Giuseppe Arcimboldo

In 1558 he was paid for designing tapestries for Como Cathedral. In 1562 he travelled to Vienna to replace Jacob Seinsenegger as the portraitist to the Habsburgs court. In 1570 Arcimboldo was send to Prague, to design an elaborate pageant for Maximilian that blended classical Czech mythology, and he was perform similar duties for Maximilian`s son Rudolf II when he ascendant the Habsburg throne in 1575. His fame came after the series of composite portraits of heads made up of a variety of objects both natural and man-made.

Most of this painting were created at the court of Rudolf II, who hired Arcimboldo as a court painter, placing him at the centre of Rudolf``s eccentric menagerie of artists, scientists and charlatans (Kunstkammera).Arcimboldo become a very important persona at the Habsburg`s court. He designed the festivities for Rudolf``s coronations and other state events. Like Leonardo da Vinci he was interesting in many subjects of since and art, while spending his spare time devising hydraulic machines and new forms of musical notation using colours. But he was famous mostly for his paintings.

Comanini in dilog "Il Figino" which was published in 1591 praised his artistic virtuosity, not only in satirical category but as an intellectual puzzle. Arcimboldo used disturbing, cumulative methods, swollen faces with the big spots and scrofulas.which comes out of accumulated vegetables,flowers,strows and animals. The best known pictures of Arcimboldo are "Seasons" and "Elements" Shortly before his death he return to Italy where he died in his home town Milan.