Eternal Season

The Louvre debuts its superb restoration of the Renaissance masterwork, The Four Seasons

Above Image: Autumn, one of four seasonal depictions in The Four Seasons.

By Aliette Boshier

Newly reinstalled in the Louvre following a months-long restoration, Giuseppe Arcimboldo’s (1526-1593) Four Seasons are a riotous medley of life in its manifold forms. In this highly inventive genre of composite portraits human features take shape in strange and unexpected ways, from the craggy face of Winter as an ivy-covered stump to Summer’s glinting berry eye. Together, they form a lively host of imaginary sitters at once familiar and unsettling. There are headpieces fashioned from boughs of ripening plums, mantles of golden wheat, peas in place of teeth, literal ears of corn… To borrow a phrase of Henry James, this “boundless fruitage” is dizzying to behold. Almost 80 different plant varieties have been identified in the figure of Spring alone—an androgynous, rosy-cheeked youth decked out in a ruff of delicate white flowers, lettuce epaulets and a jaunty lily as the feather in its cap.

The Four Seasons after restoration.

Born in Milan, Arcimboldo spent 25 years in service to the Habsburg emperors at Vienna and Prague, enchanting his royal patrons with feats of creative ingenuity that encompassed portraiture, costumes, masquerades and other courtly delights.

Autoritratto (Self Portrait) (1570), by Giuseppe Arcimboldo, and two of the artist’s early works.

When he presented his Seasons along with a sister cycle of the Four Elements to Maximilian II in 1569, an accompanying panegyric celebrated their significance as political allegories of the eternal dominion of the Habsburg empire and the harmony of its reign.

Arcimboldo’s The Four Elements (1566).

The Louvre is home to a set of copies created in 1573 as a diplomatic gift for Augustus, Elector of Saxony. Conservator Roberto Merlo was initially tasked with cleaning back the layers of yellowing varnish that had muted the brilliance of Arcimboldo’s palette but soon realized a greater challenge was at hand. Analysis revealed that heavy floral borders framing each face had been added later than assumed, between the 18th and 19th centuries. Removing these not only allowed the figures to “breathe against the black background,” but also revealed unknown details like a further crop of flowers in Spring’s hair and Augustus’ coat of arms.

Where the edges of the paintings had been cut and resized, he worked from other copies to restore lost features. As the curators note, the result is a renewed sense of monumentality and sculptural relief in the interplay of color, shadow and light. “The dialogue imagined by Arcimboldo between the four seasons is now much more animated and lively.”

As the curators note, the result is a renewed sense of monumentality and sculptural relief in the interplay of color, shadow and light. “The dialogue imagined by Arcimboldo between the four seasons is now much more animated and lively.”

As visual scherzi, or jokes, the symbolism inherent in his portraits is underpinned by a rigorous scientific observation of the natural world. Arcimboldo’s was an age of discovery in which the great botanical gardens of Europe began to take shape and volumes were filled with detailed studies of specimens from distant lands. In the wunderkammern of his patrons, which he himself was responsible for curating, he would have encountered all manner of treasures to fire his imagination. While they find possible touchpoints in a wide variety of cultural and artistic sources—the biblical Song of Songs, Roman coinage, Leonardo da Vinci’s grotesque heads, Safavid miniatures, and also the popular rites attached to seasonal festivals—the originality of his works remains undisputed.

One of the first renderings (1599) of a Cabinet of Curiosity, or Wunderkammer; a 17th-century depiction by Frans II Franck.

Consigned to relative obscurity until the early 20th century, Arcimboldo’s fame enjoyed a resurgence of popularity with the rise of the Dada and Surrealist movements. An exhibition of 1987 attests to the “Arcimboldo effect” in art, which has seen a multitude of interpretations by artists from Salvador Dalí to Miguel Berrocal. When San Francisco-born sculptor and filmmaker Philip Haas unveiled his own homage to the Four Seasons in 2012, he reflected how the project had allowed him to “make the Renaissance contemporary and make contemporary art have a root in the history of art.” In translating their visual wit for a modern audience, these technicolor totems affirm the enduring fascination that the 16th-century painter still holds today.

Eternal Season

By Aliette Boshier

As the curators note, the result is a renewed sense of monumentality and sculptural relief in the interplay of color, shadow and light. “The dialogue imagined by Arcimboldo between the four seasons is now much more animated and lively.”

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