Giuseppe Arcimboldo

Giuseppe Arcimboldo  (1526 or 1527 – July 11, 1593) was an Italian painter best known for creating imaginative portrait heads made entirely of such objects as fruits, vegetables, flowers, fish, and books – that is, he painted representations of these objects on the canvas arranged in such a way that the whole collection of objects formed a recognizable likeness of the portrait subject In 1562, he became court portraitist to Ferdinand I at the Habsburgcourt in Vienna, and later, to Maximilian II and his son Rudolf II  at the court in Prague. He was also the court decorator and costume designer. Augustus, Elector of Saxony, who visited Vienna in 1570 and 1573, saw Arcimboldo's work and commissioned a copy of his "The Four Seasons" which incorporates his own monarchic symbols. Arcimboldo's conventional work, on traditional religious subjects, has fallen into oblivion, but his portraits of human heads made up of vegetables, plants, fruits, sea creatures and tree roots, were greatly admired by his contemporaries and remain a source of fascination today.

1.    Arcimboldo was

a)    A Spanish Painter

b)    An Italian Painter

c)    A Spanish writer

d)    An Italian writer

2.    Arcimboldo’s  imaginative portraits

a)     were made of stones

b)    were made of wood

c)     represented food and flowers

d)   represented  iron and steel

3.    Arcimboldo worked

a)    Only in Italy

b)    Only in France

c)    Also in Istanbul and Bucaresth

d)    Also in Prague and Vienna