of the Face from the Sixteenth to the Twentieth Century (ex. cat. Venice), Milan, 1987, pp. 214, 217. 36. F.C. Legrand and F. Sluys, Arcimboldo et les Arcimboldesques, Aalter, 1955, p. 29, seem to have been the first to have suggested this idea. In “The Allegories and their Meaning,” in The Arcimboldo Effect, p. 93, and especially p. 107 n. 7, I have added thoughts and assembled the literature pertaining to this thesis. 37. Painters of Reality, p. 147. 38. The impact of Leonardo in Milan is studied by the various essays in Maria Tersa Florio and Pietro C. Marani, I leonardeschi a Milano: Fortuna e collezionismo, Milan, 1991; see further Pietro C. Marani, Leonardo e i leonardeschi nei musei della Lombardia, Milan, 1990. Recent literature on Milanese painting in Leonardo’s wake is surveyed in a review by Alessandro Nova of Marco Caminati, Cesare da Sesto 1477–1523, in The Burlington Magazine 139, no. 1132, July 1997, pp. 483–85. 39. Described as “vecchi e villani e villane diformi che ridessero”: see Lomazzo, Trattato dell’arte della pittura, scoltura et archittetura, in Scritti sulle arti, vol. 2, ed. Roberto Paolo Ciardi, Florence, 1974, p. 315 and n. 2, and Idem, Idea, in Scritti, vol. 1, Florence, 1973, p. 210 and n. 2. 40. See Domenico Laurenza, “Figino and the Lost Drawings of Leonardo’s Comparative Anatomy,” The Burlington Magazine 148, no. 1236, March 2006, pp. 173–79. 41. See Varena Forcione, “Leonardo’s Grotesques: Originals and Copies,” in Leonardo da Vinci, Master Draftsman, p.217. 42. Geiger, Dipinti ghribizzosi, pp. 18–19; Pavel Preiss, Giuseppe Arcimboldo, Prague, 1967, p. 7; Werner Kriegeskorte, Giuseppe Arcimboldo 1527–1593: Ein manieristischer Zauberer, Cologne, 1988, p. 20. 43. London, British Museum. The drawing is inscribed “ Blasij Arcimboldi pictoris imago” and was first illustrated by Geiger, Dipinti ghribizzosi, before p. 19. 44. See the discussion and documents published in Miller, “Note.” More recently Leydi, “Arcimboldo . . . Summary,” p. 297, has found a document indicating that in 1532 a painter named Biagio had received payment along with Bernardino Luini for work done in Saronno, but it is unclear whether this was Biagio Arcimboldo. 45. This circumstance is already noted by Bora, “Milano nell’età di Lomazzo,” p. 42. 46. See Francesco Ricardi, “Le ante d’organo del Duomo di Milano,” Archivio Storico Lombardo 114, ser. 11, vol. 5, 1988, pp. 77–88, especially pp. 81–83. 47. See for example Bora, “Milano nell’età di Lomazzo,” 41. 48. See Leonardo on Painting, ed. Martin Kemp, trans. Martin Kemp and Margaret Walker, New Haven and London, 1989, pp. 1–2.

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49. For the Codex Huygens see Erwin Panofsky, The Codex Huygens and Leonardo da Vinci’s Art Theory: The Pierpont Morgan Library, Codex M.A. 1139, London, 1940. 50. Carlo Pedretti, ed., The Literary Works of Leonardo da Vinci, Compiled and Edited from the Original Manuscripts by Jean Paul Richter, Oxford, 1977, pp. 70–75, attributes the Codex Huygens to Figino and gives an account of his other activities, including his possible involvement with the compilation of the Codex Urbinas. More recently the Codex Huygens has been attributed to Carlo Urbino by Ugo Ruggeri, “Carlo Urbino e il Codex Huygens,” Critica d’Arte ser. 3, vol. 25, no. 157/9, 1978, pp. 167–76, and convincingly by Sergio Marinelli, “The Author of the Codex Huygens,” The Journal of the Warburg and Courtauld Institutes 44, 1981, pp. 214–20. Even if Girolamo Figino did not know the Codex Huygens, he was quite familiar with it: see Frank Zöllner, “Agrippa, Leonardo, and the Codex Huygens,” Journal of the Warburg and Courtauld Institutes 48, 1985, p. 233. 51. P.C. Marani, “Leonardo’s Drawings in Milan and their Influence on the Graphic Work of Milanese Artists,”in Leonardo da Vinci: Master Draftsman, ed. Carmen C. Bambach, New York, New Haven, and London, 2003, p. 184, remarks that the “impressive optical realism of Girolamo Figino’s Self-Portrait of 1562 seems to recall the precise precepts that Leonardo set down on how to draw from nature.” 52. Lomazzo, Scritti, vol. 2, ed. Ciardi, pp. 155f. 53. See Lomazzo, Scritti, vol. 2, ed. Ciardi, p. 564. 54. See for example a drawing by Figino (Venice, Gallerie dell’Accademia) inspired by Leonardo’s grotesque heads: Annalisa Perissa Torrini, Gallerie dell’ Accademia di Venezia: Disegni del Figino, Milan 1987, 41, cat. no. 1, ill. 55. Laurenza, “Figino and the Lost Drawings.” 56. See Thomas DaCosta Kaufmann, “Arcimboldo’s Serious Jokes: ‘Mysterious but Long Meaning,” in The Verbal and the Visual: Essays in Honor of William Sebastian Heckscher, ed. Karl-Ludwig Selig and Elizabeth Sears, New York, 1990, especially pp. 75–80. 57. Thomas DaCosta Kaufmann, “Giuseppe Arcimboldo, the Habsburgs’ Leonardo,” in Rudolf II: Prague and the World, ed. B. Bukovinská, L. Koneˇcný, and I. Muchka, Prague, 1999, pp. 169–76. 58. Leonardo on Painting, p. 201. 59. See C.E. de Jong-Janssen and D.H. van Wegen, Catalogue of Italian Paintings in the Bonnefantenmuseum, trans. Michael Hoyle, Maastricht, 1995, p. 94, ill. 95, fig. 42. 60. Florence, Galleria degli Uffizi, Inv. 1890 nn. 788. 61. In recent years these have been frequently exhibited and discussed. See, for example, William A. Emboden, Leonardo da Vinci on Plants and Gardens, Portland, OR, 1987. 62. Marilyn Lavin pointed this picture out to me; the presence of the mandrake obviously suggests an interest in natural history as well. 63. See Valerio Guazzoni, “I figli del Luini,” p. 87, and the illustrations in Bernardino Luini e la pittura del Rinascimento a Milano, pp. 264–73. 64. See the translation in Leonardo on Painting, ed. cit., pp. 201–2. 65. Ibid., p. 222. 66. These topics and the sources here quoted are well discussed in Martin Kemp, “From Mimesis to Fantasia: The Quattrocento Vocabulary of Creation, Inspiration and Genius in the Visual Arts,” Viator 8, 1977, pp. 347–98, and David Summers, Michelangelo and the Language of Art, Princeton, 1981, e.g. pp. 175–76 and passim. Nevet Dolev, “Leonardo’s Amorphous Imagery and the Arcimboldo Outcome,” Academia Leonardo da Vinci 8, 1995, pp. 129–41, has also made an argument for the connection of these passages in Leonardo’s writings with Arcimboldo’s inventions. On pp. 138–40, however, she traces the possibilities for the knowledge of Leonardo’s manuscripts at Rudolf’s court, where she would locate Arcimboldo’s familiarity with Leonardo. See further Giacomo Berra, “Immagini casuale, figure nascoste e natura antropomorfa nell’immaginario artistico rinascimentale,” Mitteilungen des Kunsthistorischen Institutes in Florenz 43, no. 2/3, 1999, pp. 358–419, with pp. 386–87 and 390–92 on Arcimboldo. Berra, ibid., p. 415 n. 137, contests the present author’s interpretation of Arcimboldo’s use of the term maggia (macchia) in Thomas DaCosta Kaufmann, The Mastery of Nature: Aspects of Art, Science, and

Notes to Pages 30–33

24 1

the Humanism in the Renaissance, Princeton, 1993, pp. 151–52, ignoring the standard coupling of spot or stain with sketch, seen for example in Filippo Baldinucci, Vocabolario Toscano dell’arte del disegno . . ., Florence, 1681, p. 86. 67. See the translation in Leonardo on Painting, p. 224. 68. This story is easily accessible in the many editions of Vasari’s Vite. See, for example, Giorgio Vasari, The Lives of the Painters, Sculptors and Architects, trans. A.B. Hinds, London, 1965, vol. 2, p. 166. 69. See Giacomo Berra, “La ‘Medusa tutta serpegiata’ del Caravaggio: Fonti mitologico-letterarie e figurative,” in Caravaggio la Medusa: Lo splendore degli scudi da parata del Cinquecento, Milan, 2004, p. 62. 70. E.H. Gombrich, “The Grotesque Heads,” reprinted in The Heritage of Apelles: Studies in the Art of the Renaissance, Oxford and Ithaca, NY, 1976, p. 59. Gombrich’s essay was first published in 1954. 71. See especially Michael W. Kwakkelstein, Leonardo da Vinci as a Physiognomist: Theory and Drawing Practice, Leiden, 1994. For the general history of the relation of physiognomy to modern European art in which Leonardo plays a role, see Flavio Caroli, Storia della fisignomica: Arte e psichologia da Leonardo a Freud, Milan, 2002, with references to earlier literature. 72. Laurenza, “Figino and the Lost Drawings.” 73. Gombrich, “Grotesque Heads.” 74. For the New York copies and related works, see Forcione, “Leonardo’s Grotesques: Originals and Copies,” pp. 203–26. 75. Arcimboldo 1526–1593, cat. II. 6, pp. 57–58. 76. See Adolfo Venturi, Storia dell’arte italiana, vol. 9, pt. 3, La pittura del cinquecento, Milan, 1928. 77. For a good illustration see Arcimboldo 1526–1593, p. 109, fig. 7. 78. See Berra, “La ‘Medusa tutta serpegiata’ del Caravaggio: Fonti mitologico-letterarie e figurative.” 79. See Arcimboldo 1526–1593, cat. 12, p. 62. 80. As suggested by Berra,“Arcimboldi: Le teste ‘caricate’ leonardesche,” and also by Porzio, “Fonti carnevalesche.” Despite the facts that the earliest versions of the Elements are visibly dated 1566 on the pictures, and that the earliest versions of the Seasons are datable 1563 according to the date on Summer, Hope, “ Sight Gags,” has also averred that the Elements were painted before Arcimboldo had left Milan. Hope argues that since Lomazzo mentions Arcimboldo’s Elements in his Trattato of 1584 but fails to note the existence of his Seasons, he only had knowledge of the former series, the Elements, before Arcimboldo left Italy. They alone, he implies, were cited by Lomazzo because until Arcimboldo returned to Lombardy at the end of his career, three years after the publication of the Trattato, Lomazzo supposedly could not have known about other paintings Arcimboldo had done. However, nothing definite can be inferred from Lomazzo’s references in regard to dating Arcimboldo’s pictures, nor, as Hope also suggests, from his mentioning that Carlo Urbino also made composite pictures, which might perhaps be datable to the 1560s. Even though Arcimboldo lived outside Italy from 1562 to 1587, he did not lose contact with his homeland. On 2 June 1566 he obtained one hundred gulden from the imperial Hofkammer to travel to Italy, and on the same day he obtained a passport which explicitly stated that he was to travel to Italy. It is very possible that he was in Milan in 1567, when he may have received two payments in person: payments were authorized to him in May 1567 and were made in October and December of that year for drawings for the gonfalone Meda executed after his designs. Ten years later, in 1576 or 1577, Arcimboldo was definitely again present in Milan, because a codicil to his will which he signed in 1581 indicates that in one of those two years he had had Stefano Busti draw up his testament. The later codicil was prepared by the notary Giovanni Battista Maggi, and indicates that on 17 March 1581 Arcimboldo was living in Milan. At any of these times artists like Lomazzo and Carlo Urbino (and Carlo Urbino would probably have known about Arcimboldo’s work, since he had been in competition with him, as noted above, and the two shared similar interests, as we shall see) or any other painter in Milan could have learned about what Arcimboldo had done in Central Europe. It was thus not necessary that information about the composite heads had to have been learned before Arcimboldo went north in 1563, or after his return in 1587; such information could have been shared during the whole intermediate period. Other arguments for an early dating of the composite heads on the basis of Lomazzo are also unconvincing. Hope says that Arcimboldo’s Elements are mentioned in Lomazzo’s Rime, published in 1587 but containing poems that Lomazzo claims that he wrote in his youth. A reference in Lomazzo’s book of sogni (Libro dei Sogni) which has been assigned a date prior to January 1563, makes note of a poem which in its pub-

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lished version refers to Arcimboldo’s paintings of the Elements, and thus supposedly indicates that they had been painted before that date. But Lomazzo also says that he later added to his poems. Moreover, the reference to the poem in the manuscript of the Sogni (London, British Library) which provides the basis for the early dating includes only the first line of the poem, not the full text of the poem in which the Elements are mentioned. The poem may thus have been altered later, with lines being added: we do not know what was there originally. The full poem did not appear in print until the published version of 1587, and in the Rime there is another poem which refers to the presence of Pellegrino Tibaldi in Spain, an event that did not occur until 1585. This again points to the possibility of a later dating for the sections of the poem which mention the Elements. In his biography of the artist, Paolo Morigia says that Arcimboldo came to the attention of Maximilian II because of his fame nella pittura come in diverse bizzarrie, and this phrase has also been read to mean that the artist made bizarre paintings, signifying composite heads, before he went north. But bizzarrie does not signify composite heads, or even bizarre paintings in Morigia. His phrase makes a comparison (using the word come) of bizzarrie to painting (pittura), and thus indicates that the two are not identical. As in other contexts, bizzarrie means fantastic or imaginative inventions in general. Morigia describes intaglios in rock crystal made by the sculptor Annibale Fontana as “figure, paesi, prospettiue, & altre bizzarrie nel cristallo di monte.” Hence Morigia’s mention of Arcimboldo’s earlier work as bizzarrie most likely refers to the wide variety of tasks that the artist carried out in Lombardy before coming north, when in addition to painting frescoes and panel pictures he was engaged in, among other things, designing tapestries, standards, and gilding candles. In sum, Arcimboldo’s composite heads cannot be dated conclusively on the basis of Lomazzo’s or Morigia’s texts. Other early documentation also provides no evidence for the origination of Arcimboldo’s paradoxical paintings in Italy. Instead, as the next chapter will also argue, convincing evidence exists for believing what the pictures themselves show, namely dates of 1563 and 1566, and therefore for dating the creation of the earliest versions of both the Elements and the Seasons to the period after Arcimboldo had entered the service of Maximilian II. 81. This excursus revises my “Arcimboldo’s Composite Heads: Origins and Invention,” pp. 97–101. 82. Legrand and Sluys, Arcimboldo et les Arcimboldesques, pp. 71–76, offer an account of the “origins of the procedure”; Francesco Porzio, L’universo illusorio di Arcimboldi, Milan 1978, pp. 14–26, provides a comprehensive survey of the composite idea behind Arcimboldo. 83. Strzygowski’s views are reported in Legrand and Sluys, Arcimboldo et les Arcimboldesques p. 73, and Porzio, Il mondo illusorio, p. 14. For the present critique of Strzygowski, see Thomas DaCosta Kaufmann, Toward a Geography of Art, Chicago and London, 2004, pp. 70–73. 84. For the dating of the Seasons, see the next chapter. Akbar ascended the throne only about eight years earlier, as a thirteen-year-old; most painting done in his era came later. 85. For the general theme of European art and the Mogul court, see J. Flores and N. Vassallo e Silva, Goa and the Great Mogul, 2004. 86. See A. Van der Willingen, Les artistes de Harlem, Haarlem and the Hague, 1870, pp. 152–56 and supplement B (unpaginated). 87. See Otto Kurz, “Kunstlerische Beziehungen zwischen Prag und Persien zur Zeit Kaiser Rudolf II,” in The Decorative arts of Europe and the Islamic East: Selective Studies, London, 1977, pp. 1–22. 88. Jaromír Šíp postulated the impact of Persian painting on Savery and art in Prague. See Šíp, “Die Paradieses-Vision in den Gemälden Roelandt Saverys,” Jahrbuch der Kunsthistorischen Sammlungen in Wien 65, 1969, pp. 29–38. I would like to thank Francesca Leoni for discussing with me the issue of composites in Mogul and Persian painting in relation to Arcimboldo. 89. Jurgis Baltrušaitis, Le Moyen Age Fantastique, Paris 1981 (first ed. 1955). His point about their ubiquity is made by Porzio, Mondo illusorio, p. 14, citing Baltrušaitis, “Têtes composées,” Médicine de France 19, 1951, 29ff., which however has not been available to me. 90. See Legrand and Sluys, Arcimboldo et les arcimboldesques, pp. 72f; Porzio Mondo illusorio, p. 14. 91. For instance, Pompeii was not excavated until the mid-eighteenth century. 92. See Geiger, I dipinti ghiribozzosi, and Legrand and Sluys, Arcimboldo et les arcimboldesques. John Shearman, Mannerism, Harmondsworth, 1967, p. 204, goes so far as to say that the prints by Boyvin, which had previously been incorrectly attributed to Arcimboldo, inspired Arcimboldo’s designs.

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24 3

93. Thomas DaCosta Kaufmann, The Mastery of Nature: Aspects of Art Science and Humanism in the Renaissance, Princeton, 1993, p. 108. 94. See Porzio, Mondo illusorio, p. 46 n. 14 for other examples. 95. See Porzio, Mondo illusorio, p. 19, elaborating a suggestion made in Thomas DaCosta Kaufmann, “Arcimboldo’s Imperial Allegories,” Zeitschrift für Kunstgeschichte 39, 1976, p. 282. See also Kaufmann, Mastery of Nature, p. 261 n. 39. 96. In particular Kaufmann, “Arcimboldo’s Imperial Allegories,” and The Mastery of Nature; see further below. 97. Porzio “Fonti carnivalesche.” For a further elaboration of this connection with the commedia dell’arte see Francesco Paliaga and Giovanni Ambrogio Brambilla, “‘Le Teste di carattere’ di Leonardo e la commedia dell’arte,” Raccolta Vinciana 26, 1995, pp. 219–54. 98. Berra,“Arcimboldi: Le teste ‘caricate,’” especially pp. 63–64. Difficulties with Berra’s general thesis are discussed in appendix 1. 99. See Porzio “Fonti carnivalesche,” p. 37. 100. For Arcimboldo’s early reputation see Andreas Beyer, “Il gran pittore Giuseppe Arcimboldi,” in Arcimboldo 1526–1593, pp. 25–31. 101. See appendix 1. 102. See appendix 1. The distribution of food in a carnivalesque setting may also be regarded as being as much a measure of social control as a sign of carnivalesque subversion. 103. See Kaufmann, Mastery of Nature, pp. 151–73; cf. Philippe Morel, “Arcimboldo’s Composite Heads, Grotesques, and the Aesthetics of Paradox,” in Arcimboldo 1526–93, pp. 221–31. 104. See Kaufmann, Mastery of Nature, pp. 106–8. The most thorough account of grilli in the Renaissance is offered in Horst Bredekamp, “Grillenfänge von Michelangelo bis Goethe,” Marburger Jahrbuch für Kunstwissenschaft 22, 1989, pp. 169–80. 105. Examples from the imperial collection are seen in Erika Zwierlein-Diehl, Die antiken Gemmen der Kunsthistorischen Museums in Wien, Munich 1979, vol. 2, plate 43 no. 804; vol. 3, 1991, p. 131, no. 2103; no. 2114. A. Bernhard Waecker, “Zur Geschichte der Gemmensammlung“, ibid., vol. 1, points to the origins of the gem collections in the Habsburg Kunst- und Schatzkammers of the sixteenth century. 106. Baltrušaitis, Le Moyen Age fantastique, treats this subject extensively. 107. For this inventory see Karl Rudolf, “Die Kunstsbestrebungen Kaiser Maximilian II. im Spannungsfeld zwischen Madrid und Wien,” in Jahrbuch der Kunsthistorischen Sammlungen in Wien 91, 1995, pp. 231–53. 108. Legrand and Sluys, Arcimboldo et les Arcimboldesques, p. 74, with further reference on p. 137 n. 14, is credited by Raymond B. Waddington, “Before Arcimboldo: Composite Portraits on Italian Medals,” The Medal 14, 1989, p. 21 n. 2, with having been first to notice this association. 109. See Raymond B. Waddington, Aretino’s Satyr: Sexualtiy, Satire, and Self-Projection in Sixteenthcentury Literature and Art, Toronto, Buffalo, and London, 1993. For the notion of serious jokes see below, and initially Thomas DaCosta Kaufmann, “Arcimboldo’s Serious Jokes: ‘Mysterious but Long Meaning,’” in The Verbal and the Visual: Essays in Honor of William Sebastian Heckscher, ed. Karl-Ludwig Selig and Elizabeth Sears, New York, 1990, pp. 58–86. The Rabelaisian reference is worth emphasizing because Porzio, “Fonti carnivalesche,” p. 41, under the influence of Bakthin, invokes him in arguing for carnivalesque elements in Arcimboldo. 110. The relation to actual emblems and devices was first adumbrated by Kaufmann, “Arcimboldo’s Imperial Allegories,” and later elaborated by Porzio, Mondo illusorio, pp. 24–26. 111. See Horst Bredekamp, Thomas Hobbes visuelle Strategien; der Leviathan als Urbild des modernen Staates: Werkillustrationen und Porträts, Berlin, 2003. chapter 2 1. This comment responds to the issues considered in the first chapter, and to the a priori considerations of what was possible for a Renaissance artist suggested by Charles Hope, “Sight Gags,” New York Review of Books 34, no. 14, 24 September 1987, pp. 41–44. 2. For a preliminary orientation to this subject see Renate Wagner-Rieger, “Die Renaissancearchi-

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tektur in Oesterreich, Boehmen und Ungarn in ihrem Verhaeltnis zu Italien zur Mitte des 16. Jahrhunderts,” in Arte e artisti dei Laghi Lombardi, Como, 1959, vol 1, pp. 457–81. 3. Österreichische Nationalbibliothek 7256, fol 169v: see Otto G. Schindler, “Zan Tabarino, ‘Spielmann des Kaisers’: Italiensiche Komödianten des Cinquecento zwischen den Höfen von Wien und Paris, “Römische Historische Mitteilungen 43,2001, p. 421 and n. 35. 4. See most recently José-A. Godoy and Silvio Leydi, Parures triomphales: Le maniérisme dans l’art de l’armure italienne, Geneva, 2003, pp. 421–25, cat. no. 17 and 18, and pp.427–28, cat. no. 21. 5. Rudolf Distelberger, Die Kunst des Steinschnitts: Prunkgefäße, Kameen und Commessi aus der Kunstkammer, Vienna, 2002, p. 16. Distelberger lists many such objects made by the Milanese. The inventory of the 1568 collection published by Karl Rudolf, “Die Kunstbestrebungen Kaiser Maximilians II. im Spannungsfeld zwischen Madrid und Wien. Untersuchungen zu den Sammlungen der österreichischen und Spanischen Habsburger im 16. Jahrhundert,” Jahrbuch der kunsthistorischen Sammlungen in Wien 91 (1995), pp. 231–53, contains many such objects owned by him and by Ferdinand I. 6. For the best introduction to this material, including much information on the Milanese workshops and their service for the imperial court, see the excellent exhibition catalogue by Rudolf Distelberger, Die Kunst des Steinschnitts. 7. See, in general for various examples, Thomas DaCosta Kaufmann, Court, Cloister, and City: The Art and Culture of Central Europe 1450–1800, Chicago and London, 1995. 8. See the summary in Jiˇrí Kropáˇcek, “Francesco Terzio: Notes on his Style and Iconography,” in Rudolf II, Prague and the World, ed. B. Bukovinská, L. Koneˇcný, and I. Muchka, Prague, 1999, pp. 278–80. 9. See Franz Kreyczi, “Urkunden und Regesten aus der K.u.K. Reichs-Finanz-Archiv,” Jahrbuch der Kunsthistorischen Sammlungen der allerhöchsten Kaiserhauses 5, 1887, pp. xcv n. 4357, and xcvi n. 4362; see further p. c n. 4374 and n. 4377. Further documents on Pozzo are printed in Karl Köpl, “Urkunden, Acten und Regesten aus dem K.K. Statthalterei-Archiv in Prag,” ibid. 12, 1891, p. x n. 7973, p. xi n. 7979, 7980, 7981, p. xvi n. 8001. 10. See Eliška Fuˇcíková, “Prague Castle under Rudolf II: His Predecessors and Successors,”in Rudolf II and Prague, the Court and the City, ed. eadem, London, Milan, and Prague, 1997, p. 5, and eadem, “Císaˇr Ferdinand I. a arcivévoda Ferdinand II.—dva starostliví stavebníci,” in Ars Longa: Sborník k nedožitým sedmdesátinám Josefa Krásy, ed. Beket Bukovinská and Lubomír Koneˇcný, Prague, 2003, p. 119, where her earlier attribution and dating are revised. 11. See in general Dante Isella, “Per una lettura dei ‘Rabisch’,” in Giovan Paolo Lomazzo e i facchini della val di Blenio, ed. and commentary Isella, Turin, 1993, pp. xxxiii–xxxvi, reprinted in Rabisch: Il grottesco nell’arte del Cinquecento: L’Accademia della Val di Blenio Lomazo e l’ambiente milanese, Lugano, 1998, p. 117. See further Giulio Bora, “Milano nell’èta di Lomazzo e San Carlo: Riaffermazione e difficoltà di sopravvivenza di una cultura,” in Rabisch: Il grottesco, pp. 57–67. 12. Isella, “Per una lettura,” p. xxxv (reprint, p. 117); Bora, “Milano,” p. 51, who mentions a similar ban on another artist made at the same time. 13. Isella, “Per una lettura,” p. xxxiv (reprint, p. 117). 14. Silvio Leydi, “Giuseppe Arcimboldo in Milan: Documents and Hypotheses,” in Arcimboldo 1526–1593, ed. Sylvia Ferindo-Pagden, Paris, Vienna, and Milan, 2007, p. 47. 15. Paolo Morigia (Morigi), Historia dell’antichità di Milano, Milan, 1592 (reprint Bologna, 1967), pp. 566–67; idem, La Nobilità di Milano, Milan, 1595, pp. 278–79. Morigia, Historia, p. 556, says he obtained his information on the Arcimboldo family directly from Giuseppe Arcimboldo. 16. Sven Alfons, Giuseppe Arcimboldo (Symbolister 3), in Tidskrift för Konstvetenskap 51, 1957, p. 31, suggests that Arcimboldo may have entered into royal service in connection with the coronation in Frankfurt, but, as he admits on p. 184 n. 55, there is no evidence for his presence there, although many other figures of equal or lesser rank are mentioned in contemporary sources. 17. See Kreyczi, “Urkunden,” nos. 4325, 4336, 4344. This last, chief document which was reproduced is located in Vienna, Finanz- und Hofkammerarchiv, HF 1, nr. 3, Rote Nummer 11, where I consulted it and the other documents in question. Manfred Staudinger, “Documents Concerning the Appearance of Giuseppe Arcimboldo at the Imperial Court,” in Arcimboldo 1526–1593, pp. 302–8, has most recently republished some of the documents relating the information recorded in this chapter.

Notes to Pages 43–45

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18. The title Royal Majesty (königliche majestät) cannot refer to Maximilian’s position as king of Hungary because he was only crowned as such on 8 September 1563. Maximilian had been recognized as king of Bohemia, but only received homage as such 20 September 1562. It is not likely that someone serving the imperial court in Vienna would necessarily have meant that the royal title referred to the Bohemian crown. 19. Alfons, Arcimboldo, loc. cit., had however already corrected this impression. Arcimboldo’s occupation of this position probably accounts for the reference to Maximilian in the painting Winter, discussed below. 20. Information about Arcimboldo’s continuing presence in Lombardy until at least 1560, as discussed in the last chapter, probably excludes this possibility. In any case, no documentation in the imperial archives or elsewhere exists for Arcimboldo’s presence in Central Europe prior to 1563, and no visual evidence before 1562. Likewise, there is no firm evidence for his contact with the Habsburgs before this date. He was not paid to paint the arms of the king of Bohemia by the Austrian Habsburgs, anymore than he was paid to paint those of the king of England, alias Philip II, by the Spanish Habsburgs; it was the cathedral of Milan that gave him these commissions. This point is most recently reiterated by Karl Schütz, “Der Rom. Kay. Mt. Conterfeter / Giuseppe Arcimboldo as Portrait Painter to the Holy Roman Emperor,” in Arcimboldo 1526–1593, ed. Sylvia Ferino-Pagden, Paris, Vienna, and Milan, 2007, p. 83. Schütz proposes, however, that some of the portraits attributed to Arcimboldo are copies by him of older pictures. 21. The initial attribution of portraits to Arcimboldo was proposed by Günther Heinz in the context of a larger study: “Studien zur Porträtmalerei an den Höfen der österreichischen Erblande,” Jahrbuch der Kunsthistorischen Sammlungen in Wien 59, 1963, pp. 99–224. Heinz then was instrumental in establishing the Porträtgalerie in Schloss Ambras near Innsbruck, where several such pictures have long been displayed. 22. Heinz, ibid., p. 108, expressed his opinions as part of his rather unfavorable evaluation of Arcimboldo as a portraitist. These questions have been reexamined most recently in Schütz, “Giuseppe Arcimboldo as Portrait Painter,” pp. 81–84, 87–94, cat. no. III.4–III.10. Recognizing some of these weaker characteristics of the portraits, which had initially been a basis for attribution to Arcimboldo, Schütz has argued that the most important portrait previously attributed, a representation of Maximilian II with his family (Vienna Kunsthistorisches Museum), is a copy by Arcimboldo after Jacob Seisenegger, and he has grouped several works with it. However, the identification of works made during Arcimboldo’s early period in Lombardy provides a basis for stylistic comparison that excludes the possibility that he did the portraits attributed to him of Austrian Habsburgs. The portraits that have been given to Arcimboldo do not stand up to comparison with the early paintings in Lombardy or tapestry in Monza. The flat, pale visages of the Habsburg portraits so attributed, with their often summary modeling and coarsely constructed countenances, bear little resemblance to forms by Arcimboldo seen in the Milan or Monza frescoes, the tapestries in Como and Monza, or the windows in Milan. The features of the people painted in the Lombard frescoes are clearly defined by chiaroscuro, unlike the flattened forms of faces in the Austrian portraits; the way their faces are characterized is also dissimilar to the treatment of features found in the Austrian portraits hitherto attributed to Arcimboldo. While the notion that this group portrait is a copy may be acceptable, comparison to other paintings by the artist in the Arcimboldo exhibition, including a reversible head showing hands, also excludes this attribution. Repeated examination of these pictures, inspected in Ambras and with conservators of the Kunsthistorisches Museum as well as in the exhibition Arcimboldo 1526–1593 in Paris and Vienna, suggests a number of artists involved in the works, none of which can be attributed to Arcimboldo with certainty. Some may be by some other court painter, possibly of Italian origins; there are several other artists, including Pozzo, Terzio, or Giulio Licinio, who might be considered. Infrared images and visual examination of the portrait of the family of Maximilian II reveals the presence of underdrawing, which suggests the use of a cartoon: see Ina Slama, in Monika Strolz and Ina Slama, “Observations on the Painting Technique of Arcimboldo and His Circle,” in Arcimboldo 1526–1593, p. 285. While Slama retains the attribution to Arcimboldo in her discussion, this information neither speaks for nor against Arcimboldo as the possible artist of this painting. In fact Slama’s 246

