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Pictures at Michael Brooke, 1998)/ Giuseppe Arcimboldo, 1527-1598. Illuminations. Retrieved 12/16/03 from http://www.illumin.co.uk/svank/biog/arcim/arcidx.html Italian Giuseppe Arcimboldo Mannerism, the artistic style which gained popularity in the period following the High Renaissance, takes as its ideals the work of Raphael and Michelangelo BuonarrotIt is considered to be a period of technical accomplishment but of formulaic, theatrical and overly stylized work. One of the most bizarre and distinctive painters in the whole of art history, Giuseppe Arcimboldo (1527-1593) owes his reputation to the series of composite portraits of heads made up of a variety of objects, both natural and man-made. Most of these paintings were created at the court of Rudolf II, who hired Arcimboldo as his court painter, placing him at the centre of Rudolf's eccentric menagerie of artists, scientists and charlatans. Arcimboldo, with his anthropomorphic, cumulative methods, is one of the obsessions for which I am unable to find a satisfactory interpretation. Giuseppe Arcimboldo was born in Milan in 1527 into a highly distinguished family, which boasted archbishops (including his grandfather), jurists and artists (including his father Biagio). Little is known about his early life, but his connections with Milanese nobility undoubtedly helped him secure work designing frescoes and windows for the cathedral. In 1562 he travelled across the Alps to Vienna to become the portraitist and copyist to the Hapsburg court, at the invitation of Emperor Maximilian II (his talent having been noted by Maximilian's father Ferdinand I, who employed him as a painter of conventional portraits). Under Maximilian's patronage he produced his first series of the Seasons and the Elements, which were formally presented to the Emperor on New Year's Day, 1569. In 1570 Arcimboldo was sent to Prague, to design an elaborate pageant for Maximilian that blended classical and Czech mythology, and he was to perform similar duties for Maximilian's son Rudolf II, when he ascended the Hapsburg throne in 1575. Arcimboldo designed the festivities for Rudolf's coronation and other state events, while spending his spare time devising hydraulic machines and new forms of musical notation using colours. In 1591 he produced his masterpiece, Vertumnus, an allegorical portrait of his master Rudolf II as the Roman god of metamorphoses in nature and life, with Rudolf's face made up of fruit and flowers, symbolising the perfect balance between nature and harmony that his reign allegedly represented. Arcimboldo died in 1593. Surrealism http://www.encarta.msn.com Surrealism grew out of the Dada movement and flourished in Europe between World War I and World War II. Surrealism employed many of the techniques of Dada but emphasized the positive rather than the negative. Surrealism tried to meld the conscious and the unconscious, the world of dreams and fantasy along with reality so that the line between these ideas was completely blurred. Many artists of this time felt the unconscious was where the true center of art lay, and that artists could tap into this genius by bending and softening the lines between what one's eyes see and the dreamworld. Much of Surrealistic art portrays alternate realities; some created by accident, some using the unconventional realities of blind feeling and impulse. Some of the art of this time is quite cruel and violent as well as very beautiful. The artists, like the Dada artists before them, wanted to shock their viewers with the unexpected and make people think in new ways. He wanted to make the familiar strange, and the strange familiar. S. Lee Hager (n.d.). Surrealism, Alchemy, and the Northern Renaissance. Retreived 12/1/6/03 from http://alandpeters.tripod.com/alchemyrenaissance.html The processes of alchemy were based on Aristotle's theory of transmutation, which proposed that all matter consisted of four basic elements: earth, air, fire, and water, and that these elements were all mutable or interchangeable.9 While these theories seem preposterous now, it must be remembered that during this period empirical evidence validated the theory: water turned into ice and steam, acorns became oak trees and caterpillars became butterflies. A strong belief in transubstantiation on a spiritual level wherein the wine and bread becomes Christ's actual blood and body, no doubt also strengthened belief in these theories.10 From this point of view, it would not be a tremendous leap to believe that base metals could be transformed into gold or that an elixir of life could be distilled from plants. Alchemical symbols in Northern Renaissance art must be read within the context of alchemy as an accepted science that encompassed the medicinal, spiritual, and chemical, as well as the mystical. A brief description of some of the processes involved in alchemy will aid in the discovery of alchemical symbols in art. The first step in the alchemical process was called "conjunction," and concerns the uniting of opposites such as the four alchemical qualities of hot and cold, wet and dry. The second step was called either "coagulation" or "child's play" and concerned a balancing of the four alchemical elements, earth, air, fire, and water. Coagulation led to the third process, "putrefaction" that was said to separate the elements that had previously been joined. The last step was "purification," but since the nature of all alchemical process was cyclical, and was symbolized by the circle, purification could also be the beginning of another cycle.27 Alchemists also sought to bring about perfect health through the balancing of four bodily humors. The choleric, symbolized by yellow, signified bad temper, whereas white stood for the calm phlegmatic humor. Blood, the sanguine humor, was signified by red, and melancholic, the depressive humor was signified by black.28 The uniting of opposites was symbolized by the androgynous figure or the hermaphrodite. Transmutation was symbolized by the hybridizing of animal, bird, or plant forms with humans. Vessels used in alchemical process were used as symbols of those processes. This displacement is the opposite of images presented by Northern Renaissance artists, who retain the human head, but replace the body with that of an animal. This reversal may be seen as a result of the Surrealist reaction to the brutality of human beings to one another during World War I, and as a revolt against the ends to which intellectualism had brought the world.48