Portrait of Rudolf II of Habsburg as Vertumnus by Giuseppe Arcimboldo was created in 1590. The painting is in Skoklosters Slott Stockholm. The size of the work is 70,5 x 57,5 cm and is made as an oil on canvas.
Vertumnus is an oil painting that consists of multiple fruits, vegetables and flowers that come together to create a portrait of Holy Roman Emperor Rudolf II. Although Arcimboldo’s colleagues commented that Vertumnus was scherzo, or humorous, there were intentional political meanings behind the piece, particularly regarding the choice of fruits, vegetables, and flowers. Arcimboldo’s choice to include these items was also an intentional reference to the Roman god, Vertumnus. Vertumnus was presented to Rudolf II after its completion. Its ownership shifted to the Swedish army after the Thirty Years’ War.
The Artist: Italian painter Giuseppe Arcimboldo was born in Milan. He was a conventional court painter of portraits for three Holy Roman Emperors in Vienna and Prague. He specialized in grotesque symbolical compositions of fruits, animals, landscapes, or various inanimate objects arranged into human forms. At a distance, his portraits looked like normal human portraits. However, individual objects in each portrait were actually overlapped together to make various anatomical shapes of a human. They were carefully constructed by his imagination… Read more
You can order this work as an art print on canvas from canvastar.com