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analysis, loc. cit., of the execution of the smaller portraits confirms the present author’s observations herein that they are by several different artists. 23. Silvio Leydi, “Giuseppe Arcimboldo in Milan,” pp. 44–46. The drawings which have been adduced as evidence for his work in this domain in Milan are unconvincingly attributed to Arcimboldo. These are found in a collection of costume designs known as il libro del sarto (Venice, Biblioteca Querini Stampalia, accessible in a facsimile published in Valencia, 2004) attributed by Leydi to Arcim­ boldo, in part with reference to Giulio Bora, “Milano,” p. 55 n. 50. However, they are by a variety of different artists and are of varying quality. None of them is more than generically close to Arcimboldo’s known costume designs; all that may be said with certainty is that they are stylistically related—that is, of the same period. Long ago, in Variations on the Imperial Theme, pp. 53, 57 (not, however, cited by Leydi or Bora), I had dealt with some of the suggestions made initially by Fritz Saxl, first in “Costumes and Festivals of Milanese Society under Spanish Rule,” Proceedings of the British Academy 23, 1936, pp. 1 ff., who first linked these to Arcimboldo but suggested a relation to Florentine designs, and suggested instead that they were to be related to contemporaneous Lombard drawings. This is as far as I would go in regard to an attribution to Arcimboldo. 24. Martin Warnke, Hofkünstler: Zur Vorgeschichte des modernen Künstlers, Cologne, 1996, p. 270. Jaroslava Hausenblasová, Der Hof Kaiser Rudolf II. (Fontes Historiae Artium IX), Prague, 2002, p. 416 no. 167/1, provides a list of the other painters who had this position under Rudolf II, and gives variants in the spelling of the title. 25. See Wolfgang Hilger, Ikongraphie Kaiser Ferdinands I. (1503–1564), Vienna, Cologne, and Graz, 1969, and idem, “Das Bild vom König und Kaiser: Anmerkungen zur Verbreitung und Wirkungsgeschichte von Herrscherdarstellungen am Beispiel Ferdinands I.,” in Kaiser Ferdinand I. 1503–1564: Das Werden der Habsburgermonarchie, ed. Wilfried Seipel, Vienna, 2003, pp. 231–41. 26. On 31 December 1565 Arcimboldo was paid a monthly salary of 20 gulden, receiving a year’s wages for the period from 1 October 1564 to 1 September 1565. Since Ferdinand had died on 25 July 1564, it is likely that Arcimboldo moved into this position of imperial painter from that of painter to the king of the Romans when Maximilian succeeded to the imperial throne. 27. See Hausenblasová, Der Hof Kaiser Rudolf II., loc. cit. Arcimboldo received payment in 1577. Account books are missing for the years from 1578 through 1580, but Arcimboldo is recorded in the Hofzahlamtsbücher from 1581 to 1586 as having been paid sums equivalent to a salary of 30 gulden per month. Arcimboldo received a Hofabfertigung of 1500 gulden on 15 August 1587, a settlement meaning that he had given up his formal post at court. 28. Kreyczi, “Urkunden,” no. 4994, 5312. 29. Gian Paolo Lomazzo, Scritti sulle arti, ed. Roberto Paolo Ciardi, Florence, 1973. 30. Morigia, Nobilità, p. 461. 31. It has not hitherto been recognized that the stock faces of Arcimboldo seen in his early works—noticeably, for example, in the figure of Saint John the Baptist—as in his Monza tapestry are exceedingly close to his own features (and those of his father) as known from his self-portrait drawing and a painted self-portrait. These portray what we know from a later description of the artist to have been a tall man with a long beard. More particularly, the long aquiline nose, turned down with a bump in the middle, the high cheekbones set off from the center of the face, the ridge defining the cheeks, and the deeply set eyes, shown as relatively small, are all features found both in Arcimboldo and in the standard types he uses for male figures. As has been said, ogni pittore dipinge se. 32. For a summary of my earlier views of the extent of Arcimboldo’s painted oeuvre, see Thomas DaCosta Kaufmann, The School of Prague: Painting at the Court of Rudolf II, Chicago and London, 1988, 164–72. 33. See Sylvia Ferino-Pagden, “Arcimboldo, ‘Conterfetter’ of Nature,” in Arcimboldo 1526–1593, Paris, Vienna, and Milan, 2007, pp. 103–11. 34. See further Thomas DaCosta Kaufmann, “Giuseppe Arcimboldo, the Habsburgs’ Leonardo,” in Rudolf II, Prague and the World, ed. B. Bukovinská, L. Koneˇcný, and I. Muchka, Prague, 1999, p. 169–76. 35. Lomazzo, Idea, ed. cit., p. 363. 36. See the document published in Benno Geiger, I dipinti ghiribizzosi di Giuseppe Arcimboldi: Pittore Illusionista del Cinquecento (1527–1593), Florence, 1954, pp. 124–25, citing Jahrbuch der kunsthistorischen Sammlungen des Allerhöchsten Kaiserhauses 5, 1887, reg. no. 4565. Notes to Pages 46–47

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37. See Thomas DaCosta Kaufmann, The Mastery of Nature: Aspects of Art, Science, and Humanism in the Renaissance, Princeton, 1993, pp. 151–73. 38. See G.P. Comanini, Il Figino, overo del fine della pittura, in Paola Barocchi, ed., Trattati d’arte del Cinquecento, Bari, 1962, vol. 3, pp. 368–70. This is the subject of scholarly commentary since Lionello Levi, “L’Arcimboldi Musicista,” in Geiger, I dipinti ghiribizzosi di pp. 87–94, and most recently has engaged the ongoing research of Willard Martin and the present author. 39. Morigia, Historia, p. 566; Lomazzo, ed. cit., vol. 1, p. 363. 40. Morigia, Historia, p.566, who would have seen him there, makes the point explicitly. 41. Morigia, loc. cit.; Lomazzo, ed. cit. vol. 7, p. 363. Hausenblasovâ, Der Hof Kaiser Rudolf II. 167/1, reports on a listing of the artist in 1589, which I have not checked. This is perhaps an indication that Arcimboldo was kept on the rolls of servitors after 1586. More evidence for his activity for the court is discussed below. 42. See Staudinger, “Sources on Arcimboldo at the Imperial Court,” p. 308 n. 37. 43. Roberta Piccinelli, Le collezioni Gonzaga: Il Carteggio tra Milano e Mantova, Milan 2003, p. 223, n. 460: document of 26 January 1594, Archivo di Stato Mantova, b 1715, f. III1, c. 203–4: “Me ne pagò mesi sono un pezzo mezzano cento ducatoni la gloriosa memoria dell’Arcimboldo pittore di sua maestà Cesarea per far un coperto ad un vaso.” 44. Morigia, Nobilità, p. 479; this passage was first noticed by Leydi, “Giuseppe Arcimboldo in Milan,” pp. 48, 52 n. 80. 45. Morigia, Nobilità, p. 471; Historia, p. 566. 46. The document pertaining to this action is transcribed and published in Geiger, Dipinti ghiribizzosi, p. 122. 47. See the document published in Geiger, Dipinti ghiribizzosi, p. 123, and then extensively in Staudinger, “Sources,” p. 304–5, no. 21. 48. The pertinent document is cited in Geiger, Dipinti ghiribizzosi, pp. 126–27, and published in extenso in Staudinger, “Sources,” pp. 307–8, n. 34. 49. Warnke, Hofkunstler, p. 205. 50. This is indicated by the fact that Arcimboldo supplied Morigia, Historia, p. 556, with the information about his family. See the next chapter for more on this interest. 51. See Silvio Leydi, “Giuseppe Arcimboldo in Milan: Documents and Hypotheses,” in Arcimboldo 1526–1593, ed. Sylvia Ferino-Pagden, Paris, Vienna, and Milan, 2007, especially pp. 37–38. 52. Lubomír Koneˇcný, “Arcimboldo, Christ, and Dürer,” Bulletin of the National Gallery in Prague 5–6, 1995–96, pp. 132–37. 53. See Ferino-Pagden, in Arcimboldo 1526–1593, p. 32.cat. no. I. 1. 54. See Kaufmann, The School of Prague, for an earlier survey of Arcimboldo’s easel paintings. Since the compilation of this catalogue twenty years ago, only a few more authentic composite heads by Arcimboldo, all of them now in private collections or on the art market in the United States have been identified. For the latest view of Arcimboldo’s oeuvre, see the catalogue Arcimboldo 1526–1593; this volume does not, however, function exactly as a catalogue raisonée, even though its existence allows me to dispense with providing one here. The exact number of pictures by Arcimboldo and his studio is, in any case, moot for the purposes of the present book. 55. See Arcimboldo 1526–1593. The question of workshop participation in paintings and drawings is again not at stake here, and is indeed also moot for present purposes. 56. A version of Spring (Madrid, Academy, see Figure 2.6) may belong to this series, if it is not from a later series. For technical information on the versions of Summer and Winter in Vienna (Kunsthistorisches Museum) and on the versions of Water and Fire, see Doris Fend and Monika Strolz, “Arcimboldos Teste Composte: Beiträge zur Restaurierung,” in Jahrbuch des Kunsthistorischen Museums Wien 1, 1999, pp. 282–90, and Strolz and Slama, “Observations,” op. cit. 57. The handling of paint in this picture of Earth is rather free, with highlights placed on the horns of various creatures, and surfaces, such as fur, not so detailed. This suggests not only a different conception and use of media in comparison with the related drawings to be discussed in chapter 5, but also perhaps a response to different sorts of materials. It may also indicate a slight difference in date. 58. The correspondence between the types is based on the system of correspondence, to be

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discussed further below. See, for a clear explanation of this system, Jean Seznec, The Survival of the Pagan Gods: The Mythological Tradition and Its Place in Renaissance Humanism and Art, trans. Barbara F. Sessions, New York, 1961 (first ed. 1953), pp. 38–81. 59. See Fend and Strolz, “Arcimboldos Teste composte,” where the versos are illustrated and the technical issues are discussed. I am grateful to the Kunsthistorisches Museum, Vienna, for removing Arcimboldo’s pictures from the wall and allowing me to inspect their reverses. See further Strolz and Slama, “observation,” pp. 283–84. 60. Strolz, in Strolz and Slama, ibid., p. 284, also remarks that the inscriptions on the backs were placed there before they were given to Maximilian II. The implications of their arguments are also that the execution of these paintings on lime wood took place in Central Europe. 61. Cf. Francesco Porzio, “Fonti carnevalesche del naturalismo nel Cinquecento milanese: alcune ipotesi su Giuseppe Arcimboldi,” Arte Lombarda 105–7, 1993, especially pp. 37–38. See, however, chapters 3 and 4 below. They may have had further functions as well, as is discussed in chapters 5 and 6. 62. See, most recently for this entry and its symbolism, Howard Louthan, The Quest for Compromise: Peacemakers in Counter-Reformation Vienna, Cambridge, 1997, pp.35–42. The symbolism of the 1563 entry is echoed in the references to the peacock, eagle, and lion in Arcimboldo’s Elements. 63. See Hope, art. cit. 64. Porzio, “Fonti carnevalesche,” loc. cit. This is also suggested by Hope, “Sight Gags,” and most recently by Philippe Morel, “Arcimboldo’s Composite Heads, Grotesques, and and the Aesthetics of Paradox,” in Arcimboldo 1526–1593, ed. Sylvia Ferino-Pagden, Paris and Vienna, 2007, pp. 221–31. 65. Giacomo Berra, “Arcimboldi: Le teste ‘caricate’ leonardesche e le’grillerie’ dell’ Accademia della Val di Blenio, in Rabisch: Il grottesco nell’arte del Cinquecento: L’Accademia della Val di Blenio Lomazzo e l’ambiente milanese, Milan, 1998, p. 59. The exhibition for which this book served as a catalogue was co-organized by Francesco Porzio, who authored this thesis. 66.In a letter of 28 April 1563 from Adam Swetkowyz to Ferdinand I, Swetkowyz says that Master Joseph will soon have finished the copies he was assigned to do. Although this document was first published more than a century ago, a misreading in an exhibition catalogue (Effect to Arcimboldo, The Arcimboldo Effect), has led to the misinterpretation that it refers to caricatures commissioned from the emperor’s painter, and that these were Arcimboldo’s Four Seasons, which he had completed before coming to Prague. But nothing allows for the inference that the paintings mentioned by Swetkowyz were the Seasons (they were copies of portraits). Moreover, it is reasonable to surmise that the composite heads could not have been completed by 28 April, in any instance. Given Arcimboldo’s continuing travels and the tasks he had been set to do, namely copying portraits at Ferdinand I’s behest, it is also exceedingly unlikely that he could have had the Four Seasons ready by April. 67. See Rudolf II and Prague: The Court and the City, Prague, London, and Milan, 1997, p. 595, cat. no. III. 282. 68. See Moda alla corte dei Medici: Gli abiti restaurati di Cosimo, Eleonora e Dona Garzia, Florence, 1993. 69. See Rudolf II and Prague, p. 597, cat. no. III. 292. 70. See Karl Rudolf, “Die Kunstbestrebungen Kaiser Maximilians II. im Spannungsfeld zwischen Madrid und Wien: Untersuchungen zu den Sammlungen der österreichischen und Spanischen Habsburger im 16. Jahrhundert,” Jahrbuch der Kunsthistorischen Sammlungen in Wien 91, 1995, p. 234. 71. See, for example, works by Hans von Aachen, as illustrated for example in Kaufmann, The School of Prague, cat. no. 1.43, 1.44, 1.61, etc. 72. The arguments in these paragraphs resume those presented in Thomas DaCosta Kaufmann, “The Dating of Arcimboldo’s First Composite Heads,” Studia Rudolphina 5, 2005, pp. 28–32. 73. I have argued that there are various reasons for Winter being the imperial season, and that Maximilian was particularly attached to this notion, since he dressed as Winter in this later imperial tournament. See Variations on the Imperial Theme, p. 38. 74. See Annemarie Jordan Gschwendt, “Exotic Animals in Sixteenth-Century Europe,” in Encounters. The Meeting of Asia and Europe 1500–1800, ed. Anna Jackson and Amin Jaffer, London, 2004, p. 43. See chapter 5 below. 75. Fonteo’s poem and activities are discussed in chapters 3 and 4. For a revised presentation of

Notes to Pages 54–56

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the interpretation of these, see Thomas DaCosta Kaufmann, The Mastery of Nature: Aspects of Art, Science and Humanism in the Renaissance, Princeton, 1993, pp. 100–128; and for the poem itself, see pp. 197–205. 76. The documents for these details have been republished most recently in Staudinger, “Documents,” p. 303. 77. As discovered by Leydi, “Giuseppe Arcimboldo in Milan,” p. 46. Leydi also connects this visit with the subsequent execution of a painting by Aurelio Luini in a church in the same town. 78. Leydi, loc. cit. 79. Vienna, Hofkammerarchiv, Hofzahlamtsbücher 1568, under Conterfetter und Maler, Auszug: fol. 324r: “Joseph Arzimboldo, Röm. Kaij. Mt. conterfeter und maler hat ich sein hofbesoldung der monatlichen zwainzig gulden, die gebür von sijtenzehn monaten, welliche sich den ersten Tag Junij anno sechs und sechszig angefanngen und den (fol. 324v) letzten October des sijbenundsechzigen Jahrs geendet haben, benenntlichen dreijhundertn vierzig gulden reinisch vermug dreijer gefertigter Quittungen hiebeij lezten datum steht den neunzehenden Tag Novembris diz Jars vergnuegt. Id est 340 fl” (marginal note: vergleiche sich in 66 Jar fol. 277). This last marginal note refers to the payment made Arcimboldo on 31 May 1566, for which see Staudinger, “Documents,” p. 303 n. 7, as in note 60 above. Neither the 1568 payment nor that recorded in the following note has been published either by Staudinger or, seemingly, by anyone else previously. 80. Vienna, Hofkammerarchiv, Hofzahlamtsbücher 1570, fol. 151r, under “Conterfetter und Maller: Josephen Arzimboldo Röm. Kaij Mt. Conterfetter und Maler hat ich sein hofbesoldung der monatlichen zwainzig gulden die gebür auch um funf monaten als von erster September des acht und sechzigesten bis zu endt monats January des neun und sechzigisten Jars, benenntlichn ainhundet gulden Reinisch Inhalt quittung am sybenszighenden dis Monat bezelt id est 100 fol.” 81. The full archival citation for this payment is given in Kaufmann, “Arcimboldo au Louvre,” p. 342, n. 5. 82. See Thomas DaCosta Kaufmann, “Arcimboldo and the Elector of Saxony,” in Scambio culturale con il nemico religioso: Italia e Sassonia attorno 1600, ed. Sybille Ebert-Schifferer, Rome, 2007, pp. 27–36. 83. Lomazzo, Scritti, p. 362. 84.Lomazzo, loc. cit. 85. Kaufmann, Mastery of Nature, p. 107; see Arcimboldo 1526–1593, pp. 184–86, cat. no. IV. 37. 86.See Rudolf, “Kunstbestrebungen,” pp. 185–87; Steven Orso, Philip IV and the Decoration of the Alcázar in Madrid, Princeton, 1986, pp. 162–63, 203. 87. See most recently Arcimboldo 1526–1593, pp. 130–34, cat. no. IV. 5–7. 88. Rudolf, “Kunstbestrebungen,” p 184 and n. 218. Ferino-Pagden, “Arcimboldo as ‘Conterfetter’ of Nature,” in Arcimboldo 1526–1593, p. 111 n. 26, has called attention to existence of early copies of these paintings in Spanish private collections. 89. Oil on canvas 75 x 66 cm; see most recently Arcimboldo 1526–1593, p. 148, cat. no. IV. 19 ill. p. 150. 90. See most recently Arcimboldo 1526–1593, p. 147, cat. IV. 16, ill. In this entry I did not, however, mention the hypothesis advanced here. 91. Rudolf, “Kunstbestrebungen,” p. 184 n. 219. Rudolf’s inference that the painting had been sold—and that Comanini did not know this—is probably incorrect, given a document of 1583 (see next note) which seems to speak of a merced, a favor being granted. The process seems to have been that Rudolf II had pictures sent to Philip and then suggested that Philip pay for them. As at the imperial court, transactions seem to have been of the nature in which artists presented pictures to rulers and then received some kind of favor in return. However, this payment cannot be interpreted as straightforwardly as if it were a sale. 92. Archivo General Simancas, Estado Alemania 691, Guillén de S. Clemente to Philip II, Vienna, 4 October 1583: “Hame (?) mandado [Rodolfo II] que scriviesse a V. M.d. que dessea mucho que V. M.d haga alguna mrd [merced] a Joseph Arzimboldo que es un milanes pintor suyo que en dias passados embio a V.m. d unas testas figuradas de diversos animales y flores como por su parte lo supplicara a V. m. d su embax.r.” I am grateful to Almudena Pérez de Tudela and Annemarie Jordan Gschwendt for supplying me with transcriptions of documents from Simancas.

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93. I inspected this work when it appeared at the sale in London in 1993 and thought that despite the supposed signature, it was at most a workshop copy. This seems to have been general opinion at the time, since the painting failed to sell. Giacomo Berra, “Arcimboldi, Vincenzo Campi, Figino, Fede Galizia, Caravaggio: Congiunture sulla nascita della natura morta in Lombardia,” in Vincenzo Campi: Scene del quotidiano, Cremona, 2000, p. 84, n. 59, who has only seen a photograph, calls it an excellent copy. Nevertheless the painting was published in the catalogue (though not actually exhibited) as a work by Arcimboldo in Arcimboldo 1526–1593, p.179, cat. no. IV. 34, ill. p.182. 94. This work is frequently identified with a painting by Arcimboldo known as “The Jurist.” See Arcimboldo 1526–1593, pp. 170–72, cat. no. IV. 30, ill. p. 173. 95. The account of the 1573 visit of Elector August presented in Kaufmann, “Arcimboldo au Louvre,” Revue du Louvre et des musées de France 27, 1977, p. 340, is enriched by the description in a letter of Ottavio Landi published by Rudolf: “Kunstbestrebungen Kaiser Maximilians II,” p. 166, which will be discussed further in this book. 96. Heinrich Zimmermann, “Das Inventar der Prager Schatz und Kunstkammer von 6. Dezember 1621 nach Akten des K. und K. Reichsfinanzarchiv in Wien,” Jahrbuch der Kunsthistorischen Sammlungen des Allerhöchsten Kaiserhauses 25, 1905, reg. no. 19437 no. 57: “Ein contrafaict von früchten vom Arcimboldo.” Geiger, p. 129. For these invertible paintings see most recently Arcimboldo 1526–1593, pp. 172–79, cat. no. IV. 31–33, and chapters 7 and 8 below. 97. For these pictures, see most recently Arcimboldo 1526–1593, pp. 184–86, cat. no. IV. 37–38. The date of Gherardini’s dedicatory letter to Rudolf II, published in a booklet of poems sent to accompany the paintings of Vertumnus and Flora, provides the terminus ante quem for the shipment of the pictures. See [Gio. Filippo Gherardini], All’Invittissimo Cesare Rodolfo Secondo componimenti Sopra le Due Quadri Flora et Vertumno fatti à Sua Sacra Cesarea Maestà da Giuseppe Arcimboldo, Milan, 1591, fol. A2r and A2v. See the next chapter for more on this booklet and on Gherardini. For more on the painting, see chapters 4 and 8 below. 98. See most recently Arcimboldo 1526–1593, p. 170, cat. no. IV. 29. 99. See Arcimboldo 1526–1593, pp. 144–46, cat. no. IV. 15. 100. See Kaufmann, School of Prague, p. 172. 101. For a discussion of these questions, see the entries in Arcimboldo 1526–1593. 102. Morigia, Historia, p. 566. 103. Morigia, Nobilità, p. 471. 104. Gian Paolo Lomazzo, Idea del tempio della pittura, most easily accessible in Scritti sulle arti, ed. Roberto Paolo Ciardi, Florence 1973, vol. 1, pp. 362–63. 105. See most recently Andreas Beyer, “Arcimboldo’s Sketches and Costumes for Court Festivals and Tourneys,” in Arcimboldo 1526–1593, pp. 243–47, and the illustrations on pp. 249–61. Beyer draws much of his information from Thomas DaCosta Kaufmann, Variations on the Imperial Theme in the Age of Maximilian II and Rudolf II, New York and London, 1978. 106. Still, see most fully for these Kaufmann, Variations on the Imperial Theme in the Age of Maximilian II and Rudolf II. See also the following note, and chapter 3. 107. See Elena Venturini, Il carteggio tra la corte cesarea e Mantova (1559–1636) (Fonti, repertori e studi per la storia di Mantova 5), Milan and Mantua 2002, p. 256, no. 190, Pomponazzo Aurelio to the Castellano di Mantova, dated 9 June 1578: “Accioché ché quest’ordinario non venga senza ch’io saluti vostra signoria, dirò che li signori mantovani no cedano in pompe et inventioni nell giostre a quelli baroni bohemi et signori della corte di sua maestà, la qual corre ancor lei all’anello, con una inventione dell’Arcemboldo pittore la qual riuscì solo in imaginatione . . . .” 108. See Roy Strong, Splendor at Court: Renaissance Spectacle and the Theater of Power, Boston, 1973. 109. The 1570 tournament was also intended to celebrate the betrothal of Archduchess Elizabeth, another daughter of Maximilian II, to King Charles IX of France. See further Francis A. Yates, The Valois Tapestries, London, 2nd ed., 1975, p. 63, and Kaufmann, Variations on the Imperial Theme, pp. 28–33. 110. See Variations on the Imperial Theme, pp. 33–40. 111. See most fully Otto G. Schindler, “Zan Tabarino, ‘Spielmann des Kaisers’: Italienische Komödianten des Cinquecento zwischen den Höfen von Wien und Paris,” Römische Historische Mitteilungen 43, 2000, pp. 411–544, especially pp. 447–48, 460 for Speyer, and 444–45 for the Prague tourna-

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ment. Also see “‘Il famoso Tabarino’: Un maschera italiana tra Vienna, Parigi e Napoli,” in Commedia dell’arte e spettacolo in musica tra sei e settecento, ed. Alessandro Lattanzi and Paologiovanni Maione, Naples, 2003, pp. 147–63, especially pp. 152–56. See further idem, “Zum Ganassa—vom Reichstag zur Bluthochzeit: Neue Funde zu Alberto Naselli, am Theater Ganassa,” in Theater Kunst Wissenschaft: Festschrift für Wolfgang Greisenegger zum 66. Geburtstag, Vienna, Cologne, and Weimar, 2004, pp. 301–22. 112. Schindler, “Zan Tabarino,” op. cit. and in general for their place within the history of the genre in Central Europe. Idem, “Comici dell’arte bereisen Europa: Ein Abriss,” Maske und Kothurn 50, no. 3, 2005, especially pp. 8–11. 113. Francesco Porzio, “La pittura di genere e la cultura popolare,” in La pittura in Italia: Il settecento, Milan, 1990, vol. 2, pp. 531–33. Idem, “Fonti carnevalesche del naturalismo nel cinquecento milanese: Alcuni ipotesi su Giuseppe Arcimboldi,” Arte Lombarda 105–7, 1993, pp.37–42. Idem, “Lomazzo e il realismo grottesco: Un capitolo del primitivismo nel cinquecento,” in Rabisch: Il grottesco nell’arte del cinquecento: L’Accademia della Val di Blenio, Lomazzo el’ambiente milanese, Milan,1998, pp. 23–36. This interpretation is specifically dependent upon the presentation of the carnivalesque by Baktin. 114. First published, and with a good illustration, in Pavel Preiss, Giuseppe Arcimboldo (Nové Prameny), Prague, 1967, fig. 48. 115. Keith Moxey, “Sebald Beham’s ‘Church Anniversary Holidays’: Festive Peasants as Instruments of Repressive Humour,” Simiolus 12, 1982, pp. 107–30. 116. See Rudolf, “Kunstbestrebungen,” p. 166. For these residences as villas, see Hilde Lietzmann, Das Neugebäude in Wien, Munich and Berlin, 1987. 117. See Kaufmann, Variations on the Imperial Theme. 118. Thomas DaCosta Kaufmann, “The Kunstkammer as a Form of Representatio: Remarks on the Collections of Rudolf II,” Art Journal 38, 1978, pp. 22–28. Republished in Grasping the World, ed. Daniel Preziosi and Claire Farago, Aldershot, 2004, pp. 526–37. 119. For Christian II’s visit see Kaufmann, Variations on the Imperial Theme, pp. 111–12. 120. See Kaufmann, “Arcimboldo au Louvre,” and idem, “Arcimboldo and the Elector of Saxony.” chapter 3 1. G. Comanini, Il Figino, in Paola Barocchi, ed. Trattati d’arte del Cinquecento, Bari, 1962, vol. 3, p. 268: “io conosco esser vero che non meno al buon pittore che al buon poeta fa bisogno d’una certa universale letteratura, con cui possa guisa d’un altro Proteo trasformarsi in diverse forme e vestirsi degli abiti altrui, quanto ad imitator conviene . . . .” 2. See Erwin Panofsky, “Artist, Scientist, Genius: Notes on the ‘Renaissance Dämmerung,’” in The Renaissance: Six Essays, New York, 1962, pp. 121–82. See further, for a discussion of this topic in relation to the imperial court, Thomas DaCosta Kaufmann, The Mastery of Nature: Aspects of Art, Science, and Humanism in the Renaissance, Princeton, 1993. 3. For two prominent examples from the period of Rudolf II, see Anthony Grafton, “Humanism and Science in Rudolphine Prague: Kepler in Context,” in Defenders of the Text: The Traditions of Scholarship in an Age of Science, 1450–1800, Cambridge, MA, and London, 1991, pp. 178–203. For Kepler’s drawing see Svetlana Alpers, The Art of Describing: Dutch Art in the Seventeenth Century, Chicago and London, 1983, especially pp. 49–50. For Tycho Brahe see most recently John Robert Christianson, “Tycho Brahe,” in Danmark og renæssancen 1500–1650, n.p. (Copenhagen), 2006, pp. 174–85. Examples from the period of Maximilian II are discussed in this chapter. 4. Cf. Charles Hope, “Sight Gags,” New York Review of Books 34, no. 14, 24 September 1987, p. 42, following Elizabeth McGrath, “‘Il Senso Nostro’: The Medici Allegory Applied to Vasari’s Mythological Frescoes in the Palazzo Vecchio,” in Giorgio Vasari: Tra decorazione ambientiale e storiografia artistica, ed. G.C. Garfagnini, Florence, 1985, pp. 130–32. See also Francesco Porzio, “Fonti carnevalesche del naturalismo nel Cinquecento milanese: Alcune ipotesi su Giuseppe Arcimboldi,” Arte Lombarda 105–7, 1993, especially pp. 37–38. 5. R.J.W. Evans, Rudolf II and his World: A Study in Intellectual History, Oxford, 1973, p. 118. Evans , ibid., pp. 118–29, and The Making of the Habsburg Monarchy, Oxford, 1979, pp. 20–24 gives an introduction to this group. See also, for more detail on several figures discussed here, Howard Louthan, The Quest for

252

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Compromise: Peacemakers in Counter-Reformation Vienna, Cambridge, 1997. A recent introduction to art and culture at the court of Maximilian II is Karl Schütz, “Art and Culture at the Court of Maximilian II,” in Arcimboldo 1526–1593, ed. Sylvia Ferino-Pagden, Paris, Vienna, and Milan, 2007, pp. 73–79. 6. Paolo Morigia, Historia dell’antichità di Milano, Milan, 1592, p. 556. 7. Louthan, Quest for Compromise, p.38. 8. See ibid., p. 30; Lazius’s early history is Vienna Austria, Vienna, 1546. 9. See Alphons Lhotsky, “Apis Colonna: Fabeln und Theorien über die Abkunft der Habssburger. Ein Exkurs zur Cronica Austrie des Thomas Ebendorfer,” in Aufsätze und Vorträge, ed. Hans Wagner and Heinrich Koller, Munich, 1971, vol. 2, p. 19. 10. See Marie Tanner, The Last Descendant of Aeneas: The Hapsburgs and the Mythic Image of the Emperor, New Haven and London, 1993. 11. Louthan, Quest for Compromise, p. 42. 12. Wolfgang Lazius, Commentariorum in genealogiam Austriacam libri duo, Basel, 1564. 13. See the comment on Lazius in Roberto Bizzocchi, Genealogie incredibili: Scritti di storia nel Europa Moderna, Bologna, 1995, p.47. I am grateful to Nancy Siraisi for pointing out the reference to Bizzocchi. 14. For Annius, see Anthony Grafton, “Traditions of Invention and Inventions of Tradition in Renaissance Italy: Annius of Viterbo,” in Defenders of the Text: The Traditions of Scholarship in and Age of Science, 1450–1800, Cambridge, MA, and London, 1991, pp. 76–103. 15. For Postel in Vienna see The Mastery of Nature, p. 144; for Postel and Annius see Bizzocchi, Genealogie p. 32; Grafton, Defenders of the Text, pp. 94–95. 16. Wolfgang Lazius, De gentium aliquot migrationibus, Frankfurt, 1600 (first published 1557). 17. Bizzocchi, Genealogie, p. 47. 18. Wolfgang Lazius, Commentariorum vetustorum numismatum, Vienna, 1558. See further, for this subject, John Cunnally, Images of the Illustrious: The Numismatic Presence in the Renaissance, Princeton, NJ, 1999. 19. See Grafton, “Scaliger’s Chronology: Philology, Astronomy, World History,” in Defenders of the Text, pp. 133–34. Professor Grafton, who has written extensively on Scaliger’s chronology elsewhere, is now engaged in a large study of the history of chronology. 20. See C.R. Ligota, “Annius of Viterbo and Historical Method,” Journal of the Warburg and Courtauld Institutes 50, 1987, p. 53. 21. Morigia, Historia, p. 554: “Dalla qual miniera derivò il cognome di Arcimboldi, per ciòche Arcimboldo in lingua Alaman (che così dicono loro) in nostra lingua vuol dire quella materia che sta insieme con l’Argento, e Boldo in quella lingua vuol dire in nostra lingua Bosco, come se noi Italiani diessimo miniera nel Bosco, egli Alemani dicono anticamentae solamente così (Arcimboldo), e questo cognome hanno sempre mantenuto . . . .” 22. See Walter Goffart, Historical Atlases: The First Three Hundred Years, 1570–1870, Chicago and London, 2003, p. 63. 23. It has been argued that Lazius turned to making his own illustrations because of a want of professional artists and engravers in Austria. See Goffart, ibid., pp. 61–62. 24. See Silvio Leydi, “Giuseppe Arcimboldo in Milan: Documents and Hypotheses,” in Arcimboldo 1526–1593, ed. Sylvia Ferino-Pagden, Paris, Vienna, and Milan, 2007, especially pp. 37–38. 25. There is substantial literature on the subject of Renaissance triumphal entries. Some of the older sources may still be consulted with profit for the general question: see Jean Jacquot, ed. Les Fêts de la Renaissance, 3 vols.,Paris, 1956, 1960, 1976; Roy Strong, Splendor at Court. Renaissance Spectacle and the Theater of Power, Boston, 1973; D.P. Snoep, Praal en propaganda: Triumfalia in de Noordelijke Nederlanden in de 16de en 17de eeuw, Alphen aan den Rijn, 1975. 26. Sources for this entry are Wolfgang Lazius, Epitome Solenniorum, quae in auspiciarum adventum..., Vienna, 1563; Caspar Stainhofer, Grundliche und Khurtze Beschreibung des alten und jungen Zugs, Vienna, 1566, reprinted, with its illustrations of the arches, in Josef Wünsch, “Der Einzug Kaisers Maximilians II zu Wien,” Berichte und Mitteilungen des Altertum-Verein zu Wien, vol. 46–8, pp. 25–31. 27. For interpretations of the entry see Louthan, Quest for Compromise, pp. 34–42, and also Barbara Chabrowe, “Baroque Temporary Structures Built for the Austrian Habsburgs,” Ph D dissertation,

