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Historical Artist - Giuseppe Arcimboldo (1527 - 1593)
After creating stained glass windows for the Duomo Cathedral in Milan, Guiseppe Arcimboldo
moved to Prague where he was commissioned by the Hapsburg rulers as an architect, collection
curator, and interior designer. Arcimboldo was a forerunner of Surrealism, creating portraits
with non-human elements that incorporated bold colors and extensive detail.
Arcimboldo's conventional work, on traditional religious subjects, has fallen into oblivion,
but his portraits of human heads made up of vegetables, fruit, sea creatures and tree roots,
were greatly admired by his contemporaries and remain a source of fascination today. Art critics
debate whether these paintings were whimsical or the product of a deranged mind.
His works can be found in Vienna's Kunsthistorisches Museum and the Habsburg Schloss Ambras in
Innsbruck, the Louvre in Paris, as well as numerous museums in Sweden. In Italy, his work is in
Cremona, Brescia, and the Uffizi Gallery in Florence. The Wadsworth Atheneum in Hartford,
Connecticut, the Denver Art Museum in Denver, Colorado, the Menil Foundation in Houston, Texas,
and the Candie Museum in Guernsey also own paintings by Arcimboldo.
Contemporary Italian Artists
Art Galleries in Italy
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