Arcimboldo – Visual Jokes, Natural History and Still–Life Painting - Hardcover

Kaufmann, Thomas Dacosta

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0226426866 ISBN 13: 9780226426860

Publisher: University of Chicago Press, 2010

Synopsis

Unusual book

About this title

Review:

"Over more than 300 pages, this elegantly illustrated book offers us an abundance of complex and elliptical reflections on art, nature, philosophy, and poetry, which makes the book an important working tool for research purposes."--Sylvia Ferino "Art Newspaper "

"With characteristically probing scholarship and the discovery of new Arcimboldo nature studies, Thomas DaCosta Kaufmann illuminates the fascinating interplay of Giuseppe Arcimboldo's aspirations in the realms of antiquity, literature, imperial glorification, and natural history. Kaufmann shows that many of Arcimboldo's works were simultaneously models of imitative naturalism and ingenious fantasy. In so doing, he gives Arcimboldo his due as a learned and ambitious artist who was central to the origins of nature study and independent still life."

--Pamela H. Smith, Columbia University

"In this remarkable new book, Thomas DaCosta Kaufmann manages to show that Giuseppe Arcimboldo, often considered a sort of surrealist avant la lettre, was actually an instrumental figure in the origins of still life painting. Moreover, Kaufmann convincingly links Arcimboldo's work to the nascent discipline of Renaissance natural history, which stressed the detailed depiction of natural objects ad vivum. Building on his decades as a consummate Arcimboldo scholar, Kaufmann succeeds in drawing together the complex facets of the painter's life in order to reveal a composite figure as detailed and variegated as one of Arcimboldo's own teste composte. The result is a far-reaching volume that will appeal as much to historians of science and culture as to those in the history of art."

--William R. Newman, Indiana University

"Arcimboldo provides for the first time a brilliantly nuanced study of paintings that, until now, had been only superficially treated, despite (or because of) their visual charm and evident complexity. Kaufmann's masterful analysis of these paintings, the inclusion of so many new drawings and documentary evidence, his skilled visual and textual analyses, and his important discussion of the contexts in which the painter worked easily make this book a fundamental source not only on Arcimboldo but also on early modern Milan and court culture, on the development of natural science, and on the rise of still-life painting in Europe."--CAA reviews

About the Author:

Thomas DaCosta Kaufmann is the Frederick Marquand Professor of Art and Archaeology at Princeton University. His many books include Toward a Geography of Art, also published by the University of Chicago Press.

About this edition

• Publisher: University of Chicago Press
• Publication date: 2010
• ISBN 10: 0226426866
• ISBN 13: 9780226426860
• Binding: Hardcover
• Number of pages: 288