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Columbia University, 1970, pp. 114–22, and 180ff; see also Thomas DaCosta Kaufmann, Variations on the Imperial Theme in the Age of Maximilian II and Rudolf II, New York and London, 1978, p. 27. 28. See K. Uhlirz, “Urkunden und Regesten aus dem Archiv der K.K. Reichshaupt- und Residenzstadt Wien,” Jahrbuch der Kunsthistorischen Sammlungen des Allerhöchsten Kaiserhauses 18, 1897, no. 15749, 15764, 15778. 29. For an introduction to this dimension of the work of Lorck, see Thomas DaCosta Kaufmann, Drawings from the Holy Roman Empire 1540–1680, Princeton, 1982, pp. 62–65, cat. no. 13–15. For Lorck in general, see the various studies of Erik Fischer, notably Melchior Lorck (ex. cat.), Copenhagen, 1962. For the Ortelius circle see Tine Meganck, “Erudite Eyes: Artists and Antiquarians in the Circle of Adam Ortelius (1527–1598),” Ph D dissertation, Princeton University, 2003. 30. For these studies in context, see Alexandrine N. St. Clair, The Image of the Turk in Europe, New York, 1973. For Lorck in Constantinople, see also Barnaby Rogerson, “A Double Perspective and a Lost Rivalry: Ogier de Busbecq and Melchior Lorck in Istanbul,” in Re-orienting the Renaissance: Cultural Exchanges with the East, ed. Gerald Maclean, with a foreword by William Dalrymple, Basingstoke, 2005, pp. 88–95. 31. For this theme, see in particular Türkische Kostbarkeiten aus dem Kunsthistorischen Museum (ex. cat.), Innsbruck, 1997. 32. For this category, see Julius von Schlosser (-Magnino), La letteratura artistica: Manuale delle fonti della storia dell’arte moderna, Vienna, 1964, 3rd rev. ed., ed. Otto Kurz, pp. 276–80. 33. See Kaufmann, Mastery of Nature, pp. 136–50. 34. See R.W. Lee, Ut Pictura Poesis: The Humanistic Theory of Painting, New York, 1967. 35. See Erwin Panofsky, Studies in Titian, Mostly Iconographic, New York, 1969, pp. 161–62, 164. 36. See further for the sources cited, and for a discussion of these pictures in comparison with Titian, Thomas DaCosta Kaufmann, “Éros et poesia: La peinture à la cour de Rodolphe II,” Revue de l’art 18, 1985, pp. 29–46. 37. See Kaufmann, “Éros et poesia.” 38. Ibid., pp. 148–50. The theme of the application of rhetorical and poetical ideals to painting in Rudolfine Prague was elaborated in Thomas DaCosta Kaufmann, “The Eloquent Artist: Towards an Understanding of the Stylistics of Painting at the Court of Rudolf II,” Leids Kunsthistorisch Jaarboek 1, 1982, p. 119–48, and then in many subsequent publications. 39. See for this point Elisabeth Klecker, “Auster und Abspurge: Ein Habsburg Mythos des 16. Jahrhunderts,” in Renaissancekultur und antike Mythologie, ed. Bodo Guthmüller, Vienna, 1999, pp. 167–82. 40. For a survey of them see Kaufmann, Variations on the Imperial Theme. 41. For Strada see Louthan, The Quest for Compromise, pp. 24–46, and the many publications of Dirk Jacob Jansen, starting with “ Jacopo Strada (1515–1588): Antiquario della Sacra Cesearea Maestà,” Leids Kunsthistorisch Jaarboek 1, 1982, pp. 57–70; “Example and Examples: The Potential Influence of Jacopo Strada on the Development of Rudolphine Art,” in Prag um 1600: Beiträge zur Kunst und Kultur am Hofe Rudolfs II, Freren, 1988, pp. 132–46; “The Instruments of Patronage: Jacopo Strada at the Court of Maximiian II,” in Kaiser Maximilian II.: Kultur und Politik im 16. Jahrhundert, ed. Friedrich Edelmayer et al., Vienna, 1992, pp 231–45; “The Case of Jacopo Strada as an Imperial Architect,” in Rudolf II, Prague and the World: Papers from the International Conference, Prague 2–4 September 1997, ed. B. Bukovinská, L. Koneˇcný, and I. Muchka, Prague, 1998, pp. 229–35. See also Hilda Lietzmann, “Der kaiserliche Antiquar Jacopo Strada und Kurfürst August von Sachsen,” Zeitschrift für Kunstgschichte 60, 1997, pp. 377–99; “War Jacopo Strada als Antiquar Rudolfs II. in Prag tätig?” in Rudolf II, Prague and the World, pp. 236–38. The most recent survey of Strada’s activities is found in L’album fiorentino dei Disegni Artificiali raccolti da Jacopo e Ottavio Strada, ed. Vittorio Marchis and Luisa Dolza, Rome, 2002, including essays by Jansen and the present author. See also the following notes. 42. Jacobus Strada, Epitome thesauri antiquitatum . . ., Lyon, 1553. For Strada as a numismatist see Cunnally, Images of the Illustrious, passim; Francis Haskell, History and its Images: Art and the Interpretation of the Arts New Haven and London, 1993, pp. 14–16 and 36–38; Dirk Jacob Jansen, “Jacob Strada’s Antiquarian Interests: A Survey of his Musaeum and its Purpose,” in Xenia: Semestrale di antichità 21, 1991, pp. 59–76; and idem, “Antonio Agustin and Jacopo Strada,” in M.H. Crawford, ed., Antonio

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Agustín between Renaissance and Counter Reform (Warburg Institute Surveys and Texts, vol. 34), London, 1993, pp. 211–45. 43. Louthan, Quest for Compromise, p. 28. See also Karl Rudolf, “Die Kunstsbestrebungen Kaiser Maximilian II. im Spannungsfeld zwischen Madrid und Wien,” in Jahrbuch der Kunsthistorischen Sammlungen in Wien 91, 1995, p. 172f. 44. See in particular Thomas DaCosta Kaufmann, “Il lavoro della famiglia Strada sui mulini e sul moto delle acque a essi correlato / The Stradas’ Work on Mills and the Movement of Water in Context,” in L’album fiorentino dei Disegni Artificiali raccolti da Jacopo e Ottavio Strada, ed. Vittorio Marchis and Luisa Dolza, Rome, 2002, pp.1–35 and pp. 199–215. 45. See Hilda Lietzmann, Das Neugebäude in Wien: Sultan Süleymans Zelt—Kaiser Maximilians II. Lustschloß, Munich and Berlin, 1987, pp. 152ff. and passim. 46. See in general, for the use of images in numismatics, John Cunnally, Images of the Illustrious: The Numismatic Presence in the Renaissance, Princeton, NJ, 1999. 47. For Strada’s involvement in the 1571 tournament, and the evidence for it, see Kaufmann, Variations on the Imperial Theme, pp. 61–64, fig. 45, illustrating Österreichische Nationalbibliothek cod. min. 21/3, fol. 74r., which is inscribed by Ottavio Strada: “E fu vestito l’Elephant per le nozze del Serenissimo Arciduca Carlo, inuentione di mio padre.” Strada’s designs for the 1572 tournament are discussed in Thomas DaCosta Kaufmann, “The Festival Designs of Tacopo Strada Reconsidered,” artibus et histonae, forthcoming. Arcimboldo’s probable involvement with this tournament is discussed in Kaufmann, Variations on the Imperial Theme, pp. 40–43. 48. For Fonteo’s biography, see Fedele Savio, “Giovanni Battista Fontana o Fonteio scrittore milanese del sec. xvi.,” Archivo Storico Lombardo 4 (32), 1905, pp. 343–75. 49. For Primo Conti, see Ottavio Paltrinieri, Notizie intorno alla vita di Primo del Conte Milanese della Congregazione di Somasca: Teologo al Concilio di Trento a cui si aggiungono quelle di alcuni letterati che furono suoi allievi, le sue lettere e poesie latine e quelle di altri a lui e il dialogo di M. Ant. Majoragio, intitolato Primus Comes seu de Eloquentia, Rome, 1805. 50. Catonis Disticha Moralia cum scholiis D. Erasmi Rotterdami . . ., Milan, 1540, p. 1v: “quae nuper additi sunt adnotationes Philerasmi viri eruditissmi . . .” Notes signed by “Philerasmus” are intercalated in the text. I have used the example in the Biblioteca Trivulziana, Milan, Triv. L 3706. 51. For Conti and Erasmus and the attribution of this text, see Silvana Seidel Menchi, Erasmo in Italia, Turin, 1987, pp. 275–78 and p. 445 n. 33. For the attribution, see further Simone Albonico, Il Ruginoso Stile: Poeti e Poesia in Volgare a Milano nella Prima Metà del Cinquecento, Milan, 1995, pp. 200, 201n. 52. Ibid., p. 275. 53. For Maioragio, see Albonico, Ruginoso Stile, p. 276; the description of Maioragio is from p. 208; for the link with Alciati, see ibid., pp. 234, 276. Maioragio’s text is printed in Paltrinieri, Notizie intorno alla vita di Primo del Conte. Mioragio also published a Latin translation of Aristotle’s Rhetoric with commentary (De arte rhetorica, Venice 1573), which title suggests that he may have taken from Primo Conti (a Primo Conte auctoris). I have not been able to consult this book. 54. For Alciati, emblems, and concettismo, see Mario Praz, Studies in Seventeenth-century Imagery, London, 2 vols., 1939 and 1947. For an excellent brief introduction, see William S. Heckscher, “Renaissance Emblems: Observations Suggested by Some Emblem-Books in the Princeton University Library,” reprinted in Art and Literature: Studies in Relationship, ed. Egon Verheyen, Baden-Baden, 1985, pp. 111–26. 55. Paolo Morigia, La nobilità di Milano, Milan, 1615 (reprinted Bologna, 1979) p. 244. 56. Kaufmann, Mastery of Nature, p. 197. 57. See Bram de Klerck, The Brothers Campi: Images and Devotion: Religious Painting in Sixteenth-century Lombardy, trans. Andrew McCormick, Amsterdam, 1999, pp. 144–45. 58. Lettere Spirituali della devota religiosa Angelica Paola Antonia de Negri Milanese: Vita della medesma raccolta da Gio. Battista Fontana de’ Conti, Rome 1576, p. 70. See further Savio, “Giovanni Battista Fontana o Fonteio,” pp. 342–50. 59. De Prisca Caesiorum Gente, Bologna, 1582.

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60. “Collectanea de Archiepiscopis Mediolani, usque ad S. Carolum Borromeum,” in Milan, Biblioteca Ambrosiana, Ms. V, 35, sup. 61. For this poem and its date see Kaufmann, Mastery of Nature, passim and appendix. 62. Vienna, Österreichische Nationalbibliothek, cod. 10466, “De Risu, sive quo risus sit virtus, Dialogus Ioanni Michaelio Frangipani Veneto penes Caesarem oratori dicatus,” dedicated at Speyer, 1570; see fol. 2v–3r for Fonteo’s peregrinations with the court. 63. “Oratio habita Pragae in summo arcis templo pro funere Melchioris Biliae internuntii pontificii coram regum oratoribus et caesarea curia,” Vienna, Österreichische Nationalbibliothek, cod. 7802. This oration seems to have escaped previous attention by scholarship. 64. Stephani Vinandi Pighii Epistolarium, ed. Henry de Vocht, Louvain, 1959, p. 309, no. 190. 65.Idem (Pighius), Hercules Prodicius, Antwerp, 1587, pp. 623–24. 66. For information on and sources for the collaboration of Fonteo and Arcimboldo on tournaments, see Variations on the Imperial Theme, pp. 28–43. 67. As indicated clearly in Variations, fig. 35: the basis for the attribution is misstated by Giacomo Berra, “Un Autoritratto Cartaceo di Giuseppe Arcimboldi,” Arte Lombarda, no. 116, 1996, p. 59n. 68. Bartolommeo Taegio, La Villa, Milan, 1559. Idem, Il Liceo, Milano, 1572, is also relevant for its discussion of paradoxes, games, and the relation between poets and painters. 69. Seidel Menchi, Erasmo in Italia, p. 276. 70. For the biography and bibliography of Gherardini, see Filippio Argelati, Bibliotheca Scriptorum Mediolanensium, Milan, 1745, col. 679. 71. This document was first found and published by Robert S. Miller, “Note su Giuseppe Arcimboldo, Giuseppe Meda, Giovanni Battista della Rovere detto il Fiammenghino ed altri pittori Milanesi / Notes on Giuseppe Arcimboldo, Giuseppe Meda, Giovanni Battista della Rovere detto il Fiammenghino and other Milanese Painters,” Studi Monzesi 5, 1989, pp. 22–23, no. 14. The original will has, however, not yet been found and does not seem to be recoverable. 72. Giacomo Berra, “Arcimboldi, Vincenzo Campi, Figino, Fede Galizia, Caravaggio: Congiunture sulla nascita della natura morta in Lombardia,” in Vincenzo Campi: Scene del quotidiano, ed. Franco Palliaga (ex. cat. Cremona), Milan, 2000, p. 81 n. 1, publishes a document to this effect. 73. Silvio Leydi, “Giuseppe Arcimboldo in Milan: Documents and Hypotheses. Summary of Documents Relating to the Milanese Period,” in Giuseppe Arcimboldo 1526–1593, ed. Sylvia Ferino-Pagden, Paris, Vienna, and Milan, 2007, p. 301. 74. G. Comanini, Il Figino, in Paola Barocchi, ed. Trattati d’arte del Cinquecento, Bari and Laterza, 1962, vol. 3, p. 257. 75. [Gio. Filippo Gherardini], All’Invittissimo Cesare Rodolfo Secondo componimenti Sopra le Due Quadri Flora et Vertumno fatti à Sua Sacra Cesarea Maestà da Giuseppe Arcimboldo, Milan, 1591. See, for this collection and for Gherardini’s biography, Giacomo Berra, “Allegoria e mitologia nella pittura dell’Arcimboldi: La ‘Flora’ e il ‘Vertunno’ nei versi di un libretto sconosciuto di rime,” Acme 41, 1988, pp. 11–39. 76. Canzone, in Alcuni versi di Gio. Filippo Gherardini in occasione delle nozze de i molt’ Illustrissimi signori Giulio Dardonone, et Zanobia Corta, Milan, 1588, p. 6: Zeusi non ci è, serbi di lei il mortale nè suoi colori, l’Arcimboldo mio, o il Figino gentile 77. Gherardini, All’Invittissimo Cesare, fol. A2r and A2v. 78. Gian Paolo Lomazzo, Idea del Tempio della Pittura, in Scritti sulle arti, ed. Roberto Paolo Ciardi, Florence, 1973, vol. 1, p. 364. 79. Gregorio Comanini, Degli affetti della Mistica Theologia tratti della cantica di Salomone, et sparsi di varie guise di poesie, Venice, 1590, pp. 2–3. 80. Alla santita di nostro Signore il Beatissimo Gregorio Quatrodecimo . . . sonetto artificioso. 81. See introduction to Gregorio Comanini, The Figino or the Purpose of Painting: Art Theory in the Late Renaissance, trans. and ed., Ann Doyle-Anderson and Giancarlo Marino, Toronto, Buffalo, and London, 2001, pp. xii–xiii. 82. Lomazzo, Idea, p. 364.

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Notes to Pages 81–85

83. Paolo Morigia, La Nobilità di Milano, Milan, 1595, p. 279. 84. Gherardo Borgogni, Nuova Scielta di Rime, Bergamo, 1592, p. 140 (on Arcimboldo), pp. 1, 2, 15, 1, 17 (on Figino); idem., Le Muse Toscane dei Diversi nobilissimi ingegni, Bergamo, 1594, pt. 2, p.19 (on Arcimboldo), p. 31 (Comanini on Figino); Bernardino Baldini, Carminum Appendix, Milan, 1600, pp. 43 and 44 (on Arcimboldo, with an epitaph of Arcimboldo on p 44). 85. See Giovan Paolo Lomazzo (e i Facchini della val di Blenio), Rabisch, ed. Dante Isella, Turin, 1993, pp. 19–20, no. I, 7; and p. 41, no. I, 20. For Foliani’s poem on Gregory XIV see idem, De Gregorio XIV, Milan, 1590. Foliani also published Carminum liber unus, Milan, 1579. 86. Paltrinieri, Notizie intorno alla vita di Primo del Conte, p. 38. 87. Ibid., pp. 72–73. Foliani’s letter was printed in his Sigismundi Foliani Burmiensis, Epistolarium Libri V, Venice, 1587. 88. In addition to the poems on Figino and Arcimboldo discussed here, see the comments and poems on Fede Galizia in Gherardo Borgogni, La Fonte del Diporto, Bergamo, 1598, pp. 39f. 89. British Library, London Ms Kings 323, fol. 54r: Questi si uaghi pomi Non è d’arte fattura Che’ à far orpe si belle arte non vale Nè può tanti anni conservar natura Frutto caduco, e frale cho breuissimi giorni appena dura Ma questa è sol, Figino, forza e possanza Del tuo stile immortale Che d’arte vinci, e la natura avanza [crossed out below: Figin li belli filbbi ingngessi pingesse in questi . . .] Io: Ambrosij Figini opus 90. See Deborah Parker, Bronzino: Renaissance Painter as Poet, Cambridge and New York, 2000. Michelangelo’s poetry has garnered a considerable literature: to begin, see Christopher Ryan, The Poetry of Michelangelo: An Introduction, London, 1998. 91. Rime di Gio. Paolo Lomazzo Milanese Pittor divise in sette libri. Nelle quali ad imitatione de i Grotteschi usati da’pittori, ha contato di lodi di Deo, & de le cose sacre,di principi, di Signori, & huomoni litterati, di pittori, scoltori, & architetti . . . et però intitolati Grotteschi, non solo dilettevoli per la varietà de le inventioni, mà utili ancora per la moralità che vi si contiene, Milan, 1587. 92. Ibid., p. 100 for Luini, and see also Lomazzo, Trattato dell’arte della pittura, scoltura et archittetura, in Scritti sulle arti, ed. Roberto Paolo Ciardi, vol. 2, Florence, 1974, p. 246, for Michelangelo, Ferrari, Luini, and Bronzino. 93. This matter is discussed in Thomas DaCosta Kaufmann, “Arcimboldo’s Serious Jokes: ‘Mysterious but Long Meaning,’” in The Verbal and the Visual: Essays in Honor of William Sebastian Heckscher, ed. Karl Ludwig Selig and Elizabeth Sears, New York, 1990, pp. 78–80. 94. [Gherardini], All’Invittissimo Cesare Rodolfo Secondo, Fol. B4r: Il Medesimo VERTUNNO à i riguardanti mad di G. A. da Milano A che tanto stupore, E poi lieti ridete? Certo, che solo un mucchio mi credete Di frutti, e di verdura. Son Vertunno, e mi pregio esser fattura De l’Arcimboldo, di sì alto ingegno, Che ben giostra di par con la Natura. Mà che gli manca? Giove il facci degno Di quel furto diuin con grato ciglio Che di Giapeto fece il magno figlio.

Notes to Pages 85–86

25 7

fol D1v: All’Arcimboldo Sonetto di. G.A. da Milano: Se di lode, e di fama assai è degno Pittor, che ben retragga un solo oggetto Di quanti ogn’hor ne form à suo diletto Il supremo rettor del trino Regno O più d’Apelle, e chi giunge al tuo segno Che tanti in un ne aduni e con effetto Un viso human ne fingi si perfetto, Che l’ammira ciascun piu bell’ingegno? Tu di libri, di frondi, frutti, e fiori, D’animali vari, e di vari stromenti, E d’altre cose ancor, che non descrivo, Con giuste linee espresse, e suoi colori Il viso altrui si ben ne rappresenti Che’n dubbio stasti, qual sia il finto, o’l vivo. 95. See Kaufmann, Variations on the Imperial Theme. 96. Idem, Mastery of Nature, pp. 151–73. 97. Cf. Hope, “Sight Gags,” p. 42, who says that Arcimboldo’s comments “seem entirely conventional, and his iconographic proposals are remarkable only for their banality.” This comment is itself remarkable, considering how unusual such a proposal is, which would include the representation of silkworms on a wall or ceiling! 98. Benno Geiger, I dipinti ghiribizzosi di Giuseppe Arcimboldi: Pittore Illusionista del Cinquecento (1527–1593), Florence, 1954, pp. 124–25, citing Jahrbuch der kunsthistorischen Sammlungen des Allerhöchsten Kaiserhauses 5, 1887, reg. no. 4565. 99. See also Berra, “Un Autoritratto Cartaceo.” chapter 4 1. For the relation to Ovid see Thomas DaCosta Kaufmann, The Mastery of Nature: Aspects of Art, Science, and Humanism in the Renaissance, Princeton, NJ, 1993, pp. 114, 124, 127–130. 2. This distinction is made, for example, by Charles Hope in his review of the Arcimboldo exhibition. “Sight Gags,” New York Review of Books, 24 September 1987, pp. 41–44. 3. Vincenzo Cartari, Le imagini delli dei de gli antichi, Venice, 1571 (reprint, 1976; first ed. 1556), p. 276. 4. This may have been mediated by Cartari’s image and translation, as argued by Giacomo Berra, “Allegoria e mitologia nella pittura dell’Arcimboldi: La ‘Flora’ e il ‘Vertunno’ nei versi di un libretto sconosciuto di rime,” Acme 41, 1988, pp. 11–39, but the ultimate source is Propertius, and Arcimboldo’s painting (and poem) may be related to the broader issue of the reception of Propertius in the Renaissance. For these points see especially Kaufmann, The Mastery of Nature, pp. 129–35. 5. See Joseph Anthony Mazzeo, “Metaphysical Poetry and the Poetic of Correspondence,” Journal of the History of Ideas, 14, 1952, p. 223. 6. See chapter 8 for further discussion of Arcimboldo in relation to fantasia. This notion is discussed well by Martin Kemp, “From Mimesis to Fantasia: The Quattrocento Vocabulary of Creation, Imagination and Genius in the Visual Arts,” Viator 8, 1977, pp. 347–98, and by David Summers, Michelangelo and the Language of Art, Princeton, NJ, 1981, pp. 103–43, with reference to Arcimboldo on p. 139. 7. J.A. Cuddon, The Penguin Dictionary of Literary Terms and Literary Theory, London, 1999 (4th ed.), p. 165. 8. Kaufmann, Mastery of Nature, p. 259 n. 29. See Mazzeo, “Metaphysical Poetry,” for an older but still insightful exploration of concettismo in relation to metaphysical poetry. 9. See especially for this subject Th. A.G. Wilberg Vignau-Schuurman, Die emblematischen Elemente im Werke Joris Hoefnagels, Leiden, 1969, 2 vols.; Lee Hendrix and eadem (as Thea Vignau-Wilberg),

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Notes to Pages 87–94

Mira Calligraphiae Monumenta: A Sixteenth-Century Calligraphic Manuscript Inscribed by Georg Bocskay and Illuminated by Joris Hoefnagel, Malibu, 1992. 10. Roland Barthes, Arcimboldo, trans. John Shepley, with a text by Achille Bonito Oliva, Milan, 1980, pp. 15–16. 11. See for example the classic studies by C.S. Lewis, The Allegory of Love: A Study in Medieval Tradition, Oxford, 1938; and Don Cameron Allen, Mysteriously Meant: The Rediscovery of Pagan Symbolism and Allegorical Interpretation in the Renaissance, Baltimore, 1970. 12. Gregorio Comanini, Degli affetti della Mistica Theologia tratti della cantica di Salomone, et sparsi di varie guise di poesie, Venice, 1590, pp. 2–3. 13. Ibid., prologue, fol. a2v–a3r. 14. For these images and references to them, and for a general overview of Arcimboldo’s painted oeuvre, see Thomas DaCosta Kaufmann, The School of Prague: Painting at the Court of Rudolf II, Chicago and London, 1988, pp. 164–72. 15. For the rhetorical elements in these poems and their relation to Arcimboldo’s paintings of Flora and Vertumnus, see most recently Philippe Morel, “Arcimboldo’s Composite Heads, Grotesques, and the Aesthetics of Paradox,” in Giuseppe Arcimboldo 1526–1593, ed. Sylvia Ferino-Pagden, Paris, Vienna, and Milan, 2007, pp. 221–31, following the lead of Barthes, Arcimboldo. 16. For this subject in relation to the time of Rudolf II, see in general Emily Bakemeier, “The Portraits Historiés of Henry IV of France,” Ph D dissertation, Princeton University, 2001, with references to further literature on the portrait historié. 17. See Gian Paolo Lomazzo, Idea del Tempio della Pittura, in Scritti sulle arti, ed. Roberto Paolo Ciardi, Florence, 1973, vol. 1, p. 362. For Zasius see Anja Meußner, Für Kaiser und Reich: Politische Kommunikation in der frühen Neuzeit: Johann Ulrich Zasius (1521–1570) als Rat und Gesandter der Kaiser Ferddinand I. und Maximilian II, Husum, 2004, 18. G. Comanini, Il Figino, in Paola Barocchi, ed. Trattati d’arte del Cinquecento, Bari and Laterza, 1962, vol. 3, p. 263. 19. This work has been identified following Sven Alfons, Giuseppe Arcimboldo, Malmö, 1957 (Tidskrift för Konstvetenskap 31 [Symbolister 2]), pp. 56–59, with a painting now in Gripsholm Castle (Figure 4.2), Sweden, but it is not clear if the identification is correct. 20. See Karl Rudolf, “Die Kunstbestrebungen Kaiser Maximilians II. im Spannungsfeld zwischen Madrid und Wien: Untersuchungen zu den Sammlungen der österreichischen und spanischen Habsburger,” Jahrbuch der Kunsthistorischen Sammlungen in Wien 91, 1995, p. 166. 21. Alfons, Arcimboldo, pp. 62–8, first advanced the possibility that the so-called Librarian, a man made of books, known as a composition by Arcimboldo, was a portrait of Lazius. This identification is still maintained by Görel Cavalli-Bjorkman in the most recent publication on Arcimboldo, Arcimboldo 1526–1593, p. 170, cat. no. IV. 29; Cavalli-Bjorkman also suggests that the painting of an invertible head with a plate of meat may be a portrait: ibid., p. 172, cat.no. IV. 31. 22. Thomas DaCosta Kaufmann, “Arcimboldo’s Imperial Allegories,” Zeitschrift für Kunstgeschichte 39, 1976, pp. 275–96; idem, “Arcimboldo and Propertius: A Classical Source for Rudolf II as Vertumnus,” Zeitschrift für Kunstgeschichte 48, 1985, pp. 117–23; both now in idem, The Mastery of Nature: Aspects of Art, Science, and Humanism in the Renaissance, Princeton, NJ, 1993, pp. 100–135. 23. Given this testimony of Comanini, it seems self-contradictory for Morel, “Arcimboldo’s Composite Heads,” p. 230 n. 29, to regard this evidence with caution and view it as indecisive on the one hand while relying on the importance of Comanini’s poem for his interpretation of Vertumnus on the other. 24. See Kaufmann, “Arcimboldo’s Imperial Allegories.” 25. Further reasons for the choice of Winter, and Maximilian’s identification with this season, are discussed in Thomas DaCosta Kaufmann, The Mastery of Nature: Aspects of Art, Science, and Humanism in the Renaissance, Princeton, NJ, 1993, p. 124; for his appearance as Winter in a tournament, idem, Variations on the Imperial Theme in the Age of Maximilian II and Rudolf II, New York and London, 1978, p. 38. 26. See for these most recently Thomas DaCosta Kaufmann, “Repräsentieren, Replizieren, Reproduzieren: Herrscherporträts der Renaissance,” in Drei Fürstenbildnisse: Meisterwerke der Representatio

Notes to Pages 94–100

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Maiestatis der Renaissance, ed. Martina Minning (ex. cat.), Dresden, Staatliche Kunstsammlungen, 2008, pp. 8–26. 27. See Arcimboldo 1526–1593, pp. 144–46. 28. Aurea nunc tandem rutilanti sidere fulgent saecula sub clipeis Maximilane tuis saecula mille modis multos optata per annos quae triplex capiti dant diadema tuo. Nam novus invicta Jovis es, demissus ab arce Hector, ut imperio regna superba premas Et ubi victrices aquilae sint gloria cum sis notus et Eois, victor et Hesperiis. See Milton Steinhardt, Jacobus Vaet and his Motets, East Lansing, MI, 1951, p. 21, for the text, which I have edited slightly and put in stanzas. Other motets by Vaet in honor of Maximilian II and other Habsburgs are published ibid., pp. 20–22. 29. See initially for this subject Kaufmann, “Arcimboldo’s Imperial Allegories.” 30. For more on these events see chapter 2 above, and Thomas DaCosta Kaufmann, Variations on the Imperial Theme in the Age of Maximilian II and Rudolf II, New York and London, 1978, especially p. 38. 31. Sylvia Ferino-Pagden, “Court Artist, Philosopher, Rhétoriquer, Magician, or Entertainer?,” in Arcimboldo 1526–1593, p. 22. 32. See most recently, for the context of this gift, Kaufmann, “Arcimboldo and the Elector of Saxony.” 33. For the original version of these two works, bearing Saxon arms, see ibid., and The School of Prague, pp. 168–69, cat. nos. 2.15 and 2.16. From previously published documents Rudolf, “Kunstbestrebungen,” pp. 185–86, identifies similar paintings that belonged to the king of Spain as works by Arcimboldo. A version of the Wine Steward (Butler) bearing the arms of Philip II of Spain was sold at auction in London, Sotheby’s 9 April 1986, pp. 144–45. I did not believe, however, that this picture was more than a copy of a workshop production when I saw it. 34. Comanini, Figino, ed. cit., p. 269: “Del piacere che quale Maiestà se ne prese e delle risa che sene fecero per l’Imperial Corte non occorre che io il vi dica. Potete imaginarilovi da voi stessi.” 35. See chapter 6, note 79. 36. Comanini, Figino, ed. cit. 3, p. 258. I use here the translation in Gregorio Comanini, The Figino; or On the Purpose of Painting: Art Theory in the Late Renaissance, ed., trans., and intro. Ann Doyle-Anderson and Giancarlo Maiorino, Toronto, Buffalo, and London, 2001, p. 19. 37. See Anthony Grafton, “Renaissance Histories of Art and Nature,” in Bernardette BensaudeVincent and William R. Newman, ed. The Artificial and the Natural: An Evolving Polarity, Cambridge, MA, and London, 2007, p. 194. 38. Gabriele Paleotti, Discorso intorno alle Imagini Sacre e Profane, in Paola Barocchi, ed. Trattati d’arte del Cinquecento, Bari, 1962 (first ed. Bologna, 1582), vol. 2, p. 445. 39. Vincenzo Danti, Trattato delle perfette proporzione, in Barocchi, Trattati d’arte del Cinquecento, 1, 235–36: “Come sono le chimere, sotto le quali si veggono tutte le cose in odo fate che, quanto al tutto di loro, non sono imitate dalla natura, ma si bene composte parte di questa e parte di quella cosa naturale, facendo in tutto nuovo per sé stesso. Le quale chimere intendo io che sieno come un genere, sotto qui si comprendiano tutte le specie di grottesche . . . .” 40. Giovan Battista Armenini, De’ veri precetti della pittura, ed. Marina Gorreri, Turin, 1988, pp. 34, 219. 41. For opposing points of view on Arcimboldo’s paintings as grotesques, see Hope, “Sight Ggags,” vs. Morel, “Arcimboldo’s Composite Heads.” 42. See Kaufmann, The Mastery of Nature, pp. 107–8, 151–73.

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Notes to Pages 100–104

43. For Fonteo, grilli, and chymerae, see ibid., pp. 107–8; for Lomazzo, see Giovanni Paolo Lomazzo, Rime, Milan, 1587, p. 5. 44. Lomazzo, Trattato, in Scritti, ed. cit. vol. 2, p. 367. 45. Barry Wind, “Pitture Ridicole: Some Late Cinquecento Comic Genre Paintings,” Storia dell’arte 20, January-April 1974, pp. 28 n. 26. 46. Giovanni Andrea Gilio, Dialogo nel quale si ragiona degli errori e degli abusi de’ pittori circa l’istorie, (first ed. Camerino, 1564), in Barocchi, Trattati d’arte vol. 2, p. 19: “perché non ci vogliamo ridere dei mostri, ch’abbiamo detto che non sono nè possono essere?” 47. Giorgio Vasari, Opere, ed. Gaetano Milanesi, Florence, 1981 (reprint), vol. 1, p. 193: “Le grottesche sono una spezie di pitture licenziose e ridicole molto, fatte dagli antichi per ornamenti di vani, dove in alcuni luoghi non stava ben altro che cose in aria: per il che facevano in quelle tutte sconciature di mostri, per stretteza della natura, e per gricciolo e ghiribizzo degli artefici..” 48. See Nicole Dacos, La découverte de la Domus Aurea et la formation des grottesques à la Renaissance, London, 1969; André Chastel, La grotesque, Paris, 1988, p. 48; David R. Coffin, “Pirro Ligorio and Decoration at Ferrara, Art Bulletin 37, 1955, pp. 182–85; Summers, Michelangelo and the Language of Art, pp. 496–97 n. 106. 49. See further, for this topic, Wind, “Pitture Ridicole,” pp. 25–35. Wind, however, is dealing with genre paintings, i.e. pictures of peasants—not other types of paintings. 50. Paleotti, Discorso, ed. cit. 2, p. 390: “Sono altre pitture che chiamiamo ridicole, perchè muovono il riso a chi le riguarda; il che potendo nascere da varie cause . . .” 51. See, for this subject in general, Mary A. Grant, The Ancient Rhetorical Theories of the Laughable: The Greek Rhetoricians and Cicero, Madison, WI, 1924. 52. I use here the translation by George Bull of Baldesar Castiglione, The Book of the Courtier, London, 2003, p. 155. 53.Paleotti, Discorso, ed. cit., p. 390. 54. Vincentii Madii Brixiani, De ridiculis, in Vincetii Madii Brixiani et Bartholomei Lombardi Veronensis, In Aristotelis Librum de Poetica communes explanationes Madii vero in eundem librum Propriae Annotationes, Eiusdem de Ridiculis . . ., Venice, 1550 (reprinted Munich, 1969), pp. 302ff. 55. Maggi, ibid., pp. 301ff. et passim; Paleotti Discorso, ed. cit., p. 390. 56. See Barbara C. Bowen, “Ciceronian Wit and Renaissance Rhetoric,” Rhetorica 16, no. 4, 1998, pp. 409–29. See also eadem, “A Neglected Renaissance Art of Joking,” Rhetorica 21, no. 3, 2003, especially pp. 137f with notes. 57. Paleotti, Discorso, ed. cit., p. 390: “Intorno alla prima dicono alcuni che, essendo necessario, per causare il ridcolo, che qui se esce o farebbe una certa novità, la quale, cogliendo l’uom all’improviso, gli eccita admirazione, et essendo che le cose maravigliose secondo Aristotele porgon diletto.” 58. Lomazzo, Idea, ed. cit., p. 362: “e una meraviglia a vederlo; come maravigliosi in somma sono tutti gl’altri quadri da lui fatti con sommo artificio.” 59. Comanini, Figino, ed. cit., p. 268. 60 For this topic in general, see Peter Burke, “Frontiers of the Comic in Early Modern Italy,” reprinted in Varieties of Cultural History, Ithaca, NY, 1997, pp. 77–93. 61. For summaries of this literature, and bibliography, see Barbara C. Bowen, “Renaissance Collections of Facetiae, 1344–1490: A New Listing,” Renaissance Quarterly 39, no. 1, 1986, pp. 1–15; eadem, “Renaissance Collections of Facetiae, 1499–1528: A New Listing,”Renaissance Quarterly 39, no. 2, 1986, pp. 263–75; eadem, “The Collection of Facezie Attributed to Angelo Poliziano,” Bibliothèque d’Humanisme et Renaissance 56, 1994, pp. 27–38. 62. See Barbara C. Bowen, “Two Literary Genres: The Emblem and the Joke,” Journal of Medieval and Renaissance Studies 15, no. 1, 1985, pp. 29–35. 63. See in general Daniel Ménager, La Renaissance et le rire, Paris, 1995. 64. See M.A. Screech and Ruth Calder, “Some Renaissance Attitudes to Laughter,” in Humanism in France at the End of the Middle Ages and in the Early Renaissance, ed. A.H.T. Levi, Manchester and New York, 1970, pp. 216–28. 65. Most easily available in Laurent Joubert, Treatise on Laughter, trans. and annotated by Gregory David de Rocher, University, AL, 1980.

