Follower of Giuseppe Arcimboldo

With Galerie Jacques Kugel, Paris, circa 1958–1963;

From whom acquired.

G. Annequin, 'Un appartement-musée: sur des pistes inédites', in L'Œil, September 1990, pp. 40–43, reproduced;

Y. Toshio (ed.), Disguised Vision, exh. cat., Tokyo 1994, p. 35, nos I-2, I-3, I-4, and I-5, reproduced in colour pp. 34–37 (as attributed to Giuseppe Arcimboldo);

G. Cavalli-Björkman, 'Portraits anthropomorphes et têtes réversibles', in V. Delieuvin and S. Ferino-Pagden (eds), Arcimboldo (1526–1593), exh. cat., Paris 2008, p. 148 (under copies after the series in the Musée du Louvre).

Tokyo, Isetan Museum of Art; Hiroshima, Museum of Art; Kamakura, The Museum of Modern Art; Koriyama, Koriyama City Museum, Disguised Vision, 27 October 1994 – 23 April 1995, nos I-2, I-3, I-4, and I-5 (as attributed to Giuseppe Arcimboldo).

Complete sets of Arcimboldo's instantly recognisable figures of the Seasons appear rarely at auction – this series is one of only three sets to have come to the market in over 30 years. Giuseppe Arcimboldo (1526–93), Milanese by birth, produced some of the most memorable paintings of the 16th century, the resonance of which has been felt through generations of artists ever since, the surreal nature of his anthropomorphic figures finding echoes in the works of the likes of Salvador Dalí and Max Ernst. Arcimboldo was celebrated at the courts of Prague and Vienna, where he produced his first set of highly unusual personifications of the Seasons for the Emperor Maximilian II in 1563, of which only the panels depicting Summer and Winter now remain, in the Kunsthistorisches Museum, Vienna.¹ Maximilian subsequently commissioned a set to thank Augustus, Elector of Saxony, for his political support, for which Arcimboldo received payment in 1574; these are the four paintings on canvas, today in the Musée du Louvre, Paris, on which the present set is based.²

The present series most probably date to the 17th century, by which time multiple versions of Arcimboldo's famous paintings had been produced. They differ in several ways to the Paris series, not least in their painted ovals, rather than the floral borders of the autograph set. The figures here are also shown almost half-length, rather than the bust-lengths found in the Paris series; slightly longer formats are found, however, in other individual paintings of the Seasons also considered autograph, such as Autumn in a US private collection, and Winter, in the Menil Collection, Houston.³ In both the Vienna and Paris paintings, Arcimboldo weaves his signature and the dates into the wheat collars and shoulders of the figures of Summer, and the shoulders of the figures of Winter are emblazoned with an 'M' (for Maximilian) and crossed swords of Meissen (the Saxon coat-of-arms), respectively. Here, by contrast, the artist has included the names of months of the year associated with each season (in Italian) in the costume of each figure: Enero (January), Mayo (May), August (Agosto), and Septembre (September).

The compositions may be read as flattering political allegories representing Maximilian's harmonious reign over his people, and by extension the Seasons. Later versions, like this set, were most likely produced for the open market, which undoubtedly saw a demand for these iconic, decorative and amusing images.

¹ Summer: https://www.khm.at/en/objectdb/detail/71/; and Winter: https://www.khm.at/en/objectdb/detail/72/

² Spring: https://collections.louvre.fr/en/ark:/53355/cl010065015; Summer: https://collections.louvre.fr/en/ark:/53355/cl010064968; Autumn: https://collections.louvre.fr/en/ark:/53355/cl010065017; and Winter: https://collections.louvre.fr/en/ark:/53355/cl010064967

³ See T. DaCosta Kaufmann, in Delieuvin and Ferino-Pagden 2007, pp. 130 and 134, nos IV.6 and IV.7, reproduced in colour pp. 133 and 135, respectively.