Arcimboldo - Earth
Arcimboldo composes “Earth” from a variety of animals, and this portrait helps to establish the artist not only as a student of the everyday but also of the exotic. For nestled amongst the deer, mice, wolves, donkeys and sheep one can discover an ibex, an elephant, a lion and a camel, among others. The color palette used for “Earth” does not stray far from browns, reds, and oranges, suggesting the soil and woods without needing either to actually create the face. Arcimboldo utilizes the delicate form and points of the various animals’ antlers to create a coronet, thus crowning his earthly goddess. As a ruler, Maximilian II was fond of animals and kept an exotic menagerie of them at his court, and Arcimboldo could perhaps have done the initial studies for some of the animals pictured here in his patron’s zoo. These animals are made more exotic by the way Arcimboldo ignores the variations in size the real animals would present and instead chooses to paint them all on relatively equal footing. - WUSTL DIGITAL GATEWAY.
Size: 4960px × 5775px
Photo credit: © steeve. e. flowers. / Alamy / Afripics
License: Royalty Free
Model Released: No
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