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66. Ioannis Baptistae Fonteii Primionis, De risu, Vienna, Österreichische Nationalbibliothek, cod. 10466, fol. 7r: “Recensebantur autem (ut ferè saepissime accidit, ea, quae in palatio fiunt, dicunturve, libenter referri abscentibus ut soleant) tum actiones morionum,tum ludicrae, ridiculaeque voces cuiuspiam ac animo impotes, ut peritus ex sano insani quibus sane exhilaratum Principem optimam, et Clementissimum Caesarem Maximilianum converti in Risum narrant.” 67. See especially Barbara C. Bowen, “Roman Jokes and the Renaissance Prince, 1455–1528,” Illinois Classical Studies 9, 1998, pp. 137–48. 68. See Edwin S. Ramage, Urbanitas: Ancient Sophistication and Refinement, Norman, OK, 1973 (University of Cincinnati Classical Studies 3), especially pp. 56–57. 69. For this point see Peter Burke, The Art of Conversation, Ithaca, NY, 1993, pp. 99–102. 70. Peter Burke, The Fortunes of the Courtier: The European Reception of Castiglione’s Cortegiano, Cambridge, 1995, p. 144. For Rudolf as the recipient of the dedication see further ibid., p. 176. 71. See in general Burke, The Fortunes of the Courtier; for Castiglione’s impact on other books, see Burke, The Art of Conversation, pp. 100–102. 72.Stefano Guazzo, La Civil Conversazione, Brescia, 1574, fol. 178v. 73. Stefano Guazzo, Dialoghi piaceuoli . . ., Piacenza, 1587, p. 247: “Mà gran maraviglia mi pare, che sia scaduta dall’arti liberali, & si rimanga hoggedì senza alcun pregio la muta poesia, dico la pittura, che già era cotanto illustre . . . Di quello io ne dò la colpa non alla pittura, ma à i pittori, frà i quali si trouano (secondo il commun detto) genti assai,& huomini pochi. Et mi farete dire, che quel giorno, che caderà il dotto penello dalla maestreuol mano dell ‘unico Sig. AMBROGIO FIGINO, caderà insieme (per non rilevarsi mai più) la gloria della pittura, la quale prede d lui tanto di splendor, di quanto d’oscurità nè riceuono gli altri pittori. Hav\ureste inteso come sia ripiena di stupore, & di maestà la casa sua per l’opere marvigliose, di cui è vagamento adorna, & in spetie per lo ritratto di quel sacro hero è FR. FRANCESCO PANIGAROLA, dalle cui labra par ch’esca il suo vivace spirito, et che i riguardanti abbagliati dal misterioso obbietto strano attentamentte aspettando d’vdire il suono delle sue dolcissime parole, onde ben disse il Sig. Gheradro Borgogni, scrivendo al Figino, che col viuo color Gli apportasti gli accenti per meraviglia eterna . . .” 74. Lettere del Signor Stefano Guazzo, Venice, 1592, pp. 214, letter from Guazzo to Figino; p. 535, letter from Guazzo to Borgogni. 75. Bartolommeo Taegio, La Villa, Milan, 1559, pp. 148–49. 76. See for this point, and for a discussion of Taegio in this context, James S. Ackerman, The Villa: Form and Ideology of Country Houses, Princeton, NJ, 1990, 108–23. 77. [Zirfeo Schwarzkunstler], Ordentliche Bescrhebung: Des gewaltigen treffenlichen und herzlichen Thurniers zu Ross und Fuss . . ., Prague, 1570, fol. D1v–D2v, discussed in Thomas DaCosta Kaufmann, “‘Gar lecherlich’: Low-life Painting in Rudolfine Prague,” in Prag um 1600: Beiträge zur Kunst und Kultur am Hofe Rudolfs II., Freren, 1988, pp. 33–38. 78. Anthony Corbeill, Controlling Laughter: Political Humor in the Late Roman Republic, Princeton, NJ, 1996. 79. See Porzio, “La pittura di genere” and “Lomazzo e il realismo grottesco: Un captiolo del primitivismo nel Cinquecento,” in Rabisch: Il grottesco nell’arte del Cinquecento: L’Accademia della Val di Blenio, Lomazzo e l’ambiente milanese, Lugano, 1998, pp. 23–36. 80. Alessandro Nova, “Folengo and Romanino: The Questione della Lingua and its Eccentric Trends,” Art Bulletin 76, 1994, p. 679, citing eminent classicists for this argument. 81. Lomazzo, Della forma delle Muse, Florence, 1591. 82. Dante Isella, “Introduzione: Per una lettura del Rabisch,” in Giovan Paolo Lomazzo, Rabisch, ed. Dante Isella, Turin, 1993, pp. xxx–xxxi. This text is reprinted in Rabisch: Il grottesco nell’arte del Cinquecento, where the interpretation and mention of Orphism appear on pp. 115–16; surprisingly the other authors in this volume, including Porzio, do not seem to have taken Isella’s interpretation into

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account. Isella (in conversation with the author, 2004) in fact expressed skepticism of their views, including the connection of the Lomazzo academy qua academy (as distinct from individuals) with Arcimboldo, and especially the relevance of commedia dell’arte as indicating a popular source for Arcimboldo. 83. The full title of this work is Rime di Gio. Paolo Lomazzo Milanese Pittor divise in sette libri: Nelle quali ad imitatione de i Grotteschi usati da’pittori, ha contato di lodi di Deo, & de le cose sacre,di principi, di Signori, & huomoni litterati, di pittori, scoltori, & architetti . . . et però intitolati Grotteschi, non solo dilettevoli per la varietà de le inventioni, mà utili ancora per la moralità che vi si contiene, Milan, 1587. 84. Lomazzo, Trattato, ed. cit. 2, pp. 369, 367. 85. For Ligorio’s complete text on the grotesque, see Dacos, La Découverte, 161–62, also 181–82. 86. See Stephen Booth, ed. Shakespeare’s Sonnets, New Haven and London, 1977, p. 453. 87. It is in this metaphorical sense, so well evoked by Roland Barthes, Arcimboldo, trans. John Shepley, Milan, 1980 (first ed. 1978), that I see these pictures operating as monsters, and not as transgressions of the various realms of nature, as Barthes himself suggests. While it is certainly true that Arcimboldo’s pictures transgress the boundaries between art and nature, I do not think that it is the transgression of the realms of nature itself that makes his pictures monstrous; this notion of transgression does not in fact coincide with contemporaneous definitions of the monstrous. For these definitions in regard to Arcimboldo, see chapters 6 and 8 below. 88. Louise George Clubb, Italian Drama in Shakespeare’s Time, New Haven and London, 1989, p. 32. 89. Comanini, The Figino, trans. cit., pp. 19, 23–24. 90.See Raymond B. Waddington, Aretino’s Satyr: Sexuality, Satire, and Self-Projection in SixteenthCentury Literature and Art, Toronto, Buffalo, and London, 2004, pp. 126–27. 91. Rosalie Colie, Paradoxia Epidemica: The Renaissance Tradition of Paradox, Princeton, NJ, p. xiii, and Waddington, Aretino’s Satyr, p. 125. 92. Ampitheatrum sapientiae socraticae joco-seriae, Hanau, 1619. 93. For Dornavius see R.J.W. Evans, Rudolf II and His World: A Study in Intellectual History 1576– 1612, Oxford, 1973, p. 149 and passim. 94. Michael Maier, Jocus Severus, Frankfurt am Main, 1597; Lusus serius, Oppenheim, 1616. 95. See Waddington, Aretino’s Satyr, p. 127, for a good discussion of the term. 96. See François Rigolot, Les Langages de Rabelais (Etudes Rabelaissienes 10), Geneva, 1972, pp. 10ff; Gérard Defaux, “D’un problème à l’autre: Hermeneutique de l’altior sensus et ‘captatio lectoris’ dans le prologue de Gargantua,” Revue d’Historie litteraire de la France 85, no. 2, 1985, pp. 195–216; Terence Cave, Michel Jenneret, and François Rigolot (with a response by Gerard Defaux), “Sur la prétendue transparence de Rabelais,” Revue d’histoire litteraire de la France 86 no. 2, 1986, pp. 709–22; Edwin Duval, “Interpretation and the Doctrine Absconce,” Etudes rabelaissienes 18, pp. 1–17. A good introduction to the question of Rabelaisian laughter, with reference to the previous literature on the subject, is Barbara Bowen, Enter Rabelais Laughing, Nashville and London, 1998. For the relation of Rabelais to Joubert’s treatise on laughter, see Gregory de Rocher, Rabelais’s Laughers and Joubert’s Traité du Ris, University, AL, 1979. 97. M.A. Screech, Laughter at the Foot of the Cross, London, 1997. 98. Sylvana Seidel Menchi, “Elementi figurativi della recezione di Erasmo,” in Alberto Pio da Carpi contro Erasmo da Rotterdam, ed. M. A. Marogina, Pisa, 2005, pp 27–46. 99. See Waddington, “Aretino’s Satyr,” and idem, “Before Arcimboldo: Composite Portraits on Italian Medals,” The Medal, no. 14, Spring 1989, pp. 13–23. 100. For Strada and Erasmus see Howard Louthan, The Quest for Compromise: Peacemakers in Counter-Reformation Vienna, Cambridge, 1997, pp. 120, 125. 101. See for these points the brief and useful summary in Kaiser Ferdinand I. 1503–1564: Das Wesen der Habsburgermonarchie, ed. Wilfried Seipel, Vienna and Milan, 2003, p. 326; and for the general context, Gottfried Mraz, “Ferdinand I. und sein Wirken im Konflikt der Konfessionen: Reformation und katholische Reform,” ibid., pp. 89–99. 102. R.J.W. Evans, The Making of the Habsburg Monarchy, Oxford, 1979, p. 19. 103. See ibid. pp. 19–24, and especially Louthan, Quest for Compromise, particularly pp. 2, 3, 9, 10.

Notes to Pages 109–13

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chapter 5 1. See Erwin Panofsky, “Artist, Scientist, Genius: Notes on the ‘Renaissance-Dämmerung,’” in The Renaissance: Six Essays, New York, 1962, pp. 121–82. 2. Thomas DaCosta Kaufmann, “Giuseppe Arcimboldo, the Habsburgs’ Leonardo,” in Rudolf II, Prague and the World, ed. B. Bukovinská, L. Koneˇcný, and I. Muchka, Prague, 1999, pp. 169–76. 3. Thomas DaCosta Kaufmann, Variations on the Imperial Theme, New York and London, 1978, pp. 33ff. 4. The most extensive accounts of the 1571 festival are provided by Karl Vocelka in Habsburgische Hochzeiten 1550–1600, Vienna, Cologne, and Graz, 1976, pp. 47ff., and Kaufmann, loc. cit., with Fonteo’s description of the companions of the arts transcribed on p. 55. Lomazzo’s attribution of the invention of the festival, made against the claims of Fonteo, are found in Idea, ed. cit., p. 363. Before Arcimboldo’s lifetime editions of Marilius were published in 1472 (edited by Regiomontanus) and in 1484 (edited by Bonincontrius). 5. For particulars of this drawing (Florence, Uffizi) see Thomas DaCosta Kaufmann, Rudolf II and Prague: The Court and the City, London, Milan, and Prague, 1997, p. 606, no. IV. 10. 6. See Thomas DaCosta Kaufmann, The Mastery of Nature: Aspects of Art, Science, and Humanism in the Renaissance, Princeton, NJ, 1993, pp. 136–50 and 219–24; Anthony Grafton, “Humanism and Science in Rudolfine Prague: Kepler in Context,” in Defenders of the Text: The Traditions of Scholarship in an Age of Science, 1450–1800, Cambridge, MA, and London, 1991, pp. 178–203. 7. Kaufmann, “The Habsburgs’ Leonardo,” p. 172. 8. Heinrich Zimmermann, “Das Inventar der Prager Schatz-und Kunstkammer von 6. Dezember 1621 nach Akten des K. und K. Reichsfinanzarchiv in Wien,” Jahrbuch der Kunsthistorischen Sammlungen des allerhöchsten Kaiserhauses 25, 1905, p. xliii, reg. no. 19421: 1061. Eine lauten von Arciboldo. Zimmermann recognized that this may correspond to the reference in B [Beda] Dudík, “Die Rudolphinische Kunst- und Raritätenkammer in Prag,” Mitteilungen der K.K. Central Commission zur Erforschung und Erhaltung der Baudenmale, 12, 1867, p. xxxix: 348. Ein Perspektif lautten (?). 9. One aspect of this kind of thinking is the belief in the harmony of the spheres, which was also important in thinking about astronomy as represented most famously in the work of Johannes Kepler. For excellent accounts of harmony in relation to Kepler’s thought, see D. P. Walker, “The Harmony of the Spheres” and “Kepler’s Celestial Music,” in Studies in Musical Science in the Late Renaissance, London and Leiden, 1978, pp. 1–13 and 34–62. 10. See Kaufmann, Mastery of Nature, pp. 115–20. 11. Ibid., p. 267. 12. For a general introduction, see Flavio Cairoli, Storia della Fisognomica: Arte e psicologia da Leonardo a Freud, Milan, 2002, especially pp. 1–79. 13. Giacomo Berra, “Arcimboldi: Le teste ‘caricate’ leonardesche e le ‘grillerie’ dell’Accademia della val di Blenio,” in Rabisch: Il Grottesco nell’arte del Cinquecento: L’Accademia della Val di Blenio, Lomazzo e l’ambiente milanese, Lugano, 1998, pp. 57–67, develops the argument about the relationship to Leonardesque (and Lombard) caricatures, but without reference to the physiognomic tradition or the general questions of natural history involved—turning it instead to the popular direction and Lombard context, which, for reasons expressed above, I believe is misguided. See further on this point appendix 1. See previously, for physiognomy and low-life painting in Prague, though not cited by Berra, Thomas DaCosta Kaufmann, “‘Gar lecherlich’: Low-life Painting in Rudolfine Prague,” in Prag um 1600: Beiträge zur Kunst und Kultur am Hofe Rudolfs II,” Freren, 1988, p. 38 n. 25, and Sergiusz Michatski, review of Thomas DaCosta Kaufmann, L’École de Prague, Kunstchronik 41, no. 1, 1988, pp. 30–31. 14. See Pietro Toesca, “Di alcuni Miniatori Lombardi della fine del trecento,” L’Arte 10, 1907, pp. 184–90, especially pp. 185ff.; Lilian Armstrong, “The Illustration of Pliny’s Historia Naturalis: Manuscripts before 1430,” Journal of the Warburg and Courtauld Institutes 46, 1983, pp. 19–39, especially pp. 26–29; Marco Rossi, “Pietor da Pavia e il Plinio dell’Ambrosiana: Miniatura tardogotica e cultura scientifica del mondo classico,” Rivista di Storia della Miniatura 1–2, 1996–97 (Atti del IV congresso di Storia della Miniatura), pp. 231–38. 15. See Caroli, Storia della Fisiognomica, pp. 65–79, for an accessible discussion of Della Porta. 16. See R.J.W. Evans, Rudolf II and His World: A Study in Intellectual History 1576–1612, Oxford, 1973,

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p. 197. Caroli, Storia, p. 82, also notes that Fede Galizia—whose association with Arcimboldo and stilllife painting will be discussed in chapter 7—was also, like Arcimboldo, a portraitist who seems to have employed physiognomic theories in her painting. 17. See further Thomas DaCosta Kaufmann, “Arcimboldo and the Elector of Saxony,” in Scambio culturale con il nemico religioso: Italia e Sassonia attorno al 1600 (Roma e il nord: Percorsi e fore dello scambio artistico, vol. 1), ed. Sybille Ebert-Schifferer, Rome, 2007, pp. 29–30. 18. Kaufmann, “Arcimboldo, the Habsburgs’ Leonardo,” p. 172. 19. For this identification see Thomas DaCosta Kaufmann, “Arcimboldo and the Elector of Saxony,” in Scambio culturale con il nemico religioso: Italia e Sassonia attorno al 1600 (Roma e il nord: Percorsi e fore dello scambio artistico, vol. 1), ed. Sybille Ebert-Schifferer, Rome, 2007, pp. 29–31. 20. “Rudolph sendet den JOSEPH ARCIMBOLDO an den Buerger Raymund zu Kempten um Antiquiteten und Kunstsachen, die er zum Theile von den Fuggern, auch Thiere und Wundervoegel aus der neuen Welt , die Raymund von Welsen und Hochsteten zu Augsburg erhalten fuer ihn zu bestehen,” cited from Hormayer, Archiv, in Beitraege zur Geschichte der Schatz- und Wunderkammer Rudolphs II zu Prag, 1825, p. 573, as recorded in: Benno Geiger, I dipinti ghribizzosi di Giuseppe Arcimboldi, Pittore illusionista del Cincquecento (1527–1593), Florence, 1954, p. 125. 21. The American origins of a creature illustrated by Arcimboldo have been recognized by Manfred Staudinger, “Arcimboldo and Ulisse Aldrovandi,” in Arcimboldo 1526–1593, Paris, Vienna, and Milan, 2007, p. 114, without further comment or interpretation; several more such images are discussed in this chapter. 22.Brian Oglivie, The Science of Describing: Natural History in Renaissance Europe, Chicago and London, 2006. 23. Furthermore, physicians formed only part of a larger group of scientists and projectors who later frequented the court of Rudolf II, including the noted astronomers Johannes Kepler and Tycho Brahe along with many other instrument makers, scientists, and just plain adventurers. The best single introduction to the intellectual world of the imperial court remains R.J.W. Evans, Rudolf II and his World. 24. See Oglivie, Science of Describing, pp. 65–66. 25. For Busbecq and Lorck in Turkey, and their surprising lack of mention of each other, see Barnaby Rogerson, “A Double Perspective and a Lost Rivalry: Ogier de Busbecq and Melchior Lorck in Istanbul,” in Re-orienting the Renaissance: Cultural Exchanges with the East, ed. Gerald Maclean, with a foreword by William Dalrymple, Basingstoke, 2005, pp. 88–95. 26. See, for an entertaining overview, Anna Pavord, The Tulip: The Story of a Flower that has Made Men Mad, New York and London, 2001; for the tulip in art and its place in history, see Tulipomania (ex. cat.), Dresden, 2005. 27.The first subject has been treated in reference, for example, to the crown of Rudolf II. The crown was a product of several workshops from the first years of the seventeenth century, and it has been noted that several of its peculiarities, including for example the placement of the sapphire on top, may be related to De Boodt’s views on the powers of gem stones. More surprising, perhaps, is De Boodt’s contribution to color theory. Charles Parkhurst called attention to the innovative aspects of De Boodt’s attention to color, which was presented in the fifteenth book of his gemological treatise. De Boodt theorized that colors were made up of white and black and of red, yellow, and blue. Parkhurst regarded this shift to the triad red-yellow-blue as significant and as a forerunner of other seventeenthcentury statements of this theory, including that of François Aguilhon as well as later treatments of the theme. Parkhurst related this shift to a change both in art theory, as related by the Venetian Ludovico Dolce, and in painting, as exemplified by Peter Paul Rubens. De Boodt had an innovative approach to the subject, which he shared with Arcimboldo, who had designed a color cembalo. See Charles Parkhurst, “A Color Theory from Prague: Anselm de Boodt, 1609,” Allen Memorial Art Museum Bulletin 29, 1971, pp. 3–10. 28. See Marie-Christiane Maselis, Arnout Balis, and Roger H. Marijnissen, The Albums of Anselmus de Boodt (1550–1632): Natural History Painting at the Court of Rudolph II in Prague, Tielt, 1999. 29. Cf. David Freedberg, The Eye of the Lynx: Galileo, his Friends, and the Beginnings of Modern Natural History, Chicago and London, 2002. As suggested here because of the labels and inscription on the

Notes to Pages 118–21

26 5

animals, the argument of Claudia Swan, in Art, Science, and Witchcraft in Early Modern Holland: Jacques de Gheyn II 1565–1629, Cambridge, 2005, p. 50, that “there is no evidence that de Boodt used any of the images he did own for didactic purposes” may also be challenged. 30. Freedberg, ibid. 31. Marie-Christiane Maselis, Arnout Balis, and Roger H. Marijnissen, The Albums of Anselmus de Boodt (1550–1632), p. 71 fig. 84. 32. Oglivie, The Science of Describing, pp. 36–37 and passim. 33. Evans, Rudolf II and his World, p. 118. 34. See, for Mattioli’s life and his place in Prague, Miroslava Hejnová, Pietro Andrea Mattioli 1501–1578, Prague, 2001; for a good series of essays on him, Pietro Andrea Mattioli, Siena 1501–Trento 1578: La vita le opere con l’identificazione delle piante, ed. Sara Ferri, Perugia, 1997. 35. For a good general introduction see Wilfrid Blunt, The Art of Botanical Illustration: An Illustrated History, London, 1950. 36. This is one of the chief themes of Oglivie, The Science of Describing. 37. Giuseppe Olmi, “Osservazione della natura e raffigurazione in Ulisse Aldrovandi (1522–1605), Annali dell’Istituto storico italo-germanico in Trento 3, 1977, p. 167: “Ecco allora che a proposisto, ad es., delle immagini doppie, dei ‘montaggi’ di Giuseppe Arcimboldi si dovrà riflettere, al di là della loro struttura e del loro significato complessivi, sul realismo minuziooso, da scrupoloso catalogatore,delle singole parti. Non si dovranno trascurare, come già non fecero il Comanini e il Lomazzo, il gusto dell’artista per una osservazione lenticolare della natura, le sue aspirazioni scientifiche e infine la grande perizia, la tecnica da vero e proprio illustratore scientifico usata nel rendere, con dovizia di particulari animali e piante . . . .” 38. The legend to an illustration in The Arcimboldo Effect, ex. cat. Venice, Milan, 1987, pp. 96–97, established that the head of Water contains representations of at least sixty-two separate species of aquatic creatures, including vertebrates as well as invertebrates. Fish, mollusks, echinoderms, platyhelminths, annelids, cnidarians (i.e., coral), amphibians, reptiles, and sea mammals abound in this painting. This scheme is repeated in illustrations and text in Arcimboldo 1526–1593, Paris, Vienna, and Milan, 2007, pp. 151–55. Arcimboldo’s sources for Spring have been demonstrated by Sam Segal (in conjunction with Alexander Wied) in Arcimboldo 1526–1593, pp. 124–26, cat. IV. 1, with illustrations. Lucilla Conigliello, “L’altra faccia di Arcimboldo,” Paragone 43, no. 509–11,, 1992, pp. 44–50, and Sylvia Ferino-Pagden, “Arcimboldo ‘Conterfetter’ of Nature,” in Giuseppe Arcimboldo 1526–1593, p. 106, fig. 3, have suggested the use of studies of animals for Earth. 39. See Lee Hendrix, “Natural History Illustration at the Court of Rudolf II,” in Rudolf II and Prague: The Court and the City, ed. Eliška Fuˇcíková et al., Prague, London, and Milan, 1997, p. 158, who argues the point that Arcimboldo knew and was stimulated by natural history illustration found in various mid-sixteenth century compendia, and that he breathed tremendous animation into the individual specimens. The latest overview of Renaissance natural history (Oglivie, The Science of Describing, p. 66) can now state as fact, without giving further reasons, that Arcimboldo made naturalistic drawings of the imperial collections that formed the basis for the carefully portrayed vegetables, flowers, and animals seen in his paintings. This observation is, however, demonstrated in the subsequent catalogue Arcimboldo 1526–1593, in which many of these nature studies are discussed; see further below. 40. On the basis of the appearance of some animals in the head of Earth that are also found in cod. min. 42 of the Österreichische Nationalbibliothek, Vienna, Thea Vignau-Wilberg, “Le Museum de l’empereur Rodolphe II et le Cabinet des art et curiosités,” in Herbert Haupt, eadem, Eva Irblich, and Manfred Staudinger, Le Bestiaire de Rodolphe II, Cod. Min. 129 et 130 de la Bibliothèque Nationale d’Autriche, trans. Léa Marcou, Paris, 1990, pp. 40–41, also p. 63 n. 86, first raised the possibility that they were models elaborated and used by Arcimboldo. Following Vignau-Wilberg and the further identification by Manfred Staudinger, “Études descriptives de zoologie historique,” ibid., pp. 91–486, passim, of the use in cod. min. 129 and 130 of related models found in cod. min.42, Lucilla Conigliello, “L’altra faccia di Arcimboldo,” Paragone 43, no. 509–11, 1992, pp. 44–50, attributed some more drawings in cod. min. 42 to Arcimboldo, though not always correctly. (Cod. min. 42, fol. 115r, color illustration II in Conigliello, which is also reproduced as being by him in Ferino-Pagden, “Arcimboldo ‘Conterfetter’ of Nature,” Arcimboldo 1526–1593, p. 104, fig. 1, is for instance not by him; though cited

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Notes to Pages 121–22

by neither Conigliello nor Ferino-Pagden, Fritz Koreny, “Joseph Heintz der ältere: Eine unbekannte Farbskizze,” Jahrbuch der Kunsthistorischen Sammlungen in Wien, 85/86, 1989/90, p. 66, had already attributed this drawing to Heintz, and this drawing does resemble Heintz more than Arcimboldo. However, this attribution is not correct either, since the sheet also differs from oil sketches by Heintz which have subsequently been discovered.) Subsequently Manfred Staudinger, “Naturstudien. Museum Kaiser Rudolfs II,” in Thesaurus Austriacus: Europas Glanz im Spiegel der Buchkunst: Handschriften und Kunstalben von 800 bis 1600 (ex. cat.), ed. Eva Irblich, Vienna, 1996, pp. 233, 258–60, found an important letter and a list in the Bibliotheca Universitaria Bologna that enabled him to propose the attribution to Arcimboldo of four drawings in the Fondo Aldrovandi there. Staudinger also suggested the attribution of another drawing in cod. min. 42, already advanced by Conigliello. The Bologna attributions are briefly discussed, and the letter published as well as two images provided as illustrations, in Giacomo Berra, “Arcimboldi, Vincenzo Campi, Figino, Fede Galizia, Caravaggio: Congiunture sulla nascita della natura morta in Lombardia,” in Vincenzo Campi: Scene del quotidiano (ex cat.), ed. Franco Paliaga, Cremona, 2000, pp. 70–71, 83 n. 41–43. Staudinger, “Arcimboldo and Ulisse Aldrovandi,” Arcimboldo 1526–1593, pp. 113–15, discusses these attributions, adds a few to them, and ibid., pp. 159–64, cat. IV. 24, adds more, including birds. See further Ferino-Pagden, “Arcimboldo ‘Conterfetter.’” 41. See Ferino-Pagden, “Arcimboldo ‘Conterfetter’”; Staudinger, “Arcimboldo and Ulisse Aldrovandi,” and the cat. nos. IV.24 and 25 in Arcimboldo 1526–1593. 42. Staudinger, Thesaurus Austriacus, p. 233, who first discovered the letter, also gives some bibliographical information about De Paduanis. 43. Bibliotheca Universitari Bologna, Aldrovandi Observationes 136, vol. 11, fol 5r: . . . Habui et hisce diebus a Josepho Arcimboldo Mediolan[ense] Cesaris pictore primario pluriu[m] auiu[m] et quadrupedium perigrinoru[m] imagines ad viuu[m] colorib[us] delineatos ut illas solummodo in tui gratiam effigiare curar[e] sicuti p[er] literas ad Ecc[elentissim]um Bernardinu[m] Blasettum datas de istor[um] no[mini]bus significaui. Fol 5v: Sed eiusdam pictoris opera, ut a principio dixi cogor uti, qui me in patientia exercet et probat nam fuit adeo negligens quod eum Ca[e]sari proximis hisce diebus plantam illam quam Tusai siue lilium Persicu[m] Car[olus] Clus[ius] Lil[ium] rariorum stirpi[um] per Pannon[iam] obseruat [secundo] cap[itolo] p[rim]o appellat nobilis quidam attulisset nescio quo fato ad huc probe uiuens ad manus deueniet meas, hanc statim illi ad effigiandum obtuli, spopondit, sed postea promissis non stetet. Nam eum alio nuptiaru[m] caussa secessessit p[er] plures abfuit dies, interim flaviscentibus floribus, decedententibusque folijs planta emaciata totaq[ue] corrupta est. Et quamuis alia te hanc vidisse plantam non ambigam, huius tum inscitiam corte indignabundus tuli. Caule huc superior folia assurgebat cubitali modo absq[ue] fo[?]liis p[er] id spectum, non striato et viridi sed lessi et coloris quasi purpurescentibus sunt in angulos in summo detinebat quia sinos tantumodo sustinebat flores, eo ordine, quo Clusiu p[rimum] eum[?] optime descripsit. Satura plaum alius undecim ferentem flores se habuisse idem et Hassi[a]e Lantgravis quadragenis in plano unico caule floruisse narrat. Latissima interim sup[e]r eos filioru[m] luxuriante coma istiusmodi nondu[m] mihi videre contingit. Novit Deus qua[ndo] etiam habendi nancisseam[?] occasionem q[ua]m Martio et Aprili florere solet. Remb[er]tus Dodo[ens] lib. 2 Periptalis[?] [secundo] Liliam Persicam vocat genus quoddam hiacinthi spurij, hoc tum Clusius Lileum Susiannu[m] apellat, Bulbos he contendi, sed adhuc spe deteneor, ut a Pictore etiam delusum ire recogar, et vel etiam ab occ[tavo?] sicuti in duob[us plantis modo euenit, quas sup[e]riori hebdomada ad albim flum[en] dum illae transerim pe[r]oppidum Colin Egero et excerpisse mihi contigerat. Hac cu[m] in Beda Litomisli quodam perueni meum detullisim nullus fuit eas delineari scirerent, cumque Pragam p[er] aliam viam contendissem ventura[m] non fuit copia, et pr[ae]terito ita conciderat [6v] in nullam illarum iconem habere potuisse Pre[x?] Clusij. Pseudodamosrum[p] representare videbatur, altera eiusem mille fileii[?] This document is also published with slight variations—and, differences in construing the key passage explaining why Arcimboldo was absent—by Manfred Staudinger, “Sources on Arcimboldo at the Imperial Court,” in Giuseppe Arcimboldo 1526–1593, p. 306, n. 29.

