b.c. 1527, Milan, d.1593, Milan Italian Giuseppe Arcimboldo Galleries Arcimboldo was born in Milan in 1527, the son of Biagio, a painter who did work for the office of the Fabbrica in the Duomo.Arcimboldo was commissioned to do stained glass window designs beginning in 1549, including the Stories of St. Catherine of Alexandria vitrage at the Duomo. In 1556 he worked with Giuseppe Meda on frescoes for the Cathedral of Monza. In 1558, he drew the cartoon for a large tapestry of the Dormition of the Virgin Mary, which still hangs in the Como Cathedral today. In 1562 he became court portraitist to Ferdinand I at the Habsburg court 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. King Augustus 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, fruit and tree roots, were greatly admired by his contemporaries and remain a source of fascination today. Art critics debate whether these paintings were whimsical or the product of a deranged mind.. A majority of scholars hold to the view, however, that given the Renaissance fascination with riddles, puzzles, and the bizarre (see, for example, the grotesque heads of Leonardo da Vinci, a fellow Milanese), Arcimboldo, far from being mentally imbalanced, catered to the taste of his times. Arcimboldo died in Milan, to which he retired after leaving the Habsburg service. It was during this last phase of his career that he produced the composite portrait of Rudolph II (see above), as well as his self-portrait as the Four Seasons. His Italian contemporaries honored him with poetry and manuscripts celebrating his illustrious career. His hidden-face still-lives are a possible influence on his younger Lombard contemporary Caravaggio, whose painting of fruit in the Brera museum in Milan ranks as one of the earliest independent still-lives. When the Swedish army invaded Prague in 1648, during the Thirty Years' War, many of Arcimboldo's paintings were taken from Rudolf II's collection. His works can be found in Vienna's Kunsthistorisches Museum and the Habsburg Schloss Ambras in Innsbruck, the Louvre in Paris, as well as numerous museums in Sweden. In Italy, his work is in Cremona, Brescia, and the Uffizi Gallery in Florence. The Wadsworth Atheneum in Hartford, Connecticut, the Denver Art Museum in Denver, Colorado, the Menil Foundation in Houston, Texas, and the Candie Museum in Guernsey also own paintings by Archimboldo.  Related Paintings of Giuseppe Arcimboldo :. | Spring | the jurist | Holy Roman Emperor Maximilian II | Erzherzogin Anna | Giuseppe Arcimboldo's art |
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Albert von Keller
Albert von Keller (April 27, 1844 - July 14, 1920) was a German painter. He was born at Gais, in Switzerland; he studied at the Munich Academy under Lenbach and Ramberg, and must be counted among the leading colorists of the modern German school. Travels in Italy, France, England and Holland, and a prolonged sojourn in Paris, helped to develop his style. His scenes of society life, such as the famous "Dinner" (1890), are painted with thoroughly Parisian esprit, and his portraits are marked by the same elegant distinction. He was particularly successful in the rendering of rustling silk and satin dresses and draperies. His historical and imaginative works were as modern in spirit and as unacademical as his portraits. As of 1911, at the Munich Pinakothek was his painting "Jairi Töchterlein" (1886), while the Königsberg Museum contained his "Roman Bath", and the Liebieg collection in Reichenberg the "Audience with Louis XV", the first picture that drew attention to his talent. Among other important works he painted "Faustina in the Temple of Juno at Praeneste", "The Witches Sleep" (1888), "The Judgment of Paris", "The Happy Sister", "Temptation" (1892), "Autumn" (1893), "An Adventure" (1896), and "The Crucifixion".
COUWENBERGH, Christiaen van
Dutch painter, Delft school (b. 1604, Delft, d. 1667, Cologne).
Lochner, Stephan
German Northern Renaissance Painter, ca.1400-1451