Chapter III
New Year's menu for the emperor
New Year's Day 1569: After years of work, court artist Giuseppe Arcimboldo presents Emperor Maximilian II with an extraordinary series of paintings – the Four Seasons and the Four Elements.
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Giuseppe Arcimboldo, Summer, 1563. Vienna, Kunsthistorisches Museum, Picture Gallery © KHM-Museumsverband
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Giuseppe Arcimboldo, Fire, 1566. Vienna, Kunsthistorisches Museum, Picture Gallery © KHM-Museumsverband
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Giuseppe Arcimboldo, Winter, 1563. Vienna, Kunsthistorisches Museum, Picture Gallery © KHM-Museumsverband
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Giuseppe Arcimboldo, Water, 1566. Vienna, Kunsthistorisches Museum, Picture Gallery © KHM-Museumsverband
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Giuseppe Arcimboldo, Earth, c.1566. LIECHTENSTEIN, The Princely Collections, Vaduz – Vienna © LIECHTENSTEIN, The Princely Collections, Vaduz – Vienna/SCALA, Florence
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Giuseppe Arcimboldo, Air, c.1566. Switzerland, private collection ACHTUNG: Habt ihr die Rechte dafür? Ist nicht im Katalog!
Taking stock
Today, only two seasons of the Vienna series and their counterparts remain in the Kunsthistorisches Museum:
Summer and Fireas well as Winter and Water.Spring (made up of flowers) is now in the Real Academia de Bellas Artes de San Fernando in Madrid, while Autumn is thought to be lost. Of the elements, Earth (an arrangement of mammals) has been preserved in the Liechtenstein Princely Collections. Air – consisting entirely of birds – has been lost, having literally vanished into thin air. However, later versions of the lost paintings have been preserved, and these give us an idea of the original overall concept.
Blickkontakt
Arcimboldo depicts the seasons and elements as portraits, composed of the fruits and treasures of the respective time. These heads exist somewhere between still life andportrait, between nature study and allegory. In addition, the seasons and elements are juxtaposed in pairs: while Spring is associated with Air, Summer finds its counterpart in Fire. Autumn and Earth form the next pair, and Winter and Water complete the circle.
List of ingredients
So, what exactly are the portraits made of?
Summer
Summer consists of sun-ripened fruits, grain, and ears of corn. The teeth are peas, and the lips are formed from cherries. The cloak appears to be woven from straw, and the figure is wearing an artichoke on her chest as decoration. Hidden in the collar and sleeves are Arcimboldo's signature and the date: ‘Giuseppe Arcimboldo f. 1563.’
Fire
Fire with its flaming hair is composed of candles, an oil lamp, and firearms, among other things. The latter refer to the dangerous component of the element.
Winter
Winter appears as a gnarled tree trunk with fungus for a mouth, wrapped in a coat of straw. His head is adorned with evergreen ivy. He wears citrus fruits as jewellery – the classic winter harvest of the imperial greenhouses.
Water
Arcimboldo composes Water from sea creatures of all kinds and sizes; she wears a pearl as a fashionable earring and is adorned with coral. Arcimboldo pays no attention to realistic proportions!
Arcimboldo not only presents nature as a marvel, but also uses it to glorify the Habsburgs. His paintings are full of allusions to the Habsburgs' power.
Fire bears the collar of the Order of the Golden Fleece and shows the Habsburg double-headed eagle. Water wears a crown – a reference to the fact that the series is dedicated to a crowned Habsburg. Winter contains a hidden ‘M’ and a firesteel, the symbol of the Habsburg Order of Chivalry – a direct reference to Emperor Maximilian II. While Pieter Bruegel the Elder shows humans as part of nature in his works, Arcimboldo elevates the Habsburgs to the central authority for law and order in the universe.
Culinary delicacies
Some of the fruits depicted here were considered an absolute rarity in Arcimboldo's time. Corn, for example, which is now grown all over the world, originally comes from Mexico. It only became native to Europe starting in the sixteenth century – first in Spain, then in northern Italy. The aubergine was not quite as new, but was still considered unusual. Although it was already in use in Italy in the fifteenth century, it originally came from Africa or Arabia. In the time of Emperor Maximilian II, a wide variety of fruit, as shown by Arcimboldo, was still considered an incredible luxury.
Fire
Fire bears the collar of the Order of the Golden Fleece and shows the Habsburg double-headed eagle
Winter
Water wears a crown – a reference to the fact that the series is dedicated to a crowned Habsburg.
Warer
Water wears a crown – a reference to the fact that the series is dedicated to a crowned Habsburg.
Often copied!
Arcimboldo's Seasons cycle was such a great success in its originality that the artist himself produced several versions for various European courts. Some were intended as gifts from the Habsburg emperors. A complete series of the Seasons from 1573 is now in the Louvre. A somewhat earlier version of Spring and Summer can be found in the Pinakothek in Munich.
Temperamental
In a typical effort of the time to establish associations between different ideas and concepts, each pair of elements and seasons corresponded to one of the four temperaments. Spring and Air correspond to the sanguine type, Summer and Fire to the choleric type. Autumn and Earth correspond with the melancholic, Winter and Water finally with the phlegmatic.
Seasons of the year – Seasons of life
The seasons were also often seen as symbols of the stages of human life. Thus, spring generally represents childhood, summer represents youth, autumn represents maturity, and winter represents old age. Arcimboldo alludes to something similar in his allegories of the seasons – his gnarled Winter, for example, looks like a grumpy old man.
The sculptor Antonio Vittoria probably also represented the concept of winter with his statue of an old man.
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Alessandro Vittoria, Allegorie des Winter oder Hl. Zacharias, 1585. Vienna, Kunsthistorisches Museum, Kunstkammer © KHM-Museumsverband
Arcimboldo's Seasons are much more than whimsical portraits made from fruits and plants – they are artistic symbols of Renaissance nature, power, and knowledge. In their sophisticated combination of still life, allegory, and portrait, they reflect not only the opulence of the Habsburg world, but also the scientific interest in botany and the elements.