Notes to Pages 122–23

26 7

44. Bibliotheca Universitaria Bologna, MS Aldrovandi 136, vol. 19, fol. 164v: Ex litteris Francisci Paduani. Molto mi sono rallegrato che nelle suoi desegni degl’animali pele gruì habbia ritrouato qualche [fol. 165r] cosa di suo gusto, si com’ all’ in contra mi duole che al mio partiere di Germania per ancora non era finito un modello di una cosa che sono certo sarà carissima perche è rarissima capitata di fresco nelle mani della M[aes]ta dell’ Imperatore ch’io procurai per V[ostra] S[ignoria] Ecc[elentissi]ma la quale hauro nondimeno ma con un puoco di tempo, perche bisogna procedere cautissimo in levar disegni delle cose rare a quella corte. V[ostra] S[ignoria] non ne faccia parola che se haurò il modello, hauro il disegno in carta, non uoglio per hora dire che cosa sia, basta che è cosa reale uera e naturale della quale ancor che molti n’habbino parlato e[t] scritto hanno pero scritto in aria et come fauolosamente. 45. Ibid., pp. 25–86, and Paula Findlen, “The Formation of a Scientific Community: Natural History in Sixteenth-Century Italy,” in Natural Particulars: Nature and the Disciplines in Renaissance Europe, ed. Anthony Grafton and Nacy Siraisi, pp. 369–400. 46. Ibid., p. 66. 47. This list as indicated in Bologna, Biblioteca Universitaria, ms. 137, vol. 1, fol. 31r, dated in 1584: Animaliu[m] perigrenoru[m] depictoru[m] catalogus apud Caesaream Maies[tatem] Imp[eratorem] qu[ae] depingi curauit D[] Franc[iscus] Paduanus. Faggiano d’ India macchiato di bianco L’Ardilla Il Falcon d’India Colombo d’India Gallo dalla Pietra Papagallo di Germania La Regina Il Rinoceronte La Tigre L’Asino d’Africa Il capriolo d’Africa La Capra del Bezar Il tasso marino Il Ratto d’India e quel di Faraone [fol. 31v] L’Hurone Il Gulone L’Alce Un toro unicorno La Grue cerra o crestata Fior del’uso Mus Indicus Ichneumon (vide abunde obser.) Avis ex gruum genere Tauris unicornus. Forsan Rangifer Caesaris sed Unicornis Plini Praga[e] hortus regius habetur à me missus, iuxta Fossam artis altissima[e] situs variis arboribus ac stripitis (stirpitis) non antea domesticis, sed peregrinis ex Italia, Hispania, et alijs longinquis regionibus. Huc altribus [?] et plantas instructissimas opereque topiario etc. The important last paragraph is not published in Staudinger’s recording of documents in Arcimboldo, p. 306 n. 26. Other similar lists are published by him loc. cit., n. 27, 28, and 29. 48. This information was first provided by Manfred Staudinger, “Naturstudien Kaiser Rudolfs II. (1576–1612): Zur Kunstkammer auf der Prager Burg,” in Thesaurus Austriacus: Glanz im Spiegel der Buchkunst: Handschriften und Kunstalben von 800 bis 1600, ed. Eva Irblich (ex. cat.), Vienna, 1996, p.

268

Notes to Pages 123–25

233. The document with list of illustrations sent by Francisus Paduanus, identical with the other lists, is in Bologna, Biblioteca Universitaria, ms. 136, vol. 10, fol. 237v–238r, and is printed in Manfred Staudinger, “Sources,” p. 306 n. 27. See also loc. cit., n. 28. 49. Biblioteca Universitaria Bologna, Fondo Aldrovandi, Tavole di animali V, fol. 20r. The description of this creature and illustration are found in Ulisse Aldrovandi, Quadrupedium omnium bisulcorum historia, ed. J.C. Uterverius, T. Dempster, and H. Tamburinus, Bologna, 1621, p. 755 (De Capra sive Hirco Besartico), ill. p. 756, as also recognized by Staudinger, “Arcimboldo and Ulisse Aldrovandi,” p. 114. 50.The African identification is probably key because a copy of this image, or its prototype (Österreichische Nationalbibliothek, Vienna, Handschriftensammlung cod. min. 129, fol. 24r, in one of the two volumes, together with cod. min. 130, which constitute the so-called “Museum” or bestiary associated with Rudolf II) is called “Animal d’Africa.” 51. Biblioteca Universitaria Bologna, Fondo Aldrovandi Tavole di animali VI, fol. 87r. The coati is described as a tassus marinus in Ulisses Aldrovandi, De quadrupedibus digitatis viviparis libri tres et de qudrupedibus digitatis oviparis libri duo, ed. B. Ambrosinus, Bologna, 1637, p. 267. This connection was recognized by Staudinger, Thesaurus Austriacus, p. 258, who also, and in “Die Erwerbung amerikanischer Tiere für den Kaiserhof,” in 1492–1992: Spanien Österreich und Iberoamerika, ed. Wolfram Krömer (Innsbrucker Beiträger zur Kulturwissenschaft, Sonderheft 86), Innsbruck, 1993. p. 210, explains the derivation of the term tassus marinus or tasso marino from “Meerdachs or Merdaxl.” The duiker is probably the “capriolo d’Africa” in the list, although images of this creature in the “Museum” refer to duikers as cabrillas de India. 52. Biblioteca Universitaria Bologna, Fondo Aldrovandi, Tavole di animale VI, fol. 86r. 53.Although the drawing in Bologna is in bad condition, it too was probably done by Arcimboldo, since it is comparable at least in outline and form to other drawings by the artist of jerboas in other locations. A version of the jerboa is also found in the “Museum” (cod. min. 129 fol. 63r), for example. 54. Staudinger, Thesaurus Austriacus, p. 260, first recognized that these might provide the basis for further identifications. 55. A concordance of these images is offered in appendix 3. 56. See primarily Le Bestiaire de Rodolphe II. 57. The antlers are, however, shown along with the representation of another head on the same page. Either a repetition of this image or its prototype, or else another very similar version of the moose in which the antlers shown on this page have been attached so as to depict a male, is probably based on the prototype replicated in the list of drawings in the Aldrovandi collection as “l’alce.” For the male moose, see below. In the epoch before that of Linnaean zoology, there was some confusion between the elk (Alces cervus) and the moose (Alces alces)—a confusion which is still present in modern Italian; for example, according to the dictionary of the Accademia della Crusca, an alce is an elk. Arcimboldo’s drawings are, however, clearly depictions of moose, and the alce listed in the letter to Aldrovandi is also a moose. Similarly, the alce owned by the grand duke of Tuscany, of which the duke made drawings available to Aldrovandi, is not an elk—as it is identified in Oglivie, Science of Describing, pp. 235–36—but a moose. 58. For the identification see Arcimboldo, p. 159. 59. This is found both in the codex containing Arcimboldo studies in Vienna (cod. min. fol. 128r, upper right) and in the museum (fol. 64r), whereafter the study now can be attributed to Arcimboldo. For the location and identification of these drawings in the “Museum” (or Bestiaire), see appendix 3. 60. Ulisse Aldrovandi, Ornithologiae tomus alter, Bologna 1600, p. 482: “Hanc iconem cum modo dabimus Hieronimus Patauinus medicus clarissimus Vienna mihi ex aula sacrae Caesarae Maiestatis ante aliquot annos transmisit sub titulo Columba Indica rostro Anatis, cum interim praeter pedes, & magnitudinem nihil cum Columbis commune habeat.” Staudinger, “Études descriptives,” p. 414, and “Die Erwerbung amerikanischer Tiere für den Kaiserhof,” p. 214, also noted this passage, and subsequently, in “Aricmboldo and Ulisse Aldrovandi,” p. 123, used it to identify the bird. 61. This drawing must therefore be by Arcimboldo. The attribution is confirmed by the presence of shadows done in blue, like those in Florence and elsewhere in Vienna; the treatment of the claws in brush and wash; and the handwriting used for the numerals on the sheet.

Notes to Pages 125–28

26 9

62. Staudinger, “Naturstudien,” in Bestiaire, p. 43, and in Arcimboldo 1526–1593, p. 160, has attributed this sheet to Arcimboldo, but Almudena Pérez de Tudela and Annemarie Jordan-Gschwendt, “Luxury Gooods for Royal Collectors: Exotica, Princely Gifts and Rare Animals Exchanged Between the Iberian Courts and Central Europe in the Renaissance (1560–1612), Jahrbuch des Kunsthistorischen Museum 3, 2001 (Exotica: Portugals Entdeckungen im Spiegel fürstlicher Kunst- und “Wunderkammern” der Renaissance: Die Beiträge des am 19. und 20. Mai 2000 vom Kunsthistorischen Musuem veranstalteten Symposiums, ed. Helmut Trnek and Sabine Haag), p. 41, suggest that it is a replica, copy, or later-dated image of Sanchez Coello’s representation of the same bird in a painting of Archduke Ernst dated 1574. This latter identification overlooks the fact, however, that the birds possess plumage with distinctly different color patterns. Moreover, there are pentimenti and traces of preliminary drawing in gray wash around the hand and tail of the bird in cod. min. 42, fol. 28r. 63. It has a date written in Arcimboldo’s hand, as well as blue cast shadows done in his manner. A fumitory plant is depicted above it in a manner similar to that in which plants are shown on Arcimboldo’s drawings of a moose (fol. 8r) and a stag (fol. 9r) in the same codex. This drawing of the curassow also bears the telltale circle found on many other sheets by the artist. See Aldrovandi, Ornithologiae tomus alter, loc. cit. 64. See Haupt et. al., Bestiaire, p. 396, no. 143. 65. Staudinger, Arcimboldo 1526–1563, p.160, calls this a little bittern, Ixobrychus minutus. The attributions are presented in ibid., pp. 159–64. 66. See Staudinger, “Études descriptives,” p. 380, who remarks that the little round mark that appears on sheets in this album of natural history studies also appears in the 1607–11 inventory of the Kunstkammer, which might open the possibility that it had been placed there by the compiler of that inventory, Daniel Fröschl. This of course would not rule out that it still identifies Arcimboldo’s sheets, because it is placed on those drawings which by other means can be determined as autograph. In addition, the marks in the Uffizi drawings are in the same ink as the drawings themselves, as are those on the nature studies, which moreover are in the same ink as that of the dates, thus making it likely that the marks are also Arcimboldo’s. 67. See further Conigliello, “L’altra faccia di Arcimboldo.” 68. For instance, noted by Haupt, Vignau-Wilberg, Irblich and Staudinger, Le Bestiaire de Rodolphe II, and by Conigliello, “L’altra faccia.” 69. Called by Aldrovandi, Ornithologiae, “Mucodiata curiata”—the fourth species so listed by him. 70. See Fritz Koreny, Albrecht Dürer und die Tier- und Pflanzenstudien der Renaissance, ex. cat. Vienna, Munich, 1985, p. 21, fig. 19, pp. 21–22, n. 29. Conigliello, pp. 49–50 n. 15, called attention to this drawing, but did not contradict Koreny’s attribution and state firmly that it was by Arcimboldo, nor notice any other drawings in Dresden. This drawing is also discussed in Fritz Koreny and Sam Segal, “Hans Hoffmann: Entdeckungen und Zuschreibungen,” in Jahrbuch der Kunsthistorischen Sammlungen in Wien 85/86, 1989/90, p. 58, ill., p. 60 n. 60 (for the Vienna drawing of the moose, fig. 59). Koreny distinguishes between the draftsmen who executed the two sheets, calling the Vienna sheet a work by a German draftsman of the second half of the sixteenth century, and the Dresden drawing the work of a German draftsman circa 1600 despite the fact that a date of 1566 is legible on it. The Dresden drawing is also characterized as being of lesser natural scientific exactness because of the combination of head with antlers. I have used the numbering of folios supplied by the collection in Dresden, which accounts for discrepancies with Koreny’s foliation. 71. Staudinger, “Études descriptives,” in Haupt et. al., Bestiaire, passim, noticed that most of the bird studies here identified as by Arcimboldo supplied models for the paintings in the “Museum,” with only certain exceptions such as the jay (cod. min. 130, fol. 79r), and pheasant (cod. min. 130, fol. 48r), which he thought had been done after nature but are actually copied from Arcimboldo’s drawings (cod. min. 42, fol. 52 r and 41r). 72. See Thomas DaCosta Kaufmann, “Arcimboldo and the Elector of Saxony,” Scambio culturale con il nemico religioso: Italia e Sassonia attorno 1600, ed. Sybille Ebert-Schifferer, Rome, 2007, pp. 27–36. 73. These include a drawing of the boar’s head (Sloane 5219-34, related to Vienna Österreichische Nationalbibliothek cod. min. 42, fol. 6r), of a goat’s head (Sloane 5219-47, related to Österreichische

270

Notes to Pages 129–38

Nationalbibliothek cod. min. 42, fol. 20r), as well as of the slow loris (Nycticebus coucang, related to the “Museum,” Österreichische Nationalbibliothek cod. min. 130, fol. 37r). 74. Claudia Swan, Art, Science, and Witchcraft in Early Modern Holland: Jacques de Gheyn II (1565– 1629), Cambridge, 2005, p. 211 n. 18. While the color annotations are in Dutch, the drawing in black chalk also does not correspond to the style of Dirck de Quade van Ravesteyn, to whom the execution of the “Museum” has been attributed. For a drawing by Van Ravesteyn see Thomas DaCosta Kaufmann, The School of Prague: Painting at the Court of Rudolf II, Chicago and London, 1988, p. 60, fig. 42. 75. Thea Vignau-Wilberg, “Die Randilluminationen und Initialen,” in Das Gebetbuch Kurfürst Maximilians von Bayern: Bayerische Staatsbibliothek München Clm 23640, Frankfurt am Main and Stuttgart, 1986, pp. 114–115, called attention to two of these flower studies (whose folio numbers are however reversed) as having been prepared or collected in Prague at the time of Rudolf II, and called them Vorlageblätter, models. Furthermore, numerous other previously unpublished sheets in Florence, contained in the same book with Arcimboldo’s tournament studies, represent flowers. These drawings are sketched in pen and mainly blue ink with blue wash. Many of them possess the circles seen on other authentic drawings by Arcimboldo. These drawings seem to have escaped earlier attention from scholarship, but once we are aware of the possibility that Arcimboldo actually represented flowers, they gain in interest. They however do not seem to be studies from nature, and were more likely ideas for bouquets or decoration. 76. At this writing there was a plan to free these drawings from their backing so that they could be further studied. 77. Six separate drawings on parchment, including two of roses (upper right and upper left), two of members of the family (bottom left and center), and two different tulips (upper center and bottom right), all cultivated garden varieties which have been pasted onto the same folio (fol. 132r), can be attributed with caution to Arcimboldo. Beatrice Brenninkmeijer-de Rooij, Roots of 17th-century Flower Painting: Miniatures Plant Books Paintings, The Hague, 1996, p. 41, fig. 41, and p. 43, has attributed these to Jacques de Gheyn—but they do not reveal the same touch as De Gheyn’s flower studies for Rudolf II (Paris, Fondation Custodia), and must have been executed earlier; they more closely resemble drawings attributed here to Arcimboldo. 78. The meaning of this date is, however, still not clear. As suggested in the catalogue Giuseppe Arcimboldo, it may represent the date of the original design rather than that of execution. 79. Variation in form of the numerals on the elephant may suggest that these were applied by another hand; in any case, I see no reason to doubt veracity of the dates. 80. Manfredo Settala established an important collection in Milan which would have contained many naturalia, but this happened in the seventeenth century, long after Arcimboldo’s death. For Settala see Paula Findlen, Possessing Nature: Museums, Collecting, and Scientific Culture in Early Modern Italy, Berkeley, Los Angeles, and London, 1994. 81. While the versions of the moose and stag in Dresden date 1566 or earlier, and heads of these creatures are seen in the head of Earth, the first version of which is datable 1566, all the existing leopard and cheetah drawings are dated either 1568 or 1570 and yet have also been recognized as appearing in Earth. Similar disparities exist between the appearance of other animals in Earth and other dated drawings by Arcimboldo. The antlers of the blackbuck antelope, along with the moose and stag and other beasts, comprise a sort of crown in Earth, as Comanini also noted. But all three existing drawings of the antelope, not to mention the one in the “Museum,” postdate 1566: the earliest is dated 1570, while the latest, the one in Bologna, must be dated circa 1585. Since an elephant is seen prominently in the cheek of the painting of Earth, it must be based on a study made in or before 1566, yet an elephant is represented in a drawing in Vienna dated 1574. A similar point may be made about the Seasons. Many studies exist for Spring, as has recently been demonstrated. However, none of the surviving bud studies is dated, and none of those executed on studies with animals or birds is datable 1563 or earlier, the date of the original series of Seasons. 82. For concordance of Arcimboldo’s animal and bird studies, see appendix 3, indicating the replication of these studies in various contexts. 83. For Hoffmann, see especially Koreny, Albrecht Dürer und die Tier- und Pflanzenstudien, and Koreny and Sam Segal, “Hans Hoffmann: Entdeckungen und Zuschreibungen.” For Hoefnagel on this

Notes to Pages 139–46

271

point, see particularly Marjorie Lee Hendrix, Joris Hoefnagel and the Four Elements: A Study in Sixteenthcentury Nature Painting, PhD dissertation, Princeton University, 1984—for example, p. 158 on the use of his Four Elements as a pattern book for subsequent illustrations. 84. For this description see Ferino-Pagden, “Arcimboldo ‘Contefetter,’” p. 108. 85. Conigliello in “L’altra faccia,” Ferino-Pagden, and Staudinger in Arcimboldo 1526–1593 have all noted this. 86. As noted above; see Arcimboldo, p. 154. 87. Arcimboldo, pp. 124–26. 88. Even the recent exhibition of Arcimboldo, Arcimboldo 1526–1593, while emphasizing this aspect of his work, does not represent the full extent of his nature studies that is indicated in the present book. chapter 6 1. See Sachiko Kusukawa, “Leonhart Fuchs on the Importance of Pictures,” Journal of the History of Ideas 58, no. 3, 1997, pp.403–27, quotation from p. 404. 2. See in general Giuseppe Olmi, L’inventario del mondo: Catalogazione della natura e luoghi del sapere nella prima età moderna, Bologna, 1992. 3. For this point see James S. Ackerman, “Early Renaissance Naturalism and Scientific Illustration,” reprinted with additional bibliography in Distance Points: Essays in Theory and Renaissance Art and Architecture, Cambridge, MA, 1991, pp. 185–207; see also Allan Ellenius, “Ornithological Imagery as a Source of Scientific Information,” in Non-verbal Communication in Science Prior to 1900, ed. Renato G. Mazzolini, Florence, 1993, pp. 375–90. 4. See Brian Oglivie, The Science of Describing: Natural History in Renaissance Europe, Chicago and London, 2006. 5. “ . . . di continuo disegna figure grandi di piante e animali, tanto belle quanto possa far la natura di modo che ho fatto innamorare il mio principe di questa impresa di sorte che non mancarà de ogni possibile aiuto . . .,” [emphases in the text], cited in Lucia Tongiorgi Tomasi, “Il Problema delle immagini nei ‘Commentari,’” in Pietro Andrea Mattioli Siena 1501–Trento 1578. La vita le opere con l’identificazione delle piante, ed. Sara Ferri, Perugia, 1997, p. 370. 6. For these images, see the entries by Manfred Staudinger in Natur und Kunst: Handschriften und Alben aus der Ambraser Sammlung Erzherzog Ferdinands II. (1529–1595), ed. Alfred Auer and Eva Irblich, Vienna, 1995 (ex. cat. Innsbruck), pp. 67–75; the entries by him in Thesaurus Austriacus: Europas Glanz im Spiegel der Buchkunst: Handschriften und Kunstalben von 800 bis 1600 (ex. cat.), ed. Eva Irblich, Vienna, 1996, pp. 210–25; and those in Arcimboldo 1525–1593, Paris, etc., pp. 156–58. The attribution is however not universally accepted. 7. Tongiorgi Tomasi, “Il Problema delle immagini,” p. 369. 8.See in general Paula Findlen, Possessing Nature: Museums, Collecting and Scientific Culture in Early Modern Italy, Berkeley, Los Angeles, and London, 1994. 9. Ibid. 10. As quoted in Oglivie, Science of Describing, p. 197. 11. See Oglivie, Science of Describing, especially pp. 160–208. For another example, see Claudia Swan, The Clutius Botanical Watercolors: Plants and Flowers of the Renaissance, New York, 1998. 12. See Ulisses Aldrovandi, De quadrupedibus digitatis viviparis libri tres et de qudrupedibus digitatis oviparis libri duo, ed. B. Ambrosinus, Bologna, 1637. The points made in this paragraph are also discussed by Staudinger, “Arcimboldo and Ulisse Aldrovandi.” 13. See Aldrovandi, Quadrupedium omnium bisulcorum historia, ill. p. 756, for the antelope, and ill. p. 368 for the hartebeest, which is discussed as “De Bove strepticerote.” 14. Aldrovandi, Quadrupedium omnium bisulcorum historia,. p. 368: “Ante aliqout annos ex aula Imperatoris Rodulphi missae mihi fuere exoticorum aliquot animantium icones diligenter admodum, & pulcherrime expressae, atque inter eas huius quoque quod hic exprimitur animantis, quod non incongrue bouem dicemus strepticerotem a cornuum constitutione sunt, cum turbinata, quemadmodum figura ipsa ostendit.”

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15. Oglivie, Science of Describing, pp. 237ff. 16. Aldrovandi, Quadrupedium omnium bisulcorum historia, pp. 871. 17. See Madelon Simons, “Archduke Ferdinand II of Austria, Governor in Bohemia, and the Theatre of Representation,” in Rudolf II, Prague and the World, ed. Lubomir Koneˇcný, Beket Bukovinská, and Ivan Muchka, Prague, 1998, pp. 275–76. 18. For a convenient overview, with good illustrations, see Natur und Kunst. Handschriften und Alben aus der Ambraser Sammlung Erzherzog Ferdinands II. (1529–1595), ed, Alfred Auer and Eva Irblich, Vienna, 1995 (ex. cat. Innsbruck). 19. See Fritz Koreny, Albrecht Dürer und die Tier- und Pflanzenstudien der Renaissance (ex. cat. Vienna), Munich, 1985. 20. See Koreny, Albrecht Dürer und die Tier- und Pflanzenstudien. 21. For Ligozzi’s studies for Rudolf II, see Lucilla Conigliello, ”Pesci, crostacei e un’ iguana per l’imperatore Rodolfo II, Paragone 42, 493–95, 1991, 22–29. 22. For a good overview of these studies, see Hendrix, “Natural History Illustration.” 23. It may be listed under an attribution to Hans Hoffmann, from whose hand the drawings on the first four folios in the volume may derive; see “Das Kunstkammerinventar Kaiser Rudolfs II., 1607–1611,” ed. Rotraud Bauer and Herbert Haupt, Jahrbuch der Kunsthistorischen Sammlungen in Wien 72, 1976, p.135, no. 2688; p. 138, no. 2780. It is also possible that it may be listed as one of the items recorded in the following note. 24. See Claudia Swan, “Art, Science and Witchcraft,” in Early Modern Holland: Jacques de Gheyn II 1565–1629, Cambridge, 2007. p. 50. Swan remarks that De Boodt failed to acquire the Clutius drawings;see further eadem, The Clutius Botanical Watercolors. 25. See Kunstkammerinventar, p. 135, nos. 2688–97, 2702, 2705; p. 138, no. 2780; 139, no. 2782. 26. See for example ibid., p. xxx, with discussion of Fröschl’s authorship and of other drawings by him on pp. xviff. 27. For Arcimboldo’s relation with the Saxon court, see most recently Thomas DaCosta Kaufmann, “Arcimboldo and the Elector of Saxony,” Scambio culturale con il nemico religioso: Italia e Sassonia attorno 1600, ed. Sybille Ebert-Schifferer, Rome, 2007, pp. 27–36. 28. From a letter of 29 December 1572 from Maximilian II to Adam von Dietrichstein, imperial ambasador in Madrid, cited in Karl Rudolf, “Die Kunstsbestrebungen Kaiser Maximilian II. im Spannungsfeld zwischen Madrid und Wien,” in Jahrbuch der Kunsthistorischen Sammlungen in Wien 91, 1995, p. 170. 29. See Marjorie Lee Hendrix, “Joris Hoefnagel and the Four Elements: A Study in Sixteenth-Century Nature Painting,” PhD dissertation, Princeton University, 1984. 30. For the boar’s head see the reference in “Das Kunstkammerinventar,” p.8, no. 100, pointed out by Staudinger, “Études descriptives,” p 160, who also recognized the presence there of the freak bird, also citing“Études descriptives,” p. 440, the source in “Das Kunstkammerinventar,” p. 12, no 183, “1 hüenlein mit 3 füßen, gepalsamirt, A0 1609 zur kunstkammer kommen.” See also the entries in Arcimboldo 1526–1593, pp. 159–60. 31. Most likely listed in “Das Kunstkammerinventar,” p. 10, under no. 141. 32. “Das Kunstkammerinventar Kaiser Rudolfs II.,” p. 9, no. 117. 33. For the comparison of Arcimboldo and the Kunstkammer, see most recently Franz Kirchberger, “Between Art and Nature: Arcimboldo and the World of the Kunstkammer,” in Arcimboldo 1526–1593, pp. 189–93, using in part some of the present author’s earlier studies. The present discussion takes, however, a somewhat different tack toward the nature studies, which are not really considered by Kirchberger. 34. See Die Entdeckung der Natur: Naturalien in den Kunstkammern des 16. und 17. Jahrhunderts, ed. Wilfried Seipel (ex. cat. Innsbruck and Vienna), Vienna, 2006. 35. See Hilda Lietzmann, “Ferdinands Verdienste für die Gartenkunst,” in Kaiser Ferdinand I. 1503– 1564: Das Werden der Habsburgermonarchie, ed. Wilfried Seipel (ex. cat.), Vienna, 2003, pp. 259–63. 36. For this and other gardens promoted by Maximilian see Hilda Lietzmann, Das Neugebäude in Wien: Sultan Süleymans Zelt—Kaiser Maximilians II. Lustschloss, Munich and Berlin, 1987, pp. 29–35 and passim. See further Rudolf, “Die Kunstsbestrebungen,” pp. 179, 228. See further Eve Berger,

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“Das Renaissance Schloss Neugebäude und Seine Garten,” Die Gartenkunst 20, 2008, Beilage, pp. 3–10. 37. Most accessible as Emanuel Sweerts, Early Floral Engravings, ed. E.F. Bleiler, New York, 1976, p. 11. 38. For a full bibliography on Rudolf II and gardens, see Sylva Dobalová, “The Gardens of Rudolf II,” in Studia Rudolphina 4, 2004, pp, 61–65. 39. There is extensive literature on this beast, some of whose bones ended up being made into a chair now found in Klosterneuburg. See first Ursula Giese, Wiener Menagerien, Vienna, 1962, pp. 9–16. 40. Rudolf, “Die Kunstsbestrebungen,” p. 182. 41. See Giese, Wiener Menagerien. 42. Ibid., especially pp. 17–28. See further Staudinger, “Études descriptives,” pp. 98, 100, 102. 43. This detail, not previously cited in the literature on the Neugebäude, is noticed by Elisabeth Klecker, “Auster und Abspurge: Ein Habsburg Mythos des 16. Jahrhunderts,” in Renaissancekultur und antike Mythologie, ed. Bodo Guthmüller, Vienna, 1999, p. 180. 44. Dobalová, “The Gardens of Rudolf II.” 45. See the summary and documents cited in Staudinger, “Études descriptives,” pp. 98, 100, 102. 46. For gifts during the time of Emperor Rudolf II, see Staudinger, “Études descriptives,” p. 134. The hooves and claws of a moose are recorded in Bauer and Haupt, p. 9, no. 117. 47. Staudinger, “Études descriptives,” p. 126. 48. “Das Kunstkammerinventar Kaiser Rudolfs II,” p. 6, no. 39, 1. “Ein geshnitzter gemalter kopff, daraff 2 lange gewundene knorete hörner von dem thierlein gazella, auß Spanien kommen.” This was also noted in Staudinger, “Études descriptives,” p. 138. 49. Vienna, Österreichische Nationalbibliothek, cod. min. 129, fol. 76r. See Staudinger, “Études descriptives,” p. 248. 50. See Die Entdeckung der Natur, cat. no. 2.57, ill. p. 116; cat. no. 2. 71, 2. 76, ill. pp. 130, 131. 51. Cited in Staudinger, “Naturstudien,” 258. 52. See Staudinger, “Études descriptives,” p. 384, 98,100, 102. 53. Staudinger, “Études descriptives,” p. 356, suggests that he did it after a specimen in the Kunstkammer; see “Das Kunstkammerinventar Kaiser Rudolfs II.,” no. 185, but the inventory lists only the heads of such creatures, not the whole specimen. 54. See Almudena Peréz de Tudela and Annemarie Jordan Gschwend, “Luxury Goods for Royal Collectors: Exotica, Princely Gifts and Rare Animals Exchanged between the Iberian Courts and Central Europe in the Renaissance (1560–1612),” Jahrbuch des Kunshtistorischen Museums Wien 3 (Exotica. Portugals Entdeckungen im Spiegel fürstlicher Kunst- und Wunderkammern der Renaissance: Die Beiträge des am 19. und 20. Mai 2000 vom Kunsthistorischen Museum Wien veranstalteten Symposiums, ed. Helmut Trnek and Sabine Haag), 2001, pp. 42, 43. 55. See ibid., especially p. 41. 56. Although they are not aware of the actual examples taken by Arcimboldo from nature, in discussing the sources for the studies of the flowers used in his painting Spring, Alexander Wied and Sam Segal, in Arcimboldo 1526–1593, p. 126, suppose that he painted the majority of the flowers after nature and not after models made by other hands. They also remark that to the degree that plants flourish at different times of the year, the artist had to realize his nature studies of each flower separately, with the goal of utilizing them later for the painting. As suggested here, however, the last assumption is not necessarily entirely accurate, because Arcimboldo may have had other goals in mind. 57. See Heinrich Geissler, “Ad Vivum pinxit: Überlegungen zu Tierdarstellungen der zweiten Hälfte des 16. Jahrhunderts,” Jahrbuch der Kunsthistorischen Sammlungen in Wien 82–83, 1986/87, (Albrecht Dürer und die Tier und Pflanzenstudien der Renaissance: Symposium: Die Beiträge der von der Graphischen Sammlung Albertina vom 7. bis 10. Juni 1985 veranstalteten Tagung, ed. Fritz Koreny) pp. 101–14. This issue is also addressed in the literature to which Geissler refers, and that discussed in the present text. 58. The most complete account of portraits of Ferdinand I is Wolfgang Hilger, Ikonographie Kaiser Ferdinands 1., Vienna, 1969 (Veröffentlichung der Kommission für Geschichte Österreichs, 2). See further idem, “‘Das Bild vom König und Kaiser’: Anmerkungen zu berbreitung und Wirkungsgeschichte von Herrscherdarstellungen am Beispiel Ferdinands I.,” in Kaiser Ferdinand I. 1503–1564, pp. 231–41.

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Hilger’s attribution to Arcimboldo of the lost source of a portrait of the emperor in his waning years (ill. 5, p. 238) is unconvincing. 59. Although this term and its relation to portraiture are both discussed in relation to Arcimboldo by Ferino-Pagden, “Arcimboldo as Conterfetter of Nature,” and by Kirchberger, “Between Art and Nature,” neither delves into the complications of the term’s meanings its relation to naturalistic representation discussed here. 60. Peter Parshall, “Imago Contrafacta: Images and Facts in the Northern Renaissance,” Art History 16, 1993, pp. 554–79. 61. Ibid., p. 555. 62. See the description of the books Aldrovandi showed to the duke of Württemberg in Heinrich Schickhardt, Voyage en Italie/Reiß (Novembre 1599–Mai 1600), ed. André Bouvard, Montbéliard, 2002, pp. 311–12: “Es hatt mein Gnädiger Fürst und Herr auch gesehn / bey einem Doctor der Arzney / Ulysses Andro Uvandi genand / vil und mancherley seltsame Meer Fisch / frembde thier/ auch wunderbarliche Muschlen unnd Stain / deß gleichen Menschen/ thier und Vögell gebein / ganz Künstlich zusamen gesetzt. Item viel und mancherley Thier / Fisch / Vögel / Kreutter und Gewächß / Schön und Sauber / in dreyen Büchern / von Farben Contrafect.” 63. Swan, Art, Science, and Witchcraft, p. 206, n. 32. 64. Swan, ibid., pp. 48–49. See further her earlier treatment of the subject, eadem, “Ad Vivum, Naer Hat Leven, Form the Life: Defining a Mode of Representation,” Word and Image 11, no. 4, OctoberDecember 1995, pp. 332–53, with further bibliography on the topic. 65. Here Swan’s statement, Art, Science, and Witchcraft, p. 50, that “This does not rule out the possibility that the phrase also bore the sense of ‘appearing to render objects as they are and appear,’” seems to me a bit understated, since the point of the effort to obtain images was to get ones that were alive. See the next note. 66. Swan, ibid., p. 41. It is important to recognize that while Swan uses Aldrovandi’s texts here (and in “Ad Vivum, Naer Hat Leven”) to discuss DeGheyn and other northern artists, they are in fact directly pertinent to artists who actually provided works for Aldrovandi, among them Arcimboldo, as De Gheyn did not. 67. “Di modo che voler dipingere le piante naturalmente bisogna esser non solamente essercitatissimo pittore, ma di più bisogna havere la pianta fresca e circa cavata all’hora della terra: perché le piante essiccate non si ponno dipingere.” Olmi, “Arte e Natura nel Cinquecento Bolognese: Ulisse Aldrovandi e la Raffigurazione Scientifica,” in Le arti a Bologna e in Emilia dal XVIesimo al XVIIIesimo secolo: Acts of the XXIVth Congresso Internazionale di Storia dell’arte, ed. Andrea Emiliani, Bologna, 1982, vol. 4, p. 155. At the time of this volume’s publication a book by Angela Fischel , Natur im Bild: Zeichnung und Natur er Kenntnis bei Conrad Gessner und Ulisse Aldrovandi, Berlin 2009, was announced. 68. Loc. cit.: I use here the translation of Swan, Art, Science, and Witchcraft, p. 41, who however interprets it somewhat differently, not in its original context. 69. Olmi, “Arte e Natura nel Cinquecento,” p. 109, 155. The importance of coloring for Aldrovandi is also emphasized by Giuseppe Olmi and Lucia Tongiorgi Tomasi, De Piscibus: La bottega artistica di Ulisse Aldrovandi e l’immagine naturalistica, Rome,1997, pp. 18, 41. 70. Olmi and Tongiorgi Tomasi, De Piscibus, loc. cit. See further Il Teatro della natura di Ulisse Aldrovandi, Bologna, 2001, especially Giuseppe Olmi, “Il collezionismo scientifico,” pp. 20–50. Examples of these books are abundant in the collections in Prague, Munich, Eichstätt, etc. The last-named is represented in the Hortus Eysttetensis, for the origins of which see Die Pflanzenwelt des Hortus Eysttensis Ein Buch lebt, Munich, Paris, and London, 1998. 71. As quoted in Swan, Art, Science and Witchcraft, p. 41. See further Olmi, “Arte e natura nel Cinquecento.” 72. See the source cited by Staudinger, “Naturstudien,” p. 258. 73. Staudinger, “Études descriptives,” p. 210. 74. This has been studied in a continuing series of publications by Almudena Peréz de Tudela and Annemarie Jordan Gschwend. See, first of all, “Luxury Goods for Royal Collectors,” pp. 1–128. 75. See Ernst Kris, “Georg Hoefnagel und der wissenschaftliche Naturalismus,” in Festschrift für Julius Schlosser, ed. A. Weixlgarner and L.Planiscig, Vienna Leipzig, and Zurich, 1927, pp. 243–53.

