Giuseppe Arcimboldo: An Enduring Muse for the Arts, Sciences, and Pop Culture

Abstract

Giuseppe Arcimboldo (1526-1593), an Italian Mannerist painter, is best known for his paintings composed of meticulously-depicted fruits, vegetables, flowers, animals, and other objects arranged to create whimsical human portraits. His paintings, Spring, Summer, Fall, and Winterportray fruits harvested during each of the four seasons, which were acquired or grown in the Habsburg court gardens. Arcimboldo’s paintings, The Four Seasons in One Head, Vertumnus, and Reversible Head with Basket of Fruitalso contain pomological crops with hidden allegorical meanings, witty puns, and serious jokes. Although Arcimboldo was a creative inspiration for his artistic and literary contemporaries, his work was all but forgotten from shortly after his death until his paintings were included in the exhibition, Fantastic Art, Dada, Surrealism at the Museum of Modern Art in 1936. Since then, numerous creative and scientific works have been developed and published in homage to Arcimboldo. In biology, the computer program ARCIMBOLDO has revolutionized knowledge of the structure of protein-DNA binding proteins at 2 Å resolution. In neuroscience and psychology, Arcimboldo’s paintings have been used as stimuli for assessments of perception and brain activity, especially in diverse subjects with congenital disorders or neuroses. Also, Arcimboldo’s oeuvre has been credited as the source of inspiration for numerous artistic endeavors, such as paintings, sculptures, poetry, fictional stories, musical compositions, films, cartoons, and computer games. Thus, Arcimboldo’s Renaissance paintings, replete with pomological features, catalyzed scientific and artistic endeavors well into the 21st century.