Giuseppe Arcimboldo Painted Emperors Out of Fruit — And Meant It as a Compliment
Giuseppe Arcimboldo spent three decades painting portraits that fall apart the moment you look closely. A cheek is a peach. An eyebrow is a pea pod. A beard is a tangle of roots and chestnuts. Step back and it's a bishop, an emperor, a season of the year. Step in and it's a very strange still life. His patrons were Holy Roman Emperors, and they didn't just tolerate the joke — they commissioned more of it. Six of his paintings, below, still do exactly what they did in the 1560s: convince you they're one thing, then make you look twice. Quick facts Artist: Giuseppe Arcimboldo (1526–1593) Theme: Human faces built entirely from fruit, vegetables, flowers, fire, and roots Paintings in this guide: Spring , Summer , Fire , Vertumnus (1591), Four Seasons in One Head (c. 1590), Self-Portrait Drawing (c. 1587) Notable fact: He was the official court portraitist to three Holy Roman Emperors in Milan, Vienna, and Prague — the produce was diplomacy, not comedy ...