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76. See Peter Dreyer, “Zeichnungen von Hans Verhagen dem Stummen von Antwerpen: Ein Beitrag zu den Vorlagen der Tierminiaturen Hans Bols und Georg Hoefnagels,” Jahrbuch der Kunsthistorischen Sammlungen in Wien, vol. 82–83, 1986/87 (Albrecht Dürer und die Tier und Pflanzenstudien der Renaissance: Symposium: Die Beiträge der von der Graphischen Sammlung Albertina vom 7. bis 10. Juni 1985 veranstalteten Tagung, ed. Fritz Koreny), pp. 115–44. Many further instances of this practice are discussed in Hendrix, “Joris Hoefnagel and the Four Elements.” 77. For these reasons see Thomas DaCosta Kaufmann, “The Nature of Imitation: Hoefnagel on Dürer,” Jahrbuch der Kunsthistorischen Sammlungen in Wien, vol. 82–83, 1986/87 (Albrecht Dürer und die Tier und Pflanzenstudien der Renaissance: Symposium: Die Beiträge der von der Graphischen Sammlung Albertina vom 7. bis 10. Juni 1985 veranstalteten Tagung, ed. Fritz Koreny), pp. 163–78; also in The Mastery of Nature, pp. 79–99. 78. Koreny and Segal, “Hans Hoffmann: Entdeckungen und Zuschreibungen,” p. 60, criticize the Dresden version; Ligozzi’s moose is in the Bibliotheca Universitaria Bologna, Fondo Aldrovandi, Tavole di Animali, I, fol. 159r, and illustrated in Il teatro della natura di Ulisse Aldrovandi, p. 76. Although this creature resembles a moose much less than does Arcimboldo’s, Aldrovandi, who evidently had seen neither a live elk nor a live moose, chose to use it as the model for an illustration in his book on animals with cloven hooves. Ligozzi’s rather awkward drawing—on which, rather than Arcimboldo’s design, Aldrovandi based the illustration in his book—points to the unfamiliarity of the creature: Aldrovandi, Quadrupedium omnium bisulcorum historia, p. 871, 869 for the illustration. 79. Erwin Panofsky, “Galileo as a Critic of the Arts: Aesthetic Attitude and Scientific Thought,” Isis 47, no. 1, pp. 6–9. Galileo’s comments are translated as follows by Stillman Drake, Discoveries and Opinions of Galileo, Garden City, 1957, p. 127. They [Galileo’s critics] wish never to raise their eyes from these pages [of Aristotle]—as if this great book of the universe had been written to be read by nobody but Aristotle, and his eyes had been destined to see for all posterity. These fellows who subject themselves to such strict laws put me in mind of certain capricious painters who occasionally constrain themselves, for sport, to represent a human face or something else by throwing together now some agricultural implements, again some fruits, or perhaps the flowers of this or that season. Such bizarre actions, so long as they are proposed in jest, are both pretty and pleasant, and reveal greater resourcefulness in some artists than in others according as they have been able the more clearly to select and apply this or that material to the form depicted. But if anyone were to pursue all his studies in such a school of painting, and should conclude in general that every other manner of representations [maniera di’imitare] was blameworthy and imperfect, it is certain that Cigoli and other illustrious painters would laugh him to scorn. 80. Cf., e.g., Freedberg, Eye of the Lynx. While noting that exotic plants from the Americas and Asia were to be seen growing in the gardens in Prague, Freedberg, p. 70, says little further, beyond calling the court “glittering and strange” and speaking of its “intense and slightly overheated intellectual atmosphere, where science and magic went even more closely together than usual.” 81. Brian Oglivie, The Science of Describing: Natural History in Renaissance Europe, Chicago and London, 2006. The quotation is taken from p. 28. 82. Ibid. 83. See Gian Paolo Lomazzo, Idea, in Scritti sulle arti, ed. Roberto Paolo Ciardi, Florence, 1973, vol. 1, p. 363. 84. Comanini, Il Figino, in Paola Barocchi, ed., Trattati d’arte del Cinquecento, Bari, 1962, vol. 3, pp. 265–66. 85. See Michel Foucault, The Order of Things, New York, 1970. 86. For this aspect of Hoefnagel’s imagery, see in particular Thea A.G. Wilberg Vignau-Schuurman, Die emblematischen Elemente im Werke Joris Hoefnagels, 2. vol. (Leids Kunsthistorisch Reeks, vol. 2), Leiden, 1969. 87. See William B. Ashworth, Jr, “Natural History and the Emblematic World View,” in Reappraisals of the Scientific Revolution, ed. David C. Lindberg and Robert S. Westman, Cambridge, 1990, pp. 303–32. 88. See Thomas DaCosta Kaufmann, “The Kunstkammer as a Form of Representatio: Remarks on

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the Collections of Rudolf II,” Art Journal 38, 1978, pp. 22–28. (republished in Grasping the World, ed. Daniel Preziosi and Claire Farago, Aldershot and Burlington, VT, 2004, pp. 526–37). 89. See further the remarks of Luke Morgan, Nature as Model: Salmon de Caus and Early SeventeenthCentury Landscape Design, Philadelphia, 2007, especially p. 203. 90. See, for these arguments, the acute observations by Patricia Flaguières, Les chambres de merveilles, Paris, 2003, pp. 76–78. 91. Hendrix, “Natural History Illustration,” p. 158. 92. The latter artists have indeed all been associated with the “Museum,” whose execution is now largely attributed to Van Ravesteyn. See Vignau-Wilberg, “Le Museum de l’empereur Rodolphe II et le Cabinet des art et curiosités.” 93. For Aldrovandi’s relations with artists, see in general Olmi, L’inventario del mondo. 94. For Ligozzi’s nature studies and his patrons, see Mina Bacci and Anna Forlani, Mostra dei disegni di Jacopo Ligozzi (ex. cat.), Florence, 1961; Lucilla Conigliello, “Pesci, crustacei e un’iguana per l’iperatore Rodolfo,” Paragone 493–495, 1991, pp. 22–29; Lucia Tongiorgi Tomasi, ed. I ritratti di piante di Jacopo Ligozzi, Pisa, 1993; and eadem in eadem and Gretchen A. Hirschauer, The Flowering of Florence: Botanical Art for the Medici, Washington, DC, 2002, pp. 38–51. Olmi, L’inventario, discusses his relation with Aldrovandi at length. Ferino-Pagden also made the comparison. It has recently been determined that the drawings owned by Rudolf II were probably gifts sent to the emperor from Florence in 1578; see Elena Venturini, “Il vestibolo dell’imperatore,” pp. 51–52, based on a letter of Pomponazzo Aurelio to ducal counselor Zibramonto Aurelio dated 29 November 1578, published as document 208, p. 264 in Le collezioni Gonzaga: Il carteggio tra la corte cesarea e Mantova (1559–1636) (Fonti, repertori e studi per la storia di Mantova 5), Milan and Mantua, 2002. chapter 7 1. See especially Giancarlo Maiorino, The Portrait of Eccentricity: Arcimboldo and the Mannerist Grotesque, University Park and London, 1991. 2. Charles Sterling, La nature morte de l’antiquité à nos jours, Paris, 1952, p. 38. Sterling specifically spoke of Arcimboldo’s paintings as paradoxical (paradoxales). As suggested in chapter 6, they may also deserve a place in the Kunstkammer or collection of paintings, but not in the way Sterling interpreted them. For another view of the way in which Arcimboldo’s paintings can be related to the Kunstkammer, see Thomas DaCosta Kaufmann, “The Kunstkammer as a Form of Representatio: Remarks on the Collections of Rudolf II,” Art Journal 38, 1978, pp. 22–28 (republished in Grasping the World, ed. Daniel Preziosi and Claire Farago, Aldershot and Ashgate, 2004, pp. 526–37). 3. See the exhibition catalogue Effetto Arcimboldo: Trasformazioni del volta umana, Milan, 1987. 4. See particularly Roberto Longhi, “Un momento importante nella storia della ‘natura morta,’” Paragone 1, 1950, pp. 34–39; Charles Sterling, La Nature morte de l’antiquité à nos jours, Paris, 1952, p. 38; Christian Klemm, “Weltdeutung: Allegorien und Symbole in Stilleben,” in Stilleben in Europa (ex. Cat.), Münster, 1979, pp. 154–161; John Spike, Italian Still Life Paintings from Three Centuries (ex. cat. New York, etc.), Florence, 1983, p. 13; Maiorino, The Portrait of Eccentricity, p. 34. 5. Most notably, Giacomo Berra, “Arcimboldi e Caravaggio: ‘Diligenza’ e ‘patienza’ nella natura morta arcaica,” Paragone 8–9-10, 1996, 108–61; idem, “Arcimboldi, Vincenzo Campi, Figino, Fede Galizia, Caravaggio: Congiunture sulla nascita della natura morta in Lombardia,” in Vincenzo Campi: Scene del quotidiano, ed. Franco Palliaga (ex. cat. Cremona), Milan, 2000, pp. 60–85; Mina Gregori, “Due partenze in Lombardia per la natura morta,” in La natura morta italiana da Caravaggio al Settecento, ed. eadem (ex. cat. Florence and Munich), Florence, Munich, and Milan, 2003, pp. 21–25, especially p. 21. 6. See Longhi, “Un momento importante,” and, following Longhi, Mina Gregori, “Riflessioni sulle origini della natura morta. Da Leonardo al Caravaggio,” in La natura morta al tempo di Caravaggio, Naples, 1995 (ex. cat. Rome), p. 19. Franco Paliaga, “Da Vincenzo Campi e Bartolomeo Passerotti a Fede Galizia e Panfilo Nuvolone,” in La natura morta italiana da Caravaggio al Settecento, pp, 80–81, and Alberto Veca, “Materiali per la natura morta in Lombardia,” in Natura Morta Lombarda, Milan, 1999, pp. 46–47, relate Arcimboldo to Lombard developments but discount his importance. Sibylle Ebert-Schifferer, “Caravaggios Früchtekorb—das früheste Stilleben?” Zeitschrift für Kunstgeschichte 65,

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2002, pp. 1–23, while dealing with Caravaggio’s Lombard antecedents, does not take Arcimboldo into account. 7. See Sylvia Ferino-Pagden, “Giuseppe Arcimboldo: Court Artist, Philosopher, rhétoriquer, Magician, or Entertainer?” in Arcimboldo 1526–1593, ed. eadem, Paris, Vienna, and Milan, 2007, p. 15, who, acknowledging Berra’s studies, downplays their significance in the creation of autonomous still life; Görel Cavalli-Björkman, “Anthropomorphic Portraits and Reversiable Heads,” ibid., 122–23. In the entire catalogue this possibility is otherwise mentioned only by the present author in a catalogue entry, ibid., p. 179. 8. For these dates see Arcimboldo; the reasons for them are discussed further in this and the following chapter. 9. The earliest documentary reference to an invertible picture also suggests that it may have been viewed in the first instance as a still life. To recall, this is a description of a painting shown by Maximilian II in Vienna to August of Saxony in 1573; it first mentions the picture as a vase of different flowers (vaso di diversi fiori), and only thereafter says that when the picture is turned upside down (capovolto) a ridiculous face (una faccia incredibilmente ridicola) is seen. It therefore seems that this painting may have been displayed so that it was first recognizable as a still life, and only when inverted was to be viewed as a fantastic composite head. This possibility was also recognized by Berra in Vincenzo Campi: Scene del quotidiano, p. 210, cat. no. 38. 10. Mina Gregori, “Caravaggio and Lombardy: A Critical Account of the Artist’s Formation,” Painters of Reality: The Legacy of Leonardo and Caravaggio in Lombardy, ed. Andrea Bayer (ex. cat. New York), New Haven and London, 2004, pp. 39–40, briefly acknowledges that Arcimboldo’s skills may have been honed in the north, but still treats him with regard to Lombard painting. 11. There is a large literature on the subject of still-life painting. Some general works, making the points to which reference is cited here, include the classic study by Sterling, Nature Morte; the important exhibition catalogue Stilleben in Europa (ex. cat. Münster), Westfälisches Landesmuseum für Kunst und Kulturgeschichte, 1979; the recent surveys by Norbert Schneider, Still Life: Still Life Painting in the Early Modern Period, trans. Hugh Beyer, Cologne, etc., 1998, and Sybille Ebert-Schifferer, Still Life: A History, trans. Russell Stockman, New York, 1999, and also the compendium of texts, commentaries, and interpretations, Eberhard König and Christian Schön, ed., Stilleben, Cologne, 1996 (Geschichte der klassischen Bildgattungen in Quellentexten und Kommentaren, 5). 12. A good selection of images is provided by Stefano de Caro, La natura morta nelle pitture e nei mosaici delle città vesuviane, Naples, 2001. See the authoritative compendium by J.M. Croisille, Les natures mortes campaniennes: Répertoire descriptif des peintures de nature morte du Musée National de Naples, de Pompeii, Herculanum et Stabies (Latomus 76), Brussels, 1965. 13. This point was first made by Longhi, and has been reiterated in much of the recent literature. See, for instance, John T. Spike, Italian Still Life Paintings from Three Centuries, New York, 1983. 14. See, in general, Sybille Ebert-Schifferer, ed. Deceptions and Illusions: Five Centuries of Trompe l’Oeil Painting, Washington DC, 2002. For the artist, see most recently Simone Ferrari, Jacopo de’ Barbari: Un protagonista del Rinascimento tra Venezia e Dürer, Milan, 2006. 15. This view is shared by Ebert-Schifferer, Still Life and “Caravaggios Früchtekorb,” and by Gregori, as presented in “Riflessioni.” 16. Some of these are present in König and Schön, Stilleben, and are fully discussed by EbertSchifferer, “Caravaggios Früchtekorb.” 17. This is the thrust of Ebert-Schifferer, ibid. 18. See Thomas DaCosta Kaufmann, The Mastery of Nature: Aspects of Art, Science, and Humanism in the Renaissance, Princeton, 1993, p. 107. The relation of Antiphilus to still life is also mentioned by Gregori,“Due partenze in Lombardia per la natura morta,” in La natura morta italiana da Caravaggio al Settecento, p. 21, without reference, however, to the connection with Arcimboldo. 19. See Marianne Maaskant-Kleinbrink, Catalogue of the Engraved Gems in the Royal Coin Cabinet, The Hague: Greek, Etruscan and Roman Coins, Wiesbaden, 1978, vol. 1, p. 346. Some examples may be found in Tamás Gesztelyí, Antike Gemmen in Ungarischen Nationalmuseum, Budapest, 2000, p. 91, no. 327, p. 173 ill.; Jeffrey Spear, Ancient Gems and Finger Rings: Catalogue of the Collection (J. Paul Getty Museum), Malibu, 1992, p. 85, no. 192; Adolf Furtwangler, Die Antike Gemmen:. Geschichte der Stein-

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schneiderkunst im klassischen Altertum, Leipzig and Berlin, 1900, plate xlvi. Examples from the imperial collection are seen in Erika Zwierlein-Diehl, Die antiken Gemmen des Kunsthistorischen Museums in Wien, vol. 2, Munich, 1979 plate 43 no. 804; vol. 3, 1991, p. 131, no. 2103, no. 2114; A. Bernhard Waecker, “Zur Geschichte der Gemmensammlung,” points to the origins of the gem collections in the Habsburg Kunst- und Schatzkammers of the sixteenth century. 20. For this inventory see Karl Rudolf, “Die Kunstsbestrebungen Kaiser Maximilian II. im Spannungsfeld zwischen Madrid und Wien,” in Jahrbuch der Kunsthistorischen Sammlungen in Wien, vol. 91, 1995, pp. 231–53. 21. One such work, formerly belonging to the Museum of Athanasius Kircher, is now on display in the Museo Archeologico in Rome. 22. See Kaufmann, Mastery of Nature, pp. 151–73. 23. For the latest treatment of these designs and their actual relation to sericulture, see Phillippe Morel, “Giuseppe Arcimboldo. Drawings for the Silk Industry,” in Arcimboldo 1526–1593, pp. 233–36. 24. See André Chastel, La grottesque, Paris, 1988; Philippe Morel, Les grotesques: Les figures de l’imaginaire dans le peinture italienne de la fin de la Renaissance, Paris 1997; Morel, Les grottes maniéristes en italie au XVIe siècle, Paris, 1998; Morel, “Il funziamento simbolico delle grottesche nella seconda metà del Cinquecento,” in Roma e l’antico nell’arte e nella cultura del Cinquento, ed. Marcello Fagiolo, Rome 1985, pp. 149–78. 25. Surprisingly the latest treatment of Arcimboldo and the grotesque, Philippe Morel, “Arcimboldo’s Composite Heads, Grotesques and the Aesthetics of Paradox,” in Arcimboldo 1526–1593, pp., 221–31, ignores this possibility, and mentions the naturalistic aspect of grotesques only very briefly, p. 224. 26. See, in general for this monument, Graham Smith, The Casino of Pius IV, Princeton, 1977. 27. Other examples are to be seen in the Casino of Pius IV, for which see Smith, ibid. In the light of such examples Morel’s reversion from his interpretation of allegorical elements in grotesques, in “Arcimboldo’s Composite Heads,” p. 224ff. versus “Il funziamento simbolico,” is at least surprising. 28. Copies by Strada after Giulio Romano’s designs for goldsmith’s work (now in Prague) exist in Brno and Cambridge, England. For a complete account of Giulio’s originals, with reference to the copies, see Beket Bukovinská, Eliška Fuˇcíková, and Lubomír Koneˇcný, “Zeichnonger von Giulio Romano und Seiner Werkstatt in einem vergessenen Samnelband in Prag,” Jahrbuch der Kunsthistorischen Sammlungen in Wien, 44, 1984, pp. 61–186. For Strada’s studies of Mantua, see Egon Verheyen, “Jacobo Strada’s Mantuan Drawings of 1567–1568,” Art Bulletin 49, no. 1, 1967, pp. 62–70. Strada’s copies after the Loggie are located in one of his manuscripts in the Handschriftensammlung Österreichische Nationalbibliothek. 29. See David Coffin, The Villa d’Este at Tivoli, Princeton, 1960; Pirro Ligorio: The Renaissance Artist, Architect, and Antiquarian, Princeton, 2004. 30. This aspect of Arcimboldo’s work was noted first by Benno Geiger, I dipinti ghiribizzosi, Florence, 1954, p. 24. 31. For this subject see, in addition to the works cited in the previous note, Thomas DaCosta Kaufmann, “Hermeneutics in the History of Art: Remarks on the Reception of Dürer in Sixteenth-and Early Seventeenth-Century Art,” in J.C. Smith, ed., New Perspectives on the Art of Renaissance Nuremberg: Five Essays, Austin, TX, 1985, pp. 22–39, and Eliška Fuˇcíková, “Umělci na dvoře Rudolfa II a jejich vztah k tvorbě Albrechta Dürera,” Umě ní 20, 1972, pp. 149–62. 32. Lubomír Koneˇcný, “Arcimboldo, Christ, and Dürer,” Bulletin of the National Gallery in Prague 5–6, 1995–96, pp. 132–37. 33. London, British Museum Department of Prints and Drawings, W. 242; Koreny, Albrecht Dürer und die Tier- und Pflanzenstudien, p. 21, fig. 18, 19, 21; p. 22, and Koreny and Segal, see note 68 below, pointed out this relationship to drawings now attributable to Arcimboldo which were not recognized as such at the time; see now Manfred Staudinger in Arcimboldo 1526–1593, p. 159, cat. no. IV. 24. 34. See in general Koreny, Albrecht Dürer und die Tier und Pflanzenstudien. 35. See ibid., pp. 340–43. 36. See for these paintings Die Maler tom Ring 2, cat. nos. 178–96, pp. 633–42. 37. This question depends on the determination of when the Tom Ring material came into the

Notes to Pages 171–76

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imperial collection. Cod. min. 42 contains materials of various dates, and was bound later than many of the dates shown on the sheets it contains. Because of the binding, it is clear that the book was put together during the period of the rule of Rudolf II, after 1576. However, as Manfred Staudinger has explained to the author orally, the sheets were pasted onto the pages in two different manners, and the codex therefore results from two different compilations. In any event it is entirely possible that the Tom Ring studies were in the imperial collection at an early date, regardless of when they were placed in the book. 38. I am grateful to Laura Matthioli Rossi for this suggestion. 39. See Heinrich Zimmermann, “Das Inventar der Prager Schatz- und Kunstkammer . . .,” Jahrbuch der Kunsthistorischen Sammlungen des Allerhöchsten Kaiserhauses 25, 1905, pt. 2, pp. cx–lii, campi. 40. See Franco Paliaga, “Vincenzo e la pittura di genere fiamminga,” in Vincenzo Campi: Scene del quotidiano, ed. idem, Cremona, 2000, pp. 51–59. 41. See Thomas DaCosta Kaufmann, The School of Prague: Painting at the Court of Rudolf II, Chicago and London, 1988, cat. no. 2.8; see other representations. The signature and date recorded, for instance, by Sven Alfons, Giuseppe Arcimboldo, Malmö, 1957 (Tidskrift för Konstvetenskap 31 [Symbolister 2]), p. 55, as being on the reverse are no longer visible (as was observed by the author in Stockholm in September, 2006); the picture has been relined. 42. For this picture see recently Arcimboldo 1526–1593, pp. 170–73, cat. no. IV. 30. 43. See Kaufmann, School of Prague, p. 170, cat. no. 2.18 and 2.19. Although the second of these pictures has long been accepted as Arcimboldo’s work, there has been reluctance to bring either picture into the context of the development of still life. See, however, for the first work, Görel Cavalli Björkman, “A Reversible Fantasy Portrait by Giuseppe Arcimboldo,” Art Bulletin of Nationamuseum Stockholm, 1–2, 1994–95, 15–17; Berra, “Arcimboldi e Caravaggio”; and idem, “Arcimboldi, Vincenzo Campi . . .” 44. This observation was made by Görel Cavalli-Björkman in examination of these pictures together with the author in September, 2006. 45. This evaluation represents a revision of the dating offered in The School of Prague, cat. no. 2.18, pp. 170–72. 46. Presented and illustrated most recently in La natura morta in Emilia e in Romagna: Pittori, centri di produzione e collezionismo fra XVII e XVIII secolo, ed. Daniele Benati e Lucia Peruzzi, Milan, 2000. 47. See Nicole Dacos, Le logge di Raffaello: Maestro e bottega di fronte all’antico, Rome, 1986; eadem, Giovanni da Udine, Udine, 1987, 3 vols. 48. See, for example, Per Bjurström and Börje Magnusson, Italian Drawings: Umbria, Rome, Naples, Stockholm, 1998. 49. See Alberto Veca et. al., “I ‘Maestri del vaso a grottesche,’” in Natura morta italiana, pp. 107–14. The dating of these works depends upon an identification of a heraldic device made by Giovanna Sapori, which is not acknowledged in the catalogue. 50. This painting was first advanced as an independent still life by Mina Gregori, accepted as such by Franco Paliaga, and presented in Natura morta italiana, pp. 90–91, with references to previous literature. 51. Paintings by Campi are recorded in an inventory of the Prague collections drawn up in 1621. See Heinrich Zimmermann, “Das Inventar der Prager Schatz- und Kunstkammer . . .” Jahrbuch der Kunsthistorischen Sammlungen des Allerhöchsten Kaiserhauses 25, 1905, p. xxxix, no. 1042, “Ein fischmark von Campo Cremesino,” and no. 1044, “Ein Obstmark von Campo Cremesino.” 52. See especially Berra, “Arcimboldi e Caravaggio.” 53. British Library, Department of Manuscripts, MS Kings 323, fol. 38r. 54. Gherardo Borgogni, La fonte del diporto . . . Dialogo, Bergamo, 1598, fol. 39r–40r, mentions that Galizia “è si fattamente versata nella pittura, che fa stupir chiunque vede le sue nobilissime fatiche, et in testimonio della verità, essendo questi anni adietro, dal già fu Sig. Gioseppe Arcimboldo Pittor di Sua M. Ces. Mandate alla detta Ces. M. alcune sue fatiche, le quali gli furono care molto, onde per darne maggior segno, ordinò a detto Arcimboldo, che gli facesse haver qualch’altra cosa di mano di questa virtuosissima giovane, il che fu eseguito.” This passage was first noticed by Giacomo Berra,

280

Notes to Pages 176–81

“Alcune puntualizzazioni sulla pittrice Fede Galizia attraverso le testimonianze del letterato Gherardo Borgogni,” Paragone 40, no. 469, 1989, pp. 14–29. 55. Paolo Morigia, Antichità di Milano, Milan, 1615 (first ed. 1595), p. 467. 56. Berra, “Arcimboldi, Vincenzo Campi...,” p. 78. 57. As first discovered by Giacomo Berra, “Contributo per la datazione della ‘Natura morta con pesche’ di Ambrogio Figino,” Paragone 40, no. 469, 1989, pp. 1–13. 58. British Library, MS Kings 323, fol. 210r: “. . . ch’essendo io sempre stato da me desiderosissimo d’impiegare in S. M. qualche mia fatica, & anco consigliatone à ciò, già qualche tempo, e da Giuseppe Arcimboldi . . . .” 59. The term is Figino’s own: for an explication, see Thomas DaCosta Kaufmann, “Arcimboldo’s Serious Jokes: ‘Mysterious but Long Meaning,’” in The Verbal and the Visual: Essays in Honor of William Sebastian Heckscher, ed. Karl-Ludwig Selig and Elizabeth Sears, New York, 1990, pp. 78–80. 60. See Berra, “ Arcimboldi e Caravaggio,” and “Arcmboldi, Vicenzo Campi.” 61. Although the painting probably originated at a later date, it is also significant that a picture by Caravaggio was to be found in the imperial Kunstkammer. See Zimmermann, “Das Inventar der Prager Schatz- und Kunstkammer . . .,” p. xxxix, no. 861: “Joseph mit des Butifers weib von Michalangelo de Caravaggio (Orig.)” 62. Fritz Koreny, Albrecht Dürer und die Tier und Pflanzenstudien der Renaissance, Munich, 1985, p, 22 and p. 22 n. 32. 63. Cf. Claudia Swan, Art, Science, and Witchcraft in Early Modern Holland: Jacques de Gheyn II (1565–1629), Cambridge, 2005, p. 211, n. 18. 64. For a good illustration of the only signed drawing by Van Ravesteyn in Budapest, see Terez Gerszi, Netherlandish Drawings: Sixteenth-Century Drawings, Amsterdam, 1971, vol. 2, p. 214. 65. These notes were also observed by Koreny, Albrecht Dürer und die Tier und Pflanzenstudien, p, 22 n. 32. 66. As was suggested in Herbert Haupt, Thea Wilberg- Vignau, Eva Irblich, and Manfred Staudinger, Le Bestiaire de Rodolphe II, Cod. Min. 129 et 130 de la Bibliothèque Nationale d’Autriche, trans. Léa Marcou, Paris, 1990. 67. See most recently for some of these images Manfred Staudinger, “Arcimboldo and Ulisse Aldrovandi,” and also cat. no. IV. 25 and 26 in Arcimboldo 1526–1593, pp. 113–17 and 165–67, cat. no. IV. 25 and 26. 68. The painting in question is in Vienna, Kunsthistorisches Museum, Gemäldegalerie, inv. no. 917. Manfred Staudinger, “Études descriptives de zoologie historique,” in Haupt, Vignau-Wilberg, Irblich and idem, Le Bestiaire de Rodolphe II, p. 138, noted the appearance of the antelope, duiker, and gerboa in the Expulsion from Paradise. Fritz Koreny and Sam Segal, “Hans Hoffmann—Entdeckungen und Zuschreibungen,” in Jahrbuch der Kunsthistorischen Sammlungen in Wien, vol. 85/86, 1989/90 (published 1992), p. 59 n. 11, also make note of these creatures and add the moose and bee eater. This picture had previously been regarded as Netherlandish c. 1560, the attribution and date used by Staudinger, until it was reattributed and dated 1580/90 by Koreny and Segal. See further Staudinger, “Arcimboldo and Ulisse Aldrovandi,” pp. 113–14. 69. Hannover, Niedersächsische Landesgalerie, Inv. no. PAM 956/982. Both Staudinger, “Études descriptives,” pp. 102 and 124, and Thea Vignau-Wilberg, “Le Museum de l’empereur Rodolphe II et le Cabinet des art et curiosités,” in Herbert Haupt, Wilberg-Vignau, Irblich, and Manfred Staudinger, Le Bestiaire de Rodolphe II, p. 54, fig. 37, noted this derivation, which Staudinger correctly related to the watercolors in cod. min. 42. Because of the date of Spranger’s painting, Arcimboldo’s watercolors are probably its source, and not the images copied from them in the “Museum.” See also Staudinger, “Arcimboldo and Ulisse Aldrovandi,” p. 114. For the question of the dating see Kaufmann, The School of Prague, pp. 268–69, cat. no. 20.59, and idem, Review: Prag um 1600, Kunst und Kultur am Hofe Rudolfs II. Exhibition, Essen, 1988, Kunstchronik 41, October 1988, pp. 559–60. 70. See Thea Vignau-Wilberg, Archetypa Studiaque Patris Georgii Hoefnagelii 1592. natur, Dichtung und Wissenschaft in der Kunst um 1600 / Nature, Poetry and Science in Art Around 1600, Munich, 1994. 71. Thea Vignau-Wilberg, “Joris Hoefnagel, The Illuminator,” in Lee Hendrix and eadem, Mira

Notes to Pages 181–84

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Calligraphiae Monumenta: A Sixteenth-Century Calligraphic Manuscript Inscribed by Georg Bocskay and Illuminated by Joris Hoefnagel, Malibu, 1992, p.21. 72. See Thea Vignau-Wilberg, “Flowers for his Mother: An Unknown Cabinet Miniature by Joris Hoefnagel,” Master Drawings 45, 2007, pp. 522–26. The miniature discussed is now in the Metropolitan Museum of Art. 73. See Thea Vignau-Wilberg, In Europa zu Hause: Niederländer in München um 1600 / Citizens of Europe: Dutch and Flemish Artists in Munich c. 1600, Munich (ex. cat.), 2005, p. 272, cat. no. D43, ill. p. 273. Wilberg-Vignau says that this work was painted in Hoefnagel’s Munich period. 74. Marie-Christiane Maselis, Arnout Balis, and Roger H. Marijnissen, The Albums of Anselmus de Boodt (1550–1632): Natural History Painting at the Court of Rudolph II in Prague, Tielt, 1999, p. 71, fig. 84. 75. See Emanuel Sweerts, Early Floral Engravings, ed. E.F. Bleiler, New York, 1976. 76. Swan, Art, Science, and Witchcraft, passim. 77. Swan, Art, Science, and Witchcraft. 78. For Savery in relation to the other nature painters at the imperial court, including Arcimboldo, see Lee Hendrix, “Natural History Illustration at the Court of Rudolf II,” in Rudolf II and Prague, 157–71. A preliminary effort to catalogue the work of Savery executed while he was in imperial service is offered in Kaufmann, The School of Prague, pp. 228–48; this list may now be increased considerably. An accurate up-to-date catalogue of Savery’s paintings is, however, still lacking. 79. See Kaufmann, The School of Prague, pp. 230–31, cat. no. 19.7. In 2008 this painting emerged and was sold at auction in London. 80. See Amy Walsh, Edwin Buijsen, Ben Broos, Paulus Potter: Paintings, Drawings, Etchings (ex. cat. The Hague), Zwolle, 1994. 81. Zimmermann, “Das Inventar . . . ,” fol. xxxix, no. 899: “Erstlich eine halbe kuchen, wie eine kaz fisch frist, vom Arsimboldo. (Orig.)” 82. See Das Flämische Stilleben 1550–1680 (ex. cat. Vienna and Essen), Lingen, 2002. 83. See Pamela M. Jones, Federico Borromeo and the Ambrosiana: Art and Patronage in SeventeenthCentury Milan, Cambridge and New York, 1992. 84. This is the reaction of Ferino-Pagden, “Giuseppe Arcimboldo, Court Artist,” p. 15. chapter 8 1. In contrast with the twentieth-century reception which discussed the “Arcimboldo effect,” as in Effetto Arcimboldo, Milan, 1987, and as treated in the introduction. 2. See for instance Barry Wind, “Genre as Season: Dossi, Campi, Caravaggio,” Arte Lombarda 42–43, 1975, p. 70: “Certainly Arcimboldo’s complicated, fantastic, and witty reconstruction of a floral still life [i.e., in Spring] has little to do with either Campi or Caravaggio, yet the directness of his image without key mythological focus has a certain kind of kinship with the seemingly straightforward presentation of the genre subject . . .” 3. G.P. Comanini, Il Figino, overo del fine della pittura, in Paola Barocchi, ed., Trattati d’arte del Cinquecento, Bari, 1962, vol. 3, pp. 266f; Gian Paolo Lomazzo, Idea del Tempio della Pittura, in Scritti sulle arti, ed. and intro. Roberto Paolo Ciardi, Florence, 1973, 1, 362: “Come meravigliose in somma sono tutti gl’altri quadri da lui fatti con sommo artificio.” 4. Giancarlo Maiorino, The Portrait of Eccentricity: Arcimboldo and the Mannerist Grotesque, University Park, PA, 1991, pp. 19f. 5. As Erwin Panofsky recognized long ago, Comanini’s defense alters Plato’s definitions, particularly that of fantastic imitation. See Erwin Panofsky, Idea: A Concept in Art Theory, trans. Joseph J.S. Peake, Columbia, SC, 1968 (first ed. Leipzig, 1924), pp. 212–15. 6. “Quel pittore adunque, il quale imiterà cosa formata dalla natura, come sarebbe uomo, fiera, monte, mare, piano et altre simili, farà imitazione icastica; ma quegli che dipingerà un suo capriccio non più disegnato da alcun altro, almeno che egli sappia, farà imitazione fantastica.” Comanini, Figino, in Trattati d’arte, ed. cit., p.256. For Mazzoni, see Della difesa della Comedia di Dante . . ., Cesena, 1587. 7. Francesco Scanelli, Il microsmo della pittura, Cesena, 1657, ed. Guido Giubbini, Milan, 1966, p. 86, cited in Roland Kanz, Die Kunst des Capriccio: Kreativer Eigensinn in Renaissance und Barock, Munich and Berlin, 2002, p. 212 n. 62. Kanz, pp. 204–13, provides a full discussion of the notion of capriccio in 282

Notes to Pages 185–92

relation to Arcimboldo, which, while relevant to this chapter, does not take into account the notion of his pictures as caprices of nature, discussed below. 8. For a discussion of Arcimboldo’s work in relation to this topic, including further references, see Thomas DaCosta Kaufmann, “The Allegories and their Meaning,” in The Arcimboldo Effect, Milan, 1987, pp. 89–108; Giacomo Berra, “Allegoria e mitologia nella pittura dell’Arcimboldi: La ‘Flora’ e il ‘Vertunno’ nei versi di un libretto sconosciuto di rime,” Acme (Annali della Facoltà di Lettere e Filosofia dell’Università degli Studi di Milano) 41, no. 2, May-August, 1988, pp. 11–13; and Berra, “Immagini casuali, figure nascose e natura antropomorfa nell’immaginario artistico rinascimentale,” Mitteilungen des Kunsthistorischen Institutes in Florenz 43, no. 2/3, 1999, pp. 391–92. 9. For the relation of Arcimboldo’s paintings to chimeras, see Thomas DaCosta Kaufmann, The Mastery of Nature: Aspects of Art, Science, and Humanism in the Renaissance, Princeton, NJ, 1993, p. 107, and in general for these topoi, idem, “The Allegories and their Meaning.” 10. This may also be related to a discussion in Lomazzo. For Arcimboldo’s paintings and dream images see Kaufmann, Mastery of Nature, p. 162. For their relation to other sorts of visions see Giacomo Berra, “Arcimboldi: Le teste ‘caricate’ leonardesche: Le ‘grillerie’ dell’Accademia della Val di Blenio,” in Rabisch: Il grottesco nell’arte del Cinquecento: L’Accademia della Val di Blenio Lomazzo e l’ambiente milanese (ex. cat. Lugano), Milan, 1998, 57–67. 11. “. . . est etiam diversae tertius Phantasos: ille in humum saxumque undamque trabemque, quaeque vacant anima, fallaciter omnia transit.” 12. Comanini, Figino, ed. cit., p. 270: “. . . poiché egli sa fare l’arti e le trasformazioni che eglino fanno. Anzi, fa di vantaggio piú cose che non fanno essi, trasformando egli animali et uccelli e serpenti e bronchi e fiori e frutti e peschi et erbe e foglie e spiche e pagli et uve in uomini et in vestimenti d’uomini, in donne et in ornamenti di donne.” 13. Morigia, Historia dell’antichità di Milano, Milan, 1592, p. 566. 14. Lomazzo, Idea, ed. cit., I, 363.. See further idem, Rime, Milan, 1590. 15. Anton Francesco Doni, Disegno di Doni partito in piû ragionamenti . . ., Venice, 1549, fol. 22r. 16. For Arcimboldo’s paintings as new forms of metamorphoses, and the terms applied to them, see Thomas DaCosta Kaufmann in Mastery of Nature, pp. 102, 107–8, and 162–63 (revising the author’s earlier publications). 17. Comanini, Figino, ed. cit., 266–67: “Lasciamo che no v’ha testa la quale dall’Arcimboldo non sia stata tratta del naturale, percioche l’Imperadore gliene diede la commodità, facendogli veder vivi tutti i sopradetti animali.” 18. As cited above, Sylvia Ferino Pagden, “Arcimboldo, Counterfetter of Nature,” in Arcimboldo 1526–1593, ed. eadem, Paris, Vienna, and Milan, 2007, pp. 103–12, also notes the conjunction of the two aspects of his art. 19. For other publications on the painting, see Berra, “Allegoria e mitologia.” 20. Comanini, Figino, ed. cit., p.258. 21. See Lorraine Daston and Katharine Park, “Unnatural Conceptions: The Study of Monsters in Sixteenth- and Seventeenth-Century France and England,” Past and Present 92, 1981, pp. 20–54; eadem, Wonders and the Order of Nature, New York, 1998; Zakiya Hanfi, The Monster in the Machine: Magic, Medicine, and the Marvelous in the Time of the Scientific Revolution, Durham and London, 2000. The quotation comes from a draft of Wonders and the Order of Nature, which the authors kindly allowed me to consult before publication; the comment does not appear in the published book. 22. See Daston and Park, Wonders and the Order of Nature, and more recently the essays in Curiosity and Wonder from the Renaissance to the Enlightenment, ed. R.J.W. Evans and Alexander Marr, Aldershot and Burlington, VT, 2006, especially Alexander Marr, introduction, pp. 1–20, which gives an account of the issues and the literature since Daston and Park. 23. Comanini, Figino, ed. cit., pp. 265–66: “Non c’è frutto o pur fiore che non sieno cavati dal naturale et imitati con quella maggior diligenza che possibil sia.” 24. Lee Hendrix, “Natural History Illustration at the Court of Rudolf II,” in Rudolf II and Prague: The Court and the City, ed. Eliška Fuˇcíková et. al., Prague, London, and Milan, 1997, p. 166. 25. Ignis (Animalia Rationalia et Insecta), fol 1, National Gallery of Art, Washington, DC. Gift of Mrs. Lessing J. Rosenwald. See Lee Hendrix, “Of Hirsutes and Insects: Joris Hoefnagel and the Art of the Wondrous,” Word and Image, 1995, pp. 373–90. Paintings of hirsute people are also linked with Notes to Pages 192–96

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Arcimboldo by their exhibition in a show devoted to his work: see Arcimboldo 1526–1593, pp. 167–69, cat. nos. IV. 27 and IV. 28. 26. See Hendrix, “Natural History Illustration,” pp. 166ff., Thea Vignau-Wilberg, “Le Museum de l’empereur Rodolphe II et le Cabinet des art et curiosités,” in Herbert Haupt, eadem, Eva Irblich and Manfred Staudinger, Le Bestiaire de Rodolphe II, Cod. Min. 129 et 130 de la Bibliothèque Nationale d’Autriche, trans. Léa Marcou, Paris, 1990, p. 47. The arguments in these paragraphs were first stated in Thomas DaCosta Kaufmann, “Caprices of Art and Nature: Arcimboldo and the Monstrous,” in Kunstform Capricccio. Von der Groteske zur Spieltheorie der Moderne, ed. Ekkehard Mai and Joachim Rees, Cologne, 1997, pp. 33–35. 27. See for a discussion of these connections Thomas DaCosta Kaufmann, Variations on the Imperial Theme in the Age of Maximilian II and Rudolf II, New York and London, 1978, pp. 103ff, and for a more recent critique, idem, The Mastery of Nature, pp. 174ff. 28. See Park and Daston, Wonders and the Orders of Nature. 29. This connection was also brought out by Franz Kirchweger, “Between Art and Nature: Arcimboldo and the World of the Kunstkammer,” in Giuseppe Arcimboldo, pp. 189–94; see further the catalogue items on pp. 195ff. For more on this topic see Martin Kemp, “‘Wrought by no Artist’s Hand’: The Natural, the Artificial, the Exotic, and the Scientific in Some Artifacts from the Renaissance,” in: Reframing the Renaissance: Visual Culture in Europe and Latin America 1450–1650, ed. Claire Farago, New Haven and London, 1995, pp. 177–96. 30. Comanini, Figino, ed. cit., pp. 284–85: Chiunque imita, non fa un certo gioco? Lo dice Platone nel X delle Leggi. Haven and London, 1995, pp. 177–96. 31. This is the implication of Paula Findlen, “Jokes of Nature and Jokes of Knowledge: The Playfulness of Scientific Discourse in Early Modern Europe,” in Renaissance Quarterly 43, 1990, citing Comanini and making reference to Arcimboldo, p. 316. 32. Vignau-Wilberg, “Le Museum de Rodolphe II,” pp. 31f., assembles references demonstrating this point. 33. For a good illustration of Arcimboldo’s invention, see The Arcimboldo Effect, p. 188. For works inspired by this composition see Geiger, I dipinti ghiribizzosi, figs. 19–22, and Findlen, “Jokes of Nature,” p. 294, ill. Other examples were to be seen in “Une image peut en cacher une autre,” Paris 2009. 34. Park and Daston, Wonders and the Order of Nature. 35. See Findlen, “Jokes of Nature,” pp. 316ff. An example of an Arcimboldesque may be found, for example, in the Walters Art Gallery, Baltimore, Maryland. This piece is made out of wax, shells, seeds, and pearls and is attributed, significantly, to Milan, the home of Arcimboldo. For an illustration see Treasures and Rarities (ex. cat. Baltimore), 1971, p. 6. See further Adalgisa Lugli, Naturalia et mirabilia: Il collezionismo enciclopedico nelle Wunderkammern d’Europa, Milan, 1983, fig. 97–99. It is interesting to note the interconnection of these interests; small copies of Arcimboldo’s paintings of the four seasons are contained in the Kunstschrank of Gustavus Adolfus (Uppsala, University): see Hans-Olof Boström, Det Underbara Skåpe: Philipp Hainhofer och Gustav II Adolfs konstkåp, Uppsala, 2001, p. 83. 36. Findlen, “Jokes of Nature,” p. 318. 37. See Kaufmann, The Mastery of Nature, pp. 162ff. 38. For the arguments on which the statements in these two paragraphs rest, see The Mastery of Nature, pp. 100ff., “Mysterious but Long Meaning,” and “The Allegories and their Meaning.” 39. See, for an explication of this connection, “The Allegories and their Meaning.” 40. Park and Daston, Wonders and the Orders of Nature; also eaedem, “The Study of Monsters.” 41. The Mastery of Nature, pp. 126ff. 42. Cited in full in Berra, “Un Autoritratto cartaceo,” 58. 43. Cited, loc. cit., and previously by idem, “Allegoria e mitologia,” 20. 44. Ovid, Metamorphoses 1:82, refers to Prometheus as satus Iapeto. 45. Bernardini Baldini, Carminum Appendix Caesaris Millefanti . . ., Milan, 1600, pp. 43–44. DE IOSEPHO ARCIMBOLDIO PICTORE. Ex hominum membris homines formare / creatrix / Diva potest, folijs, floreq[ue] vestit agros; / Frondibus humanos, herbisq[ue] virentibus artus / Haud eadem simili texere docta modo. / Hoc Arcimboldi potuit praestare facultas / Unica naturae qua superavit opus. 284

Notes to Pages 196–201

46. This and other concepts of imitation, as well as the contest of art and nature, are discussed by Francis Wolff, “The Three Pleasures of Mimesis According to Aristotle’s Poetics,” in The Artificial and the Natural, an Evolving Polarity, ed. Bernadette Bensaudé-Vincent and William R. Newman, Cambridge, MA, and London, 2007. 47. It may even be that Arcimboldo’s representation of the god of transformations, Vertumnus, who is equated with the god of the elements as well, and his series of representations of the four elements also engage with Cicero’s comments (De Natura Deorum 84) related to the cycle of the elements, and the ability of art to compete with them in its own cycles. 48. The full text of this poem was first published in Kaufmann, “Arcimboldo’s Serious Jokes,” p. 75. 49. Comanini, Il Figino, ed. cit., 260, says of Arcimboldo’s brush, “...ch’avanza / Pur quel di Zeusi, o quello / Di chi gli fe’ l’inganno / Del sottil vel dipinto.” Pointed out by Lubomír Koneˇcný, “Zeuxis in Prague: Some Thoughts on Hans von Aachen [sic],” in Prag um 1600: Beiträge zur Kunst und Kultur am Hofe Rudolfs II., Freren, 1988, p. 154 n. 21. 50. Koneˇcný, “Zeuxis in Prague,” 147–55. Koneˇcný, pp. 154–55, n. 21, also refers to the treatment of Arcimboldo as being superior to Zeuxis and Parrhasios. 51. See Eberhard König and Christiane Schön, Stilleben, Berlin, 1996 p. 59. 52. For the most recent approach to questions of attribution and dating, see my entries in Arcimboldo 1526–1593, passim. 53. Comanini, Il Figino, ed. cit., p. 269; Lomazzo, Idea, ed. cit., p. 362, 54. Comanini, Il Figino, p. 265: “Ch’ammirar sacra cosa è più securo /Sol, che, parlando, balbettarne il meno. / Però qual dotto Egizzio ha sotto ’l velo / Di si bei frutti il tuo divin coperto L’Arcimboldo.” 55. Ibid., p. 264: “quel buon vecchio caro, / Cui si pregiò ’l gran Plato, / son, che fuor sembro un monstro / e dentro lemie sembianze / E regia imago ascondo.” 56. Ibid., pp. 268, 270. 57. I have consulted the Latin and Italian translations in addition to the Greek original. 58. Michele Mercati, Metallotheca opus Posthumum, Rome, 1717, fol. liii. 59. For Mercati, see the discussion with references to previous literature, by Hans Holländer, “Ein Museum der Steine: Die ‘Mettalotheca des Michele Mercati und die Ordnung des Wissens,” in Wunderwerk: Göttliche Ordnung und vermessene Welt: Der Goldschmied und Kupferstecher Antonius Eisenhoit und die Hofkunst um 1600, ed. Christophe Stiegemann (ex. cat.Paderborn), Mainz, 2003, pp. 19–30. Horst Bredekamp, The Lure of Antiquity and the Cult of the Machine, trans. Allison Brown, Princeton, NJ, 1995, p.14, compares Mercati’s ordering system to Aldrovandi’s. 60. See chapters 3 and 4 for Fonteo and De risu. 61. See Michel Jeanneret, Perpetual Motion: Transforming Shapes in the Renaissance from da Vinci to Montaigne, trans. Nidra Poller, Baltimore and London, 2001, pp. 101–2, commenting on Conti’s Mythologiae sive Explicationes Fabularum of 1551. 62. Morigia, La Nobilità di Milano, p. 244. 63. As quoted by Giuseppe Olmi, L’inventario del mondo: Catalogazione della natura e luoghi del sapere nella prima età moderna, Bologna, 1992, p. 30, and translated by Claudia Swan, Art, Science, and Witchcraft in Early Modern Holland: Jacques de Gheyn II (1565–1629), Cambridge, 2005, p. 41. Swan notes, p. 42 n. 51, that Jochen Becker had recognized Aldrovandi’s source in Aelian. 64. Gabriele Paleotti, Discorso intorno alle Imagini Sacre e Profane, in Paola Barocchi, ed. Trattati d’arte del Cincquecento, Bari, 1962 (first ed. Bologna, 1582), pp. 2, 390: Delle pitture ridicole. 65. Jürgen Müller, Das Paradox als Bildform: Studien zur Ikonologie Pieter Bruegels d. Ä., Munich, 1999, p. 111. 66. Sebastian Franck, Paradoxa, ed. and introd. Siegfried Wollgast, Berlin, 1966, p. 161: “Darum muß der Schein mit der Wahrheit streiten und die Welt dem Scheinhaben, Gott aber die Wahrheit behalten. Darum kann vor Gott in der Wahrheit nicht sein, wie es oder der Welt scheint, sondern jedes Ding ist umgekehrt, und in umgewendeter Silenus. Davon siehe weiter: Inversus silenus omnia.” The translation here is that presented in Sebastian Franck, 280 Paradoxes or Wondrous Sayings, trans. and intro. E.J. Furcha (Texts and Studies in Religion vol. 26), Lewiston, NY and Queenston, ON, 1986, p. 171. 67. This represents a readjustment of thinking offered in Thomas DaCosta Kaufmann, The School of Prague: Painting at the Court of Rudolf II, Chicago and London, 1988. 68. See, most recently for Arcimboldo’s relations with Saxony Thomas DaCosta Kaufmann, “ArNotes to Pages 201–8

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cimboldo and the Elector of Saxony,” Scambio culturale con il nemico religioso: Italia e Sassonia attorno 1600, ed. Sybille Ebert-Schifferer, Rome, 2007, pp. 27–36. 69. Karl Rudolf, “Die Kunstsbestrebungen Kaiser Maximilian II. im Spannungsfeld zwischen Madrid und Wien,” in Jahrbuch der Kunsthistorischen Sammlungen in Wien 91, 1995, p. 166 and n. 3: “. . . et tra l’altre un retratto del Dottor Zasio Iddio gli perdoni, fatto tutto di scritture, di cedoli, di polize, di lettere, et di memoriali; et di un naso di fiori diversi la metà contrafatti netti, et la metà secchi: che stando il naso in suo essere rappresentava una vaghesta mirabili di fiori, voltato il naso al rovescio mostrava una faccia incredibilmente ridicola.” Rudolf has returned to this theme in an as yet unpublished paper delivered 2 June 2008 at a colloquium held in the Kunsthistorisches Museum, Vienna, “Scherz und Ironie in Kunst und Literatur zur Zeit Arcimboldos.” Rudolf now thinks that the description may refer to two separate paintings by Arcimboldo, one of which was a reversible head made of flowers, and one a portrait of Zasius made of papers. 70. Kaufmann, Mastery of Nature, p. 107. 71. See Kaufmann, “Arcimboldo and the Elector of Saxony.” 72. Gregorio Comanini, De gli Affeti della mistica Theologia tratti dalla cantica dei Salomone, et sparsi di varie guise di poesie, Venice, 1590, fol. a2v–a3r: “Salomone . . . Rè grandissimo è stato, & altissimo Poeta Icastico come quegli, che sotto metafore, & hiperbole marvigliose, hà nascosto profondi secreti, & cantato non fauole, ma verità della fede nostra.” 73. Ibid., pp. 2–3. 74. Berra also noticed the similarity of Arcimboldo’s composite head made of fruit, which when inverted becomes a fruit basket, to one of a series of Vier Fantasie Köpfe of 1616 by Paul Flindt. This is a composite head that also becomes a basket when turned upside down, and which has a pear for a nose. See Berra, “Arcimboldi, Vincenzo Campi, Figino, Fede Galizia, Caravaggio,” pp. 68–69, figs. 8 and 9. 75. Ioannis Pierii Valeriani, Hieroglyphica sive de sacris literis commentarii, Lyon 1610 (first ed. Florence 1556, but the illustrations and descriptions of the season only appear in editions from 1567), p.642: Ver Cista florum authore Eusebio Ver significat: quia vere cuncta florescunt. Aestas Cista spicis reserta, eodem Eusebio teste, Aestatem denotat: quod aestate segetes et spicae demetantur Autumnus Cornu copiae uvis et pomis plenum, Autumnum indicat: quoniam tunc vina fiunt et omnes fructus pleno copiae cornu fundi videntur. 76. Loc. cit. Hyems Mens apu ignem parata, Hyemem significat: quia frigus et quis post aestates labores parta, terraeque opes congetae ad laudis vitae genera invitare videntur . . . 77. See School of Prague, p. 170, cat. nos. 2.18 and 2.19. Although the second of these pictures has long been accepted as Arcimboldo’s work, there has been reluctance to bring either into the context of the development of still life. See, however, for the first work, Görel Cavalli Björkman, “A Reversible Fantasy Portrait by Giuseppe Arcimboldo,” Art Bulletin of Nationalmuseum Stockholm 1–2, 1994–95, pp. 15–17; Berra, “Arcimboldi e Caravaggio”; and idem, “Arcimboldi Vincenzo Campi.” 78. See Terence Cave, The Cornucopian Text: Problems of Writing in the French Renaissance, Oxford and New York, 1979. 79. See Thomas DaCosta Kaufmann, The Eloquent Artist: Essays on Art, Art Theory and Architecture, Sixteenth to Nineteenth Century; London, 2004. 80. See Luke Morgan, Nature as Model: Salomon de Caus and Early Seventeenth-Century Landscape Design, Philadelphia, 2003, p. 203.

286

Notes to Pages 208–10

conclusion 1. See John Shearman, Mannerism, Harmondsworth, 1967. 2. See R.J.W. Evans, Rudolf II and his World: A Study in Intellectual History 1576–1612, Oxford, 1973. 3. As many essays in Arcimboldo 1526–1593, Paris, Vienna, and Milan, 2007–08, have pointed out, this is so even if the court with which Arcimboldo’s art is to be associated can legitimately also be considered that of Maximilian II. 4. See first Thomas DaCosta Kaufmann, Variations on the Imperial Theme in the Age of Maximilian II and Rudolf II, New York and London, 1978. 5. See Arcimboldo 1526–1593. 6. Arcimboldo 1526–1593. 7. See Painters of Reality: The Legacy of Leonardo and Caravaggio in Lombardy, New York, New Haven, and London, 2004. 8. The mirror device was used at exhibitions in Cremona in 2002, in Vienna and Paris in 2007–08, and in Paris in 2009; the rotating device has been used at various venues (New York Fine Arts Fair; Maastricht TEFAF Fair, etc.). 9. This problem of spatial resolution has even led some critics to doubt–erroneously in my mind— the attribution of some invertible pictures to Arcimboldo. 10. Rosalie Colie, Paradoxia Epidemica, Princeton, 1966, p. 286. 11. Reindert Falkenburg, “Alter Einoutus: Over de aard en herkomst van Pieter Aertsens stilleven conceptie,” Nederlands Kunsthistorisch Jaarboek 40, 1989, pp. 40–66. 12. Claudia Swan, Art, Science, and Witchcraft in Early Modern Holland: Jacques de Gheyn II (1565– 1629), Cambridge, 2005. 13. See Kaufmann, The Mastery of Nature; Oglivie, The Science of Describing, p. 114, relates this argument to the origins of modern natural history as well. 14. The literature on still life has been increasing steadily. For this particular view an exemplary treatment is Beatrix Brenninkmeijer-de Rooij, Roots of 17th-century Flower Painting: Miniatures, Plant Books, Paintings, Leiden, 1996. 15. This point of view is most forcefully presented by Swan, Art, Science, and Witchcraft in Early Modern Holland. 16. The poles in this debate may be represented by the statements encapsulated in Svetlana Alpers, The Art of Describing: Dutch Art in the Seventeenth Century, Chicago and London, 1983, and by Edy de Jongh, Questions of Meaning, trans. and ed. Michael Hoyle, Leiden, 2000—and especially in reference to this question, “The Interpretation of Still-Life Paintings: Possibilities and Limits,” in idem, ed., Still Life in the Age of Rembrandt, Auckland, 1982, pp. 27–38. There are, of course, notable specialists who have proposed and represented the latter positions, including Sam Segal, in numerous publications, e.g. Niederländische Stilleben von Brueghel bis Van Gogh, Amsterdam and Braunschweig, 1983, and Ingvar Bergström, including his classic Dutch Still-Life Painting in the Seventeenth Century, London, 1956 (first ed. Stockholm, 1947). 17. These issues were dramatized in the landmark exhibition devoted to genre painting and subsequently to other pictorial genres, including landscape and still life, in Tot lering en vermaak: Betekenissen van Hollandse genrevoorstellingen uit de zeventiende eeuw (ex. cat.) Amsterdam, 1976. 18. See Philippe Morel, “Arcimboldo’s Composite Heads: Grotesques and the Aesthetics of Paradox,” in Arcimboldo 1526–1593, ed. Sylvia Ferino-Pagden, Paris, Vienna, and Milan, 2007, pp. 221–31, especially pp. 227–29. Morel’s interpretations are considered in these programs. 19. As suggested by Roland Barthes, Arcimboldo, trans. John Shepley, Milan, 1980 (first ed. 1978), whom Morel, “Arcimboldo’s Composite Heads,” deploys. 20 Cf. Morel, ibid., who raises the interpretation here considered. 21. Morel, ibid., p. 225, doubts that there is a political program at the origins of the composite heads, or that some political inflexion really determined their conception. My interpretation never suggested that this was the cause of their creation—and this book has suggested that their composition was even much more profound, even though the Seasons and Elements were imperial allegories. See, however, for a reasonable argument that refutes many of these doubts—including specifically those of Charles Hope, “Sight Gags,” New York Review of Books 34, no. 14, 24 September 1987, pp.

Notes to Pages 213–17

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41–44—and deals with the problem of the addition of details pertaining to the Habsburgs in the Elements versus the Seasons, the remarks of Sylvia Ferino-Pagden, “Giuseppe Arcimboldo: Court Artist, Philosopher, Rhétoriquer, Magician, or Simple Entertainer?” in Arcimboldo 1526–1593, especially p. 22. appendix 1 1. See Giovan Paolo Lomazzo e i Facchini della Val di Blenio, Rabisch, ed. and commentary Dante Isella, Turin, 1993. For various aspects of this group, see the interpretations offered in Rabisch: Il grottesco nell’arte del Cinquecento: L’Accademia della Val di Blenio Lomazzo e l’ambiente milanese (ex. cat. Lugano), Milan, 1998. 2. See Francesco Porzio, “Fonti carnevalesche del naturalismo nel Cinquecento milanese: Alcune ipotesi su Giuseppe Arcimboldi,” Arte Lombarda 105–7, 1993, especially pp. 37–42. Giacomo Berra, “Arcimboldi: Le teste ‘caricate’ leonardesche e le ‘grillerie’ dell’Accademia della Val di Blenio,” in Rabisch: Il grottesco nell’arte del Cinquecento: L’accademia della Val di Blenio Lomazzo e l’ambiente artistico, p. 64, picks up this argument. 3. In this transcription, as elsewhere, I have generally expanded standard abbreviations. For the document quoted here, see Archivio della Fabbrica del Duomo di Milano, Entrate e Uscite, 333, fol. 116r. Silvio Leydi, “Giuseppe Arcimboldo in Milan, Documents and Hypotheses: Summary of Documents Relating to the Milanese Period,” in Arcimboldo 1526–1593, Paris, Vienna, and Milan, 2007, p. 299, independently came across this document, which he publishes without transcription. 4. Archivio della Fabbrica del Duomo di Milano, Entrate e Uscite, 410, fol. 126v. This document is not recorded by Leydi, ibid. 5. Archivio della Fabbrica del Duomo di Milano, Entrate e Uscite, 335, fol. 169r. This document is also not recorded by Leydi, ibid. 6. Archivio della Fabbrica del Duomo di Milano, Entrate e Uscite, 335, fol. 127v. This document was found independently and recorded but not transcribed by Leydi, ibid., p.300, who also notes that the painting was of Eight Virgins in Majesty. 7. See Elisabetta Canobbio, “Quod rationes fabrice ecclesie cathedralis Cumarum recto ordine et recte transeat: La fabbrica di S. Maria Maggiore nel Quattrocento,” Periodico della Societa Storica Comense 57, 1995, pp. 33–48. 8. There is an extensive bibliography on the iconography of this subject. See, for example, K. Wessel, “Maiestas Domini: Aus der Frühgeschichte eines Bildmotivs,” Archivo Español de Arqueologia, 1972–74, pp. 185–204. 9. Leydi, “Documents,” pp. 299–300. 10. See the previously unpublished document to which reference is made in Leydi, op. cit., p. 299. 11. Cf. Rabisch. 12. See chapter 4, note 82. 13. Porzio is responding in particular to Thomas DaCosta Kaufmann, “Arcimboldo’s Imperial Allegories,” Zeitschrift für Kunstgeschichte 39, 1976, pp. 275–96; idem, “Arcimboldo and Propertius: A Classical Source for Rudolf II as Vertumnus,” Zeitschrift für Kunstgeschichte 48, 1985, pp. 117–23; both in idem, The Mastery of Nature: Aspects of Art, Science, and Humanism in the Renaissance, Princeton, NJ, 1993, pp. 100–135. 14. Especially Porzio, “Fonti carnivalesche,” p. 37. 15. Porzio, “Fonti carnevalesche.” appendix 2 1. Borromeo’s letter was published in Mercede Viale Ferrero, “La serie degli Arazzi,” in Angelo Paredi, David Talbot Rice, Angelo Ottino Della Chies, and eadem, Il tesoro del Duomo di Monza, Milan, 1966, p. 122. 2. E.g., A. Bernareggi, “Gli arazzi del Duomo di Monza,” Arte Cristiana 14, no. 9, 1926, p. 239. 3. See Nello Forti Grazzini, “Gli Arazzi,” in Monza: Il duomo, Milan, 1988, p. 137. 4. Cf. Forti Grazzini, ibid., pp. 135–51; Robert Miller, who first found the documents pertaining to Monza, already rightly recognized this fact. See note 7 below.

288

Notes to Pages 219–23

5.Miller, most explicitly in “Gli affreschi cinquecenteschi: Giuseppe Arcimboldo, Giuseppe Meda e Giovanni Battista della Rovere detto il Fiammenghino,” in Il Duomo di Monza: La storia e l’arte, Milan, 1989, 2, pp. 216–30, has declined to separate Meda’s hand from Arcimboldo’s in this work, and also has rejected an earlier attempt (by the author) to divide the hands in the fresco. His arguments are that the documentary evidence does not allow for such a distinction to be made, that the range of style in works by Lombard artists in the 1550s is limited, and that even elements such as the physiognomies or women’s coiffure, used to attribute the tapestry, recur in the scenes depicting the life of John the Baptist in the north transept of the cathedral at Monza that were painted by Meda, according to a contract of 1562. 6. Significantly, this is Miller’s own point; see ibid. A drawing related to the gonfalone (New York, Metropolitan Museum of Art) and published as an Arcimboldo by Giulio Bora, “Milano nell’età di Lomazzo e San Carlo: Riaffermazione e difficoltà di sopravvivenza di una cultura, in Rabisch: Il grottesco nell’arte del Cinquecento: L’accademia della Val di Blenio Lomazzo e l’ambiente milanese, Lugano and Milan, 1998, p. 42, fig. 4, does not, after ocular inspection (and it is not clear that Bora has seen the actual drawing), seem to be by him on stylistic grounds, as discussed in chapter 1 above. Despite this fact, the drawing was published, partly on the basis of Bora’s comments, in the recent exhibition catalogue Arcimboldo 1526–1593, Paris, Vienna, and Milan, 2007; see chapter 1 note 19. 7. While a contract of 1562 (see Robert S.Miller,”Note su Giuseppe Arcimboldo, Giuseppe Meda, Giovanni Battista della Rovere detto il Fiammenghino ed altri pittori milanesi / Notes on Giuseppe Arcimboldo, Giuseppe Meda, Giovanni Battista della Rovere detto il Fiammenghino and other Milanese pianters,” Studi Monzesi 5, 1989, pp. 3–25) indicates that scenes depicting the life of John the Baptist in the north transept of the cathedral at Monza were painted by Meda, later documents indicate that Giovanni Maria della Rovere, called il Fiamminghino, did the lower two rows of frescoes in the north transept, c. 1585–86. Since Meda is documented as having painted frescoes in the north transept, they must be the upper scenes. 8. As Miller noted himself; “Gli affreschi cinquecenteschi.” 9. Giulio Bora, while stating that it may be difficult to distinguish the hands of different artists in the wall, has seen the presence of Meda in the angels and evangelists on the ceiling, which he regards as resembling the work of Meda’s master Campi. Bora, “Milano nell’età di Lomazzo,” p. 42. 10. Illustrated in Bora, “Milano nell’età di Lomazzo,” p. 41, fig. 5. 11. See Thomas DaCosta Kaufmann, “Le opere di Arcimboldo a Monza e la carriera iniziale dell’artista” (also in English: “Arcimboldo’s Work in Monza and the Artist’s Early Career”), Studi Monzesi 3, July-August, 1988 (published winter 1989), pp. 5–17, [1]–[8].

