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1890 London (Gallery of the Society of Painters in Water Colours)

August 26, 2024

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1894 Madras

August 26, 2024

Arcimboldo, 1526–1593: Nature and Fantasy

Closed January 9, 2011

16 paintings of fantastic heads composed of animals, plants, and objects by 16th-century Italian painter Giuseppe Arcimboldo were presented in this exhibition, the first time the works had been shown together in the United States. Included were Arcimboldo's painting Four Seasons in One Head from the collection of the National Gallery of Art, together with loans from the Kunsthistorishes Museum, Vienna, the Musée du Louvre, Paris, and other public and private collections in Europe and the United States. The presentation was selected from a 2008 exhibition at the Musée du Luxembourg, Paris, and the Kunsthistorishes Museum, Vienna. To suggest the context for the artist's work, the exhibition in Washington also included 30 prints, drawings, volumes, and sculptures by Arcimboldo's contemporaries, including drawings by Leonardo da Vinci and Albrecht Dürer, volumes illustrated by Joris Hoefnagel, and a helmet by Giovanni Paolo Negroli. The exhibition was part of ITALY@150, a series of activities in Washington, DC, and throughout the United States celebrating the 150th anniversary of the unification of Italy.

In this vertical painting, a tree trunk, branches, plants, fruit, and flowers are arranged to create the head, neck, and chest of an old person, like a portrait. The face and shoulders are angled to our left against a black background. The ash-brown tree trunk is the head with stumps to represent the long, bulbous nose, protruding chin, and ear. The eyes and mouth are sunken in deep shadow. Smaller bumps and the rough texture of the bark of the skin resembles warts or other imperfections. Flax-yellow moss or fungi grows on the chin and head, creating the impression of short hair. Branches grow up from the top of the head like antlers or a tall crown. On our left, green and purple grapes sit among the branches and stumps on the head while red apples and pears sit on our right. Ivy grows up on branch behind the apples. Two red cherries dangle from the small stub of the ear we can see. Pale pink, red, and white flowers on the chest make a garment. Sheaves of wheat hang down from branches protruding from the neck over the flowers. The artist signed the painting with black letters where bark has peeled away from a branch to our upper right, "ARCIMBOLDUS F."

Scholarly Article

Dutch Paintings of the Seventeenth Century: Trompe l'Oeil of an Etching by Ferdinand Bol, c. 1675

May 7, 2019

by:

Arthur K. Wheelock Jr.

Scholarly Article

Dutch Paintings of the Seventeenth Century: A Nurse and a Child in an Elegant Foyer, 1663

May 7, 2019

by:

Alexandra Libby

A child and woman stand at the open door of an entryway with black and white marble floors, as the child drops a coin into the hat of a disheveled boy accompanied by a nursing mother across the threshold in this vertical painting. Beyond the entryway, a man and woman look on from a room with a landscape painting hanging over a tall mantle. All the people have pale skin. The child standing with the woman inside, near the door, looks at us with gray eyes. Blond ringlets frame a round face with full cheeks, a snub nose, and parted coral-red lips. The ringlets are tied with butter-yellow ribbons and the rest of the head is covered with a white cap. The child’s garment has a wide, flaring, flat collar, a tight-fitting bodice, and a flaring, floor-length skirt. Pale plum-purple, puffy sleeves are tied with pale yellow and azure-blue ribbons, and a cape of the same fabric lined with pale grass-green falls from the shoulders. A medallion hangs from a thick gold chain looped over the child’s right shoulder, to our left, across to the opposite hip. The child touches the hand of the woman standing behind with one hand, to our right, and drops a silver coin into the proffered hat with the other. The woman’s body faces us but she turns her oval-shaped face to look down at the boy holding out his hat. She wears a scarlet-red, long-sleeved bodice with a wide, white collar over her chest. A taupe-brown apron covers her dark skirt and her bonnet is long on the sides, draping to brush her shoulders. She rests her right hand, to our left, on her stomach and touches the fingertips of the child in front of her with the other. Near the lower right corner of the painting, a small white dog with ginger-brown spots stands on the black and white marble floor, looking up toward the exchange. Light pours into the entryway through the open door and a transom window above it. The walls are light gray and the doorways are surrounded with darker gray molding. A painting of a landscape hangs above the doorway leading to the room beyond. The man and woman there look at us from in front of a mantle that is taller than the woman who stands next to the man, who is seated. The woman’s hair is pulled back under a cap, and she wears a silver-gray dress lined with a wide band of white fur. She holds one hand to her waist and gestures toward the foyer with the other. The man wears a black suit with a wide, flat collar. The floor in this room is a checkerboard pattern of white and brick-red squares, and sky-blue panels with gilded leafy designs cover part of the walls. A carved stone cherub like a small, chubby child, stands on the mantle to our left, next to the landscape painting there. Back in the entryway, across the threshold, the boy steps with one foot onto the floor of the foyer as he holds out his frayed, brimmed hat. He has short-cropped blond hair and wears a mustard-yellow shirt with tattered brown pants. The nursing woman stands next to the door, out of sight of the people inside, holding a baby to one round breast. The boy and woman’s faces, necks, and hands are noticeably tanned, almost orange. Two small children huddle, almost out of sight, in the narrow space between the boy and the left edge of the painting. They look down onto a few light tan disks, perhaps coins, on the step in front of them. In the distance beyond the family are a few trees and buildings beneath a vibrant blue sky with puffy white clouds. The artist signed and dated the painting in the lower right corner, “J. Ochtervelt f. 1663.”

Scholarly Article

Dutch Paintings of the Seventeenth Century: Ice Scene near a Wooden Observation Tower, 1646

May 7, 2019

by:

Arthur K. Wheelock Jr.

Scholarly Article

Dutch Paintings of the Seventeenth Century: View of Dordrecht from the North, early 1650s

May 7, 2019

by:

Arthur K. Wheelock Jr.

Scholarly Article

Stieglitz’s Portfolios and Other Published Photographs

August 19, 2020

by:

Julia Thompson

Scholarly Article

Chronology of Stieglitz’s Processes and Techniques

by:

Julia Thompson

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1890 London (Gallery of the Society of Painters in Water Colours)

1889 Philadelphia

1894 Madras

Dutch Paintings of the Seventeenth Century: Trompe l'Oeil of an Etching by Ferdinand Bol, c. 1675

Dutch Paintings of the Seventeenth Century: A Nurse and a Child in an Elegant Foyer, 1663

Dutch Paintings of the Seventeenth Century: Ice Scene near a Wooden Observation Tower, 1646

Dutch Paintings of the Seventeenth Century: View of Dordrecht from the North, early 1650s

Stieglitz’s Portfolios and Other Published Photographs

Chronology of Stieglitz’