Completed her training in about 1553, met Michelangelo in Rome in 1554, where she became an established portraitist, invited to the court of King Philip II of Spain, advised the young van Dyck, and died in her early 90s.
Arcimboldo
Arcimboldo’s 4 in 1, two sets by Joos de Momper, one anthropomorphic the other of landscapes, and a splendid set by Pieter Brueghel the Younger.
First Dante and Virgil have to negotiate the three-headed monster dog Cerberus, guarding Hell, then the stinking mud containing gluttons.
The god of the seasons and gardens falls in love with a devoted gardener, but can’t woo her successfully when posing as someone else.
Children on the cabbage patch, those toiling with the potatoes, digging beetroots, and a couple of unusual paintings with cucumbers and the true vegetable gardener.
Come leaf-peeping with painters from Samuel Palmer in the Weald of Kent, to Julian Alden Weir’s autumn rain.
Examples of surreal visual art from Bosch in about 1500, through Piranesi’s Imaginary Prison, Richard Dadd, to Félix Vallotton in 1892.
A parrot, coral, snuffed-out candles, human skulls, worn-out boots, a bottle of poison and a syringe: all objects in still life paintings.
Until the seventeenth century, still life paintings were occasional curiosities, From the Romans and Hans Memling to the early Dutch Golden Age the genre developed steadily.
In the century from 1560, many artists painted allegories of the four elements of the classical world: earth, air, water and fire. Here are some fine examples.
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