Notes to Pages 223–224

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primary sour ces Archives and Manuscripts

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index

Numbers in italics indicate pages on which illustrations appear. Aachen, Hans von, 48, 203, 249n71; Boy with Grapes, 202 Abruzzo, Arcangelo d’, 66 Academy of Lynxes, 121 Accademia (academy) della Val di Blenio, 38, 219–21, 262n82 Accademia degli Affidati, 84 ad vivum (drawings from the life; naer het leven), 123, 156, 157, 158, 207 Aelian, 204–7, 285n63 Aertsen, Pieter, 169, 176, 177, 180, 215, 216 Aicholz, Johann, 120 Alberti, Leon Battista, 71, 115 Alciati, Andrea, 80, 84, 94, 255n53, 255n54 Aldrovandi, Ulisse, and Arcimboldo’s nature studies, 122–29, 135, 138, 147, 149, 152, 154, 157–58, 163–64, 196, 207, 214–16, 226–31, 266n40, 269n57, 269n60, 272n14, 275n62, 275n66, 275n69, 276n78, 277n93, 285n59, 285n63 Alexandrinus, 119 allegories, 12, 13, 14, 40, 54, 68, 71, 94, 96–102, 103, 162, 163, 164, 199, 213, 214, 216, 217, 279n27, 287n21 anamorphoses, 10, 11, 234n27, 235n32 Anaxagoras, 206 Anna, Habsburg, archduchess, 66 Annius of Viterbo, 73 Antiphilus, painter, 104 Apelles, 86, 201 Arcimboldo, Ambrogio, 29

Arcimboldo, Benedict, 49 Arcimboldo, Biagio, 9, 20, 21, 29, 240n44 Arcimboldo, Giuseppe, drawings for festivals and tournaments, 64, 65, 66, 117 —for the gonfalone, 22, 24, 30, 44, 83, 221, 223, 238n19, 242n80, 289n6 —nature studies, 50, 57, 101, 122–47 passim, 149–55, 159–64, 168, 175, 176, 182, 185, 189, 194, 198, 208, 217, 266n39, 270n66, 272n88, 273n33, 274n56; of animals, 124, 126, 127, 132, 133, 134, 136, 137, 145, 159; of birds, 128, 129, 130, 131, 197; flowers, 137, 139, 140, 141, 143, 144, 151 —Rudolf II, 46–47, 48 —self-portrait, 47, 49, 88, 157, 174, 247n31; as man of documents, 19, 46, 47, 49–50, 68, 74, 88, 91, 157 —silk manufacture (sericulture), 8, 33, 47, 87, 171, 199, 258n97 Arcimboldo, Giuseppe, paintings —Agriculture, 96 —anthropomorphic landscape, 198 —Butler (Cellarman, Wine Steward), 1, 58, 59, 60, 96, 102 —Cook, 1, 58, 59, 60, 96, 102 —Elements, 1, 11, 40, 50, 54–61, 66, 75, 83, 84, 96–97, 100–102, 117–18, 144, 146, 147, 163, 171, 177, 193, 199–200, 208, 210, 233n3, 242n80, 249n62, 284n47, 287n21; Air, 1, 50, 52, 55, 60, 100, 118, 121, 122, 146, 147, 162, 186, 194; Earth, 1, 50, 55, 56, 60, 96, 97, 99, 100, 103, 118, 122,

30 7

Arcimboldo, Giuseppe, paintings (continued) 146, 147, 160, 162, 191, 194, 196, 234n13, 248n57, 266n38, 266n40, 271n81; Fire, 1, 18, 19, 50, 60, 94, 96, 100, 118, 248n56; Water, 1, 50, 66, 94, 95, 118, 122, 146, 194, 198, 248n56, 266n38 —Flora, 3, 9, 48, 61, 68, 84, 91, 96, 105, 122, 146, 147, 162, 181, 192, 200, 202, 251n97, 259n15 —invertible heads, 1, 5, 13–14, 60–62, 68, 102 (Zasius), 169, 171, 176–77, 179–80, 189, 190, 236n32, 251n96, 259n21, 278n9, 287n9; Cook (invertible head), 1, 61, 62, 105, 168, 177, 179, 208, 209, 211; Flower Head (invertible still life), 61, 68, 177, 179, 208, 210, 278n9; Man of Fruit (invertible head), 1, 61, 177, 178, 181, 203, 204, 209, 211, 215; Vegetable Gardener (invertible still life), 5, 61, 167, 168, 177, 208, 209, 210–11, 215 —Jurist, 1, 60, 98, 251n94 —Lenaeus (Bacchus), 61 —Librarian (after Arcimboldo?), 1, 61, 63, 96, 233n1, 259n21 —painting (fresco), 21, 23, 23, 24, 26 —Seasons, 1, 11, 40, 50, 54, 56–61, 66, 75, 83, 84, 96–97, 100–101, 102, 104, 106, 115, 117–18, 122, 144, 146, 147, 163, 171, 177, 193, 199–200, 208, 210, 233nL3, 234n13, 242n80, 249n66, 271n81, 284n35, 287n21; Autumn, 50, 51, 59, 96, 118, 146, 194; Spring, 50, 53, 96, 118, 146, 147, 162, 194, 248n56, 266n38, 271n81, 274n56, 282n2; Spring (1573), 5; Summer, 1, 2, 6, 11, 50, 96, 118, 146, 194, 215, 242n80, 248n56; Summer (1573) 58; Summer (other versions), 59–60; Winter, 26, 27, 28, 34, 36, 50, 54, 55, 66, 96, 97, 101, 118, 246n19, 248n56, 249n73, 259n25; Winter (1573), 58, 59, 102 —Seasons, other versions, 59–60, 102 —self-portrait, 46, 47, 49, 157, 247n31 —stained-glass windows, 20, 21 —tapestries, 24; (Johannes Karcher after), 25, 26 —Vertumnus (Rudolf II), 1, 4, 6, 9, 10, 38, 40, 46, 48, 61, 68, 84, 86, 91, 92, 93, 96, 97, 100, 101, 103, 107, 110, 122, 146, 162, 163, 181, 192, 194, 195, 199–203, 205, 210, 251n97, 259n15, 259n23, 285n47 Arcimboldo, Pasio, 49 Arcimboldo restaurants, 6, 7 Aretino, Pietro, 38–40, 112, 222 Aristotle, 161, 163, 201, 276n79; Poetics, 104–6, 204–5 Armenini, Giovan Battista, 33, 103, 104 Ashworth, William, 163 astronomy, 116, 122, 161, 162, 264n9 Augsburg, 72, 165n20, 251n109 August, Duke Elector of Saxony, 57, 61, 67, 68, 83, 196, 208, 251n95, 278n9 Baldini, Bernardino, on Arcimboldo and Figino, 85, 86, 181, 201–3, 284n45 Baltrusaitis, Jurgis, 37, 39 Barbari, Jacopo de’, 169, 180 Barbarito, Pompeo, 86

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Barbaro, Ermalao, 111 Barthes, Roland, 12, 94, 263n87 Bernard of Clairvaux, St., 103, 253n19 Bernazzano, 27 Berra, Giacomo, 38, 181, 209, 222, 286n74 Beuckelaer, Joachim, 169, 176, 177, 215, 216 Biglia, Melchiore, 81 bizzarrie, 10, 193, 243n80 Blotius, Hugo, 72 Bocskay, Georg, 185 Bol, Hans, 153 Bologna, 124, 125, 128, 144, 150, 158, 174, 216, 224–31 Boodt, Anselm Boethius de, 120, 121, 153, 185, 186, 265n27, 265n29, 273n24 Borbonius, Matthias, 119 Borgogni, Gherardo, on Arcimboldo, Figino, and Fede Galizia, 85, 86, 107, 181, 262n73, 262n74, 280n54 Borja, Juan de, 60 Borromeo, Carlo, 22, 44, 45, 223, 288n1 Borromeo, Federico, 22, 189 Bosch, Hieronymus, 37 Botticelli, 33 Boyvin, Rene, 37 Bramantino, 26 Brambilla, (Giovanni) Ambrogio, 38, 221, 222 Bratislava, 44; tournament of 1572 in, 80, 82 Bronzino, 86, 234n13, 257n90, 257n92 Brueghel, Jan, 189 Brueghel, Peter, 75 Brunfels, Otto, and Leonhard Fuchs, 14 Burke, Peter, 107 Busbecq, Ogier de, 119, 120, 265n25 Callimachus, 108 Campi, Bernardino, 22, 224, 238n15, 289n9 Campi, Vincenzo, 169, 177, 180, 181, 280n51, 282n2 Canisius, Peter, 72 caprices (capricci), and Arcimboldo, 10, 11, 14, 27, 48, 115, 161, 192, 193, 194–200, 204, 210, 276n78, 282nn6–7 Caravaggio, Michelangelo Merisi da, 168–70, 177, 179, 181–82, 203, 277n6, 281n61, 282n2 Cardano, Girolamo, 103 carnival, carnivalesque, 22, 37, 38, 67, 108, 219, 221, 222, 244n102, 244n109, 252n113 Carpaccio, Vittore, 10 Cartari, Vincenzo, 92 Casa, Giovanni della, Il Galateo, 107 Casino of Pius IV, Vatican, 172 Castiglione, Baldassare, Il Cortegiano and its impact, 105, 107, 192, 262n71 Catullus, 94 Central Europe, 8, 13, 17, 19, 25, 43, 44, 45, 46, 54, 56, 57, 60, 66, 75, 80, 107, 119, 120, 143, 152, 155, 156, 162, 168, 169, 181, 189, 208, 217, 239n28, 242n80, 246n20, 252n12

Cesi family, 81 Charles (Karl), Habsburg, Archduke, 65, 66, 101 Charles V, Habsburg, emperor, 43, 100, 113 chimeras, 103, 104, 171, 192, 193, 260n39, 283n9 Christian II, Duke Elector of Saxony, 68, 252n119 Clusius, Carolus, 72, 119–21, 123, 150, 184, 187; illustration of Lilium persicum, 123, 169, 267n43 Colie, Rosalie, on paradox, 111, 215 Comanini, G. P.: Il Figino and other writings, 9, 10, 30, 38, 48, 60, 61, 68, 71, 84–86, 96–97, 100–103, 105, 107, 110, 113, 115, 116, 117, 162, 181, 191–96, 199, 203, 205, 208, 250n91, 257n84, 259n23, 266n37, 271n81, 282n5, 284n31 commedia dell’arte, 38, 43, 66, 67, 222, 244n97, 263n82 Como, 8, 14, 24, 26, 29, 80, 112, 220, 225, 239n24, 246n22 concettismo, 93–94 Constantinople, 25, 120, 254n30 Conti, Antonio, 85 Conti, Giuliano, 80 Conti, Natale, 206 Conti, Primo, 80, 81, 84, 85, 112, 206, 210, 255n49, 255n51; as Philerasmus, 80, 255n50, 255n51, 263n100 Cosimo, Piero di, 33 Crato, Johannes, 72, 119 Crevalcore, Antonio da, fragment with still life of grapes, 179 Croll, Oswald, 119 Dali, Salvador, and Arcimboldo, 6 Danti, Vincenzo, 103 Daston, Loraine, 199 Delphic Oracle, 204–5 Dionysios (painter), 204 Dioscurides, Materia medica, 121–22 Dodoens, Rembert, 119 Doni, Antonio (Anton Francesco), 33, 193 Donne, John, 93 Dorn, Raimund, 88 Dornavius, Caspar, 111 dreams. See sogni (dreams and dream images) Durer, Albrecht, 49, 73, 76, 146, 152, 153, 161, 174, 175, 182 Ebert-Schifferer, Sibylle, 170 ekphrasis, 102, 170 emblems and emblem books, 40, 54, 72, 81, 83, 84, 93, 94, 109, 120, 163, 185, 216, 240n10, 254n55 Erasmus and Erasmianism, 11, 39, 80, 109, 111, 112, 113, 205, 207, 210, 217 exotic (creatures), 119, 125, 151, 152, 155, 156, 160, 196, 276n80 Extravagant Shepherd, 109 Fabritius, Paulus, 72, 76, 77, 116, 119 facchini, 22, 38, 218–21, 238n13

index

Falkenburg, Reindert, 215 fantasy (and fantasia), the fantastic, and art, 6, 10, 13, 14, 32, 33, 34, 35, 38, 39, 72, 74, 77, 92, 93, 103, 164, 167, 171, 191–96, 199, 200, 201, 204, 210, 213, 214, 217, 218, 241n66, 243n80, 258n6, 278n9, 282n2, 282n5, 282n6 Fava, Marco Antonio, 44 Ferdinand I, Habsburg, emperor, 44, 45, 46, 55, 73, 78, 83, 113, 155, 157, 164, 210, 235n32, 237n10, 239n27, 245n5, 247n26, 249n66, 274n58 Ferdinand II (of the Tyrol), Habsburg, archduke, 44, 150, 152, 153, 156, 184 Ferino-Pagden, Sylvia, 101, 258n88, 266n40, 271n84, 274n59, 277n94, 282n84, 288n21 Ferrari, Gaudenzio, 26, 86, 174, 257n92 Ficino, Marsilio, 111 Figino (Giovanni), Ambrogio, 30, 34, 84–85, 107, 179, 181, 262n73, 281n59; book of Leonardo drawings and, 27, 241n54; poems about and by, 85–86, 181, 200, 202–3, 256n76, 257n89 Figino, Girolamo (Gerolamo), 29, 30, 31, 241n50, 241n51 Findlen, Paula, 198 Florence, 37, 68,119, 164, 209 Folengo, Teofilo, 108, 109 Foliani, Sigismondo, 85, 181, 257n85, 257n87 Fonteo (Fontana de’ Conti, Fonteius Primionis), Giovanni Baptista, 56, 58, 59, 61, 80–85, 101–2, 104, 107, 112–13, 115, 155, 171, 193, 206, 208, 210, 249n60, 252n66, 264n4; De Risu, 81, 103, 106, 205–6, 256n52, 262n66; tournament drawing, 82 Foppa, Vicenzo, 174 Frangipani, Michele, 81, 83 Fröschl, Daniel, 154, 164, 270n66, 273n26 Galilei, Galileo, 102, 121, 161, 162, 193, 276n79 Galizia, Fede, 85, 179, 181, 257n88, 264n16, 280n54 game, 11, 64, 108, 185, 189, 196, 256n68 Gerard, of Tilbury, 163 Gherardini, Giovanni Filippo, friend and commentator on Arcimboldo, 61, 84–86, 206, 251n97, 256n76 Gheyn, Jacques de, 153, 187–89, 215, 216, 271n77, 275n66 Gilio, Giovanni Antonio, 104 Giovio, Paolo, 39, 112 golden age, 91, 100, 101, 199, 201 Golden Fleece, Order of the, 55, 60, 97, 100 Gombrich, E. H., 33, 34 Gonzagas, the, 49, 78 Grafton, Anthony, 103 Grassi, Giovannino de’, 26 Grilli, 39, 104, 105, 171, 193, 244n104, 261n43 grotesque (and grotesques), 11, 12, 27, 30, 33, 34, 39, 47, 87, 103, 104, 108, 109, 118, 167, 169–74, 180, 193, 199, 219, 238n11, 241n54, 260n41, 263n85, 279n25

30 9

Guazzo, Stefano, 85, 107, 262n73, 262n74 Gubbio, studiolo from, 169 Guzzi, Giuseppe, 49 Habermel, Erasmus, 123 Hagecius (Hayek), Thadeus, 119 harmony, 39, 102, 116–17, 215, 264n9 Heda, Cornelis Claesz, 37 Henry IV, king of France, 96 hieroglyphs, 109, 199 Hobbes, Thomas, Leviathan, 40 Hoefnagel, Jacob, Archetypa, 184 Hoefnagel, Joris (Georg), 75, 94, 118, 120, 146, 153, 164, 174, 183–84, 216; emblematic images, 163; after Hairy Family, 195; miniatures and drawings, 154, 175, 184, 185, 186, 187, 188–89, 196, 271n83, 281n83; “Scientific Naturalism” and, 161 Hoffmann, Ferdinand, Baron, 47, 87, 104 Hoffmann, Hans, 146, 173, 174, 271n83, 273n23 Hondius, Hendrik, 121 Hope, Charles, 236n2, 242n80, 244n1, 258n97, 258n2 (chap. 4), 287n21 Horace, Ars Poetica, 38, 76, 106, 192, 217 humanism, humanistic, 13, 71, 83, 85, 113, 162, 170, 213 humanist, humanists, 13, 14, 37, 39, 54, 71, 72, 73, 75, 76, 77, 78, 80, 82, 84, 88, 100, 102, 106, 111, 115, 117, 119, 162, 170, 200, 205, 207, 210, 221 hybrids, 196, 217 Hyginus, 116 imitation (artistic), 10, 14, 68, 77, 85, 107, 109, 161, 192, 193, 194, 196, 201, 204, 210, 217, 282n5, 285n46 impresa (device), 60, 109, 120 Innsbruck, 44, 152, 184, 246n21 invenzioni (inventions), 6, 8, 9, 13, 14, 17, 26, 32–34, 37, 40, 43, 64, 76, 77, 96, 109, 115, 118, 121, 163, 168, 192, 193, 198, 210, 213, 219, 220, 234n17, 236n2, 241n66, 243n80, 251n107, 284n33 Isella, Dante, 108, 262n82 jokes, and Arcimboldo, 9, 10, 11, 14, 83, 88, 91–113 passim, 163, 167, 185, 193, 205, 207, 213; Poggio Bracciolini on, 105; Giovanni della Casa on, 107; Castiglione on, 105; Cicero on, 105; Ted Cohen on, 11; Mary Douglas on, 11; Fonteo on, 106; Sigmund Freud on, 11; Stefano Guazzo on, 107; Jacques Lacan on, 11; Vincenzo Maggi on, 105–6; Poliziano on, 105; Quintillian on, 105; Bartolommeo Taegio on, 107–8 jokes, serious, and Arcimboldo, 14, 91–113 passim, 163, 185, 195, 199, 207, 208–10, 214, 217, 222, 235n36, 244n109; Caspar Dornavius on, 111; Michael Maier on, 111; Socratic jokes, 110–12, 204, 205, 207 jokes of nature, 198, 199 Joubert, Laurent, Traité du ris, 106, 263n96

310

index

Kaiserebersdorf, palace and gardens at, 67, 78, 155, 156, 160 Kepler, Johannes, 116, 264n9, 265n23 Kinsky, Hans, 121 Kris, Ernst, 161 Kunstkammer, 49, 210, 214, 216; Dresden, 57, 154, 208; imperial, 68, 116, 152–56, 163, 196, 198, 200, 205, 270n66, 273n33, 274n53, 277n2 Landi, Ottavio, 68 Lanzi, Luigi, 10 Lazius, Wolfgang, 72–78, 87, 88, 100, 119, 121, 233n1, 253n13, 253n23, 259n21 Leonardo (da Vinci) and the Leonardesque, 26–27, 29–35, 83, 86, 115, 118, 168–70, 181–82, 240n29, 240n38, 241n66, 241n71 Leoni, Leone, 100 Liberale, Giorgio, 149, 150, 152, 174 Liechtenstein, collection of prince of, 61 Ligorio, Pirro, 104, 109, 174, 263n85 Ligozzi, Jacopo, 119, 164, 174; nature studies, 152, 153, 155, 161, 175, 273n21, 276n78, 277n94 Lomazzo, Gian Paolo, 10, 27, 30, 36, 38, 44, 47, 48, 58–61, 64, 83, 97, 104–5, 116, 181, 204–5, 238n11, 238n13, 266n37, 283n10; Della forma delle Muse, 108; Idea, 46, 84–86, 162; Libro dei Sogni, 242n80; Rabisch (and the facchini), 38, 85, 86, 108, 219–21, 262n82; Rime, 109, 242n80; Trattato, 9, 44, 46, 86, 242n80 Lombardy, 13, 14, 17, 25, 26, 27, 34, 35, 36, 38, 43, 54, 56, 83, 94, 108, 112, 115, 146, 170, 182, 214, 219–21, 236n2 Longhi, Roberto, 167, 168, 277n6, 278n13 Lorck, Melchior, 75, 76, 120, 254n24, 265n25 Lucian, (Pseudo-), 204–6 Luini family, 21, 29, 238n12; Aurelio, 27, 29, 44, 86, 250n77; Bernardino, 26, 27, 29, 32, 86, 237n9, 240n44; Evangelista, 21, 29, 238n11; Giovan Pietro, 29; Tobia, 29 Maggi, Vincenzo, De ridiculis, 105–6 Maier, Michael, 111 Maioragio, Marco Antonio, 80, 112, 206, 210, 255n53 Mander, Karel van, 183 Manilius, 116 Maria, empress, 69 Maria of Bavaria, 66 Marmion, Simon, 153 Martial, 94 Masters of the Vases with Grotesque Ornament, 180 Mattioli, Pietro Andrea, 72, 119, 120, 121, 149, 150, 152, 266n34 Maximilian I, Habsburg, emperor, 73 Maximilian II, Habsburg, emperor, 8, 9, 25, 43–46, 49, 54–57, 60, 101, 103, 106, 208, 210, 243n80, 246n18, 246n19, 249n60, 249n73, 251n109, 259n25, 261n66 (humor); cloak of, 55, 97; court

of, 72, 112, 113, 119, 174, 213, 287n3; gardens and, 68, 154, 155, 160, 273n36; motets in honor of, 100, 260n28; portrait with family, 246n22; Schatzkammer and other collections of, 39, 78, 84, 171; tournaments and entries of, 64, 66, 67, 75–77, 82–83, 100 Mazzoni, Jacopo, 85, 192, 282n6 Meda, Jusepe, 29, 221, 242n80, 289n5; with Arcimboldo at Monza, 22, 23, 24, 223–25, 238n14, 288n7, 288n9 Melzi, Francesco, 27, 29–31, 34, 83, 86; painting of Rhea Syliva, 32 Memlinc, Hans, 169, 176 Mercati, Michele, Metallotheca, 204 “metaphysical poetry,” 93 Meyer, Hans, 198 Michelangelo (Buonarroti), poetry of, 86, 257n90 Milan, 8, 9, 14, 19, 22, 24, 25, 26, 27, 29, 31, 33, 34, 35, 38, 43–45, 48, 49, 54, 56, 61, 68, 71, 80, 81, 170, 174, 181, 182, 189, 219–25, 240n38, 242n80, 271n80, 284n35; Cathedral, works by Arcimboldo for, 20–26, 29, 237nn9–10, 238n12, 246n20, 246n22; literati circles and Arcimboldo in, 83–88, 102, 112, 181, 201, 206, 208, 210, 217, 219; stonecutters’ workshops from, 245nn5–6 miniatures, Mogul, 36, 37; Persian, 37 Mirandola, Pico della, 111 Miseroni, Ottavio, and workshop, 44, 49, 86 Mochis, Corrado de, 20 Momper, Joos de, 9 Monmacher, Matthias, 76 monsters, 38, 39, 103, 104, 109, 110, 171, 192, 194, 195, 198, 199, 263n87 Monza (Arcimboldo at), 8, 14, 22–24, 26, 29, 30, 223–25, 238n12, 238n14, 239n22, 246n22, 247n31, 288n4 (appendix 2), 289n5, 289n7 Morel, Philippe, 236n40, 259n23, 279n25, 279n27, 287nn17–21 Moretto da Brescia, 169 Morigia (Morigi), Paolo, on Arcimboldo and other artists, 9, 10, 25, 29, 45–46, 48–49, 64, 72, 74, 85, 88, 148n50, 181, 193, 206, 243n80, 245n15 music, and musicians (including Arcimboldo as), 31, 48, 84, 100, 110, 116, 221 “naer het leven.” See ad vivum (drawings from the life; naer het leven) natural history, 12, 14, 36, 104, 115–53 passim, 157, 160–64, 174, 195, 199, 200, 214, 216, 217, 241n62, 264n13, 266n39, 270n66, 287n13 natural philosophy, 71, 93, 115–18, 162 nature studies, 14, 31, 32, 50, 57, 101, 122–47 passim, 149–55, 159–64, 168, 174, 175, 176, 182, 184, 185, 186, 187, 189, 194, 198, 208, 217, 266n39, 270n66, 272n88, 273n33, 274n56 Negri, Paola Antonia, 81 Neugebäude, with gardens and menageries, 67, 78, 79, 155, 156, 160, 174

index

New York Times, on Arcimboldo, 1 Orlandi, P. A., 10 Ortelius, Abraham, 75, 254n29 Ovid, 76, 91, 109, 170, 192, 258n1, 284n44 Paduanis (Paduanus, Patavinus), Franciscus de, 122, 123, 125, 127–29, 139, 144, 150, 157–58 Paleottti, Gabriele, Cardinal, 103–5, 207 paradox, 10, 11, 12, 14, 40, 92, 93, 110, 111, 185, 191– 211 passim, 214–16, 235n31, 235n32, 243n80, 256n68, 277n2 Park, Katherine, 199 parody, 109, 233 Parrhasius, 202–4, 285n50 Pausias (painter), 206 Pauson (painter), 204–7 Peterzano, Simone, 182 Petrarch, 93; Petrarchan tradition, 109 Pfaff, Nikolaus, and A. Schweinberger, carved rhinoceros horn, 196, 197 Philip II, king of Spain, 60, 66, 76, 77, 194, 237n10, 246n20, 250n91, 250n92, 260n33 physiognomy, physiognomics, 30, 33, 34, 39, 117, 118, 198, 224, 242n71, 264n13, 264n16, 289n5 phytognomy, 118 Picasso, and Arcimboldo, 6 Pigheus, Stephen, 82 Plato, 39, 110, 112, 192, 196, 207, 282n5, 284n30, 285n55 Pliny, Natural History, 39, 104, 117, 202, 203, 206 Poesie, 76, 77 poetry, poet, 13, 14, 38, 71–86 passim, 91–94, 96, 108, 109, 113, 162, 170, 192, 200, 208, 216, 219, 256n68, 257n90, 258n8; Arcimboldo as, 13, 14, 86, 91, 93, 162, 170, 200, 217; Figino as, 86, 170 Polygnotos, 204 Porta, Giovan Battista della, 118, 264n15 portrait, portraiture (and conterfett, contefetter), 8, 10, 25, 29, 34, 36, 39, 45, 46, 47, 50, 55, 60, 61, 68, 75, 78, 96, 97, 100, 102, 103, 105, 109, 110, 118, 157, 169, 177, 187, 192, 194, 203, 227, 233n3, 246n20, 246n22, 249n66, 259n21, 264n16, 274n58, 275n59, 286n69 Portugal, 156, 160 Porzio, Francesco, 38, 221, 222, 242n80, 243n89, 249n65, 262n82 Postel, Guillaume, 72, 73 Pozzo, Cassiano del, 120 Pozzo, Domenico, 44 Prague, court, and collections in, 9, 37, 44, 47, 48, 56, 71, 82, 87, 107, 111, 116, 118, 120, 122–24, 125, 128, 139, 149, 150, 152–54, 156, 158, 160, 168, 177, 180, 183, 184, 188, 189, 198, 233n10, 243n88, 249n66, 254n8, 266n4, 271n75, 275n70, 276n80, 280n51; of 1578 in, 65; “Prague Mannerism,” 198; tournament of, 1570 in, 56, 65, 66, 67, 81, 82, 86, 106, 252n11

311

Propertius, 91–94, 100, 102, 170, 200, 258n4 Proteus, 74, 204, 205, 206 Psellos, Michael, 163 Puligo, Domenico, 37 Rabelais, Rabelaisian, 38, 39, 109, 111, 112, 222, 236n41, 244n109 Ravesteyn, Dirck de Quade van, 164, 182, 271n74, 276n92, 281n64; Leopard and Cheetah, 183 Regensburg, 72 ridiculous pictures, 103–5 Romanino, Girolamo, 174 Romano, Giamaria, 66 Romano, Giulio, 78, 238n11, 279n28 Roman painting, ancient, 168–69 Rosso Fiorentino, 37 Roy, Paulus, painting of emperors Ferdinand I, Maximilian II, and Rudolf II, 235n22 Rudolf II, Habsburg, emperor, 2, 8–10, 37, 44, 46–48, 55, 60–61, 65, 67–68, 76, 79, 84–86, 88, 94, 96, 97, 100, 103, 107, 110, 111, 118, 120, 125, 153, 155, 157, 164, 181, 184, 187, 194, 213; entries of, 77 Ruggiero (acrobat), 43 Ruland, Michael, 119 Rustici, Giovan Francesco, 37 Salini, Tomaso, 180 Salviati, Francesco, 49, 174 Sambucus, Johannes, 72 San Clemente, Guillen de, 60 Saracchi workshop, 44 Sarto, Andrea del, 37 satyrs, 39, 110, 112 Savery, Jacob, 189 Savery, Roeland, 188–89, 243n88, 271n78; Flower Still Life, 188 Saxony, Duchess of, 69 Scala of Sixtus V, Vatican, 173 Scaliger, Julius Caesar, 103, 105 Scanelli, Francesco, 192 scherzi, 10, 193 Schwartzkunstler, Zirfeo, 108 Schweinberger, Anton, and N. Pfaff, carved rhinoceros horn, 196, 197 Schwendi, Lazarus, 72 Scot, Michael, 163 Seisenegger, Jacob, 46 Seneca, 201 serio-ludere, 14, 109, 111, 185, 199, 211 Serlio, Sebastiano, 78 Sesto, Cesare da, 27 Settala, Manfredo, 271n80 Sidney, Philip, 72 Silenus and Sileni, 39; Arcimboldo’s, 110–12, 199, 216; inverted, 207, 210, 285n66; Socrates and Socratic jokes, 110–12, 204, 205, 207 Sodoma, Il, 49

312

index

sogni (dreams and dream images), 104, 192, 193, 199, 243 Soldino, Antonio, 66 Solomon, 96, 208 Spain, 43, 60, 102, 124, 156, 160, 194, 243n80, 250n88 Spranger, Bartholomeus, 76, 77, 79, 94; Bacchus and Venus, 183, 281n69 Sterling, Charles, 167, 168, 180, 191, 277n2 still life, 13, 14, 35, 97, 164, 167–89 passim, 191, 194, 200, 203, 206, 208, 210, 211, 214, 215, 216, 217, 235n28, 264n16, 278n7, 278n9, 278n11, 278n18, 280n43, 280n50, 282n2, 286n77, 287n14, 287n17 Stimmer, Tobias, 37 Stoer, Lorenz, 37 Strada, Jacopo, 72–73, 78–80, 82, 120, 155, 173, 254n41, 255n47, 279n28; festival design, 79 Strada, Ottavio, 79, 120, 255n47 surrealism, and Arcimboldo, 7 Sweerts, Emmanuel, 186 Swetkowyz, Adam, 45, 78, 249n66 Tabarino, Giovanni (Jan/Zan Tabarin), 66 Tacitus, De Germania, 73 Taegio, Bartolommeo, 83, 84, 107–8, 256n68, 262n76 Tale of Despereaux, and Arcimboldo, 6 Tasso, Torquato, 85 Terzio, Francesco, 44 Titian, 49, 76, 77, 78 Tom Ring, Ludger, 175, 279n73; Still Life Study, 176 Tribolo, Nicolo, 171 Trompe l’oeil, 10–11, 169, 180, 185 twentieth-century art, and Arcimboldo, 6 Typotius, Jacopus, 120 Udine, Giovanni da, 171, 172, 173, 174, 180; copy after, 173 universal man (uomo universale), 71 urbanity, 105–6 Urbino, Carlo, da Crema, 9, 22, 29, 30, 242n80; and Codex Huygens, 241n50 Valeriano, Piero, 209 Vasari, Giorgio, 174; Vite, 33, 104, 180, 242n68, 261n47 Verhulst, Elias, 121 Vermeyen, Jan, 46 Vienna, court at, 39, 56, 60, 61, 67, 68, 71, 72, 73, 113, 119, 120, 127, 154, 156, 168, 171, 176, 184, 189, 208, 246n18 —collections, 27, 34 —entry of: 1563, of Maximilian II into, 54, 75–78, 100; 1577, of Rudolf into, 76 —tournament of 1571 in, 64–66, 80, 81, 82, 86, 97, 101, 106, 115 —university, 73

Vitruvius, De Architectura, 169, 170 Vogtherr, Heinrich the Younger, 76 Vries, Adriaen de, 100 whim and whimsical (ghiribizzoso), 10, 48, 104, 192, 193, 194 Widmanstetter, Johann Albrecht, 97 Wittgenstein, Ludwig, 10 wonder and wonders, 92, 194, 196, 199; of art and nature, 154, 196; of the north, 152

index

xenia, 170, 171, 177 Zarbaglia (Giovanni Battista Panzeri), 44 Zasius, 60, 61, 68, 97, 102, 103, 105, 108, 177, 179, 205, 208, 259n17, 286n69 Zeuxis, 202, 203, 285n50 Zucchi, Francesco, 9 Zucchi, Jacopo, 9

313