Giuseppe Arcimboldo

Giuseppe Arcimboldo, (1527 - 1593), Italian Mannerist painter whose grotesque compositions of fruits, vegetables, animals, books, and other objects were arranged to resemble human portraits. In the 20th century these double images were greatly admired by Salvador Dali and other Surrealist painters. He was a conventional court painter of portraits for three Holy Roman Emperors in Vienna and Prague, also producing religious subjects and, among other things, a series of coloured drawings of exotic animals in the imperial menagerie. The still-life portraits were clearly partly intended as whimsical curiosities to amuse the court, but critics have speculated as the degree of serious engagement with Renaissance Neo-Platonism or other intellectual currents that they have.