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(1527-1593) A REVERSIBLE ANTHROPOMORPHIC PORTRAIT OF A MAN COMPOSED OF FRUIT oil on panel 22 by 16›in. 55.9 by 41.6cm. We are grateful to Dr. Thomas DaCosta Kaufmann who has examined the present painting firsthand and has confirmed it to be a work by Arcimboldo, datable to the 1580's. It constitutes an important addition to this rare, but influential, artist's known oeuvre. Arcimboldo is one of the most fascinating and unique artists of the Western tradition. His fame, which was considerable even in his own time, is founded on the basis of a series of fantastic composite heads executed for Emperor Maximilian II at his court in Vienna and later Rudolf II at Prague. From a prominent Milanese family and the son of the painter Biagio Arcimboldo, the artist's early endeavors include paintings, designs for an altar baldacchino and stained-glass windows for the Cathedral in Milan, and tapestry designs for Como Cathedral. He was first summoned for imperial service by Ferdinand I in 1562, and by 1564 is recorded as a portrait painter for Maximilian II. In addition to these standard duties, Arcimboldo also served as a kind of artistic advisor, organizing festivals, processions, tournaments and theatrical presentations. Arcimboldo's compelling composite heads- human faces and profiles assembled of fruit, flowers, vegetables, fish, animals and other still life objects- delighted and amazed his patrons and courtiers. His first version of his most famous series, The Seasons and The Elements, were presented to Maximilian II on New Year's Day, 1569. As Dr. Kaufmann has shown, these fantastic creations were not only meant to fascinate and delight the eye, but were on another level meant to function as complex allegories and commentaries on the Empire he served (see T.D. Kaufmann, "The Allegories and Their Meaning," in The Arcimboldo Effect, Transformations of the Face from the 16th to the 20th Century, catalogue of the exhibition, Venice, Palazzo Grassi, 1987, pp.89-108). Arcimboldo's friend, the poet Giovanni Battista Fonteo, wrote poems that accompanied the paintings and functioned as an explanation and development of their content. Arcimboldo's reversible paintings, still lifes that when turned one hundred and eighty degrees are transformed into a human head, were probably not meant to be imbued with such depth of content, "but instead demonstrate the painter's incredible mastery of inventiveness in the composition of forms, whereby two totally different images could be depicted simultaneously" (see E. Fuc 13/16ková, ibid, p. 122). Other examples of these reversible compositions are the so-called The Vegetable Gardener (circa1590, Museo Civico Ala Ponzone, Cremona) and The Cook (circa 1570, private collection, Stockholm). Dr. Kaufmann has dated the present painting to later in Arcimboldo's career, antecedent to his great portrait of Rudolf II as Vertumnus of circa1590 (Skokloster Castle, Skokloster, Sweden). Following his renown and influence in his own lifetime, Arcimboldo's work fell into relative obscurity for three centuries, only to be rediscovered in the early 20th century by the Surrealists and Dadaists. His estimation as a great painter, certainly one of the most original, now seems secure. He created a totally new type of imagery that represents one of the most extraordinary concepts of mankind that one can find in art (see P. Hulten, ibid, p. 26).