Heritage (New York City) Giuseppe Arcimboldo did not leave written certificates on himself or his artwork. After the deaths of Arcimboldo and his patron—the emperor Rudolph II—the heritage of the artist was quickly forgotten, and many of his works were lost. They were not mentioned in the literature of the 17th and 18th centuries. Only in 1885 did the art critic K. Kasati publish the monograph "Giuseppe Arcimboldi, Milan Artist" in which the main attention was given to Arcimboldi's role as a portraitist. With the advent of
surrealism its theorists paid attention to the formal work of Arcimboldo, and in the first half of the 20th century many articles were devoted to his heritage. drew parallels between Arcimboldo,
Salvador Dalí, and
Max Ernst's works. A volume monograph of B. Geyger and the book by F. Legrand and F. Xu were published in 1954. Since 1978 T. DaCosta Kaufmann was engaged in Arcimboldo's heritage, and wrote of the artist defending his dissertation "Variations on an imperial subject". His volume work, published in 2009, summed up the attitude of modern art critics towards Arcimboldo. An article published in 1980 by
Roland Barthes was devoted to Arcimboldo's works. Arcimboldo's art heritage is badly identified, especially as it concerns his early works and pictures in traditional style. In total about 20 of his pictures remain, but many more have been lost, according to mentions of his contemporaries and documents of the era. His cycles
Four Elements and
Seasons, which the artist repeated with little changes, are most known. Some of his paintings include
The Librarian,
The Jurist,
The Cook,
Cupbearer, and other pictures. Arcimboldo's works are stored in the state museums and private collections of Italy (including
Uffizi Gallery), France (
Louvre), Austria, the Czech Republic, Spain, Sweden, and in the US.
Art interpretations The main object of modern art critics' interpretation are the "curious" paintings of Arcimboldo whose works, according to V. Krigeskort, "are absolutely unique". Attempts of interpretation begin with judgments of the cultural background and philosophy of the artist, however a consensus in this respect is not developed. B. Geyger, who for the first time raised these questions, relied mainly on judgments of contemporaries—
Lomazzo,
Comanini, and
Morigia, who used the terms "scherzi, grilli, and capricci" (respectively, "jokes", "whims", "caprices"). Geyger's monograph is entitled: "Comic pictures of Giuseppe Arcimboldo". Geyger considered the works of the artist as inversion, when the ugliness seems beautiful, or, on the contrary, as the disgrace exceeding the beauty, entertaining the regal customer. A similar point of view was stated by
Barthes, but he reduced works of the artist to the theory of language, believing that fundamentals of Arcimboldo's art philosophy is linguistic, because without creating new signs he confused them by mixing and combining elements that then played a role in the innovation of language. Arcimboldo speaks double language, at the same time obvious and obfuscatory; he creates "mumbling" and "gibberish", but these inventions remain quite rational. Generally, the only whim (bizarrerie) which isn't afforded by Arcimboldo – he doesn't create language absolutely unclear ... his art not madly. Arcimboldo's classification as
mannerist also belongs to the 20th century, for example in 's work
The world as a Labyrinth, published in 1957. Arcimboldo was born in the late Renaissance, and his first works were done in a traditional Renaissance manner. In Hocke's opinion, during the Renaissance era the artist had to be first of all a talented handicraftsman who skillfully imitated nature, as the idea of fine art was based on its studying.
Mannerism differed from the
Renaissance art in attraction to "not naturalistic abstraction". It was a continuation of artistic innovation in the late Middle Ages—art embodying ideas. According to G. Hocke, in consciousness there is concetto—the concept of a picture or a picture of the concept, an intellectual prototype. Arcimboldo, making a start from concetti, painted metaphorical and fantastic pictures, extremely typical of manneristic art. In
Umberto Eco's
On Ugliness Arcimboldo is described as belonging to the manneristic tradition for which "...the preference for aspiration to strange, extravagant and shapeless over expressional fine" is peculiar. In the work
Arcimboldo and archimboldesk, F. Legrand and F. Xu tried to reconstruct the artist's philosophical views. They came to a conclusion that the views represented a kind of
Platonic pantheism. The key to reconstruction of Arcimboldo's outlook seemed to them to be in the symbolism of court celebrations staged by the artist, and in his allegorical series. According to Plato's dialogue
Timaeus, an immemorial god created the Universe from chaos by a combination of four elements – fire, water, air and the earth, as defines all-encompassing unity. In T. DaCosta Kauffman's works serious interpretation of heritage of Arcimboldo in the context of culture of the 16th century is carried out consistently. Kauffman in general was skeptical about attribution of works by Arcimboldo, and recognized as undoubted originals only four pictures, those with a signature of the artist. He based the interpretation on the text of the unpublished poem by J. Fonteo "The picture
Seasons and
Four Elements of the imperial artist Giuseppe Arcimboldo". According to Fonteo, the allegorical cycles of Arcimboldo transfer ideas of greatness of the emperor. The harmony in which fruits and animals are combined into images of the human head symbolizes harmony of the empire under the good board of the Habsburgs. Images of seasons and elements are always presented in profile, but thus
Winter and
Water,
Spring and
Air,
Summer and
Fire,
Fall and
Earth are turned to each other. In each cycle symmetry is also observed: two heads look to the right, and two — to the left. Seasons alternate in an invariable order, symbolizing both constancy of the nature and eternity of board of the Habsburgs' house. The political symbolism also hints at it: at the image of
Air there are Habsburg symbols — a peacock and an eagle and
Fire is decorated with a chain of the Award of the Golden Fleece, a great master of which by tradition was a head of a reigning dynasty. However it is made of flints and shod steel. Guns also point to the aggressive beginning. The Habsburg symbolics is present in the picture
Earth, where the lion's skin designates a heraldic sign of Bohemia. Pearls and corals similar to cervine horns in
Water hint at the same. ==In literature and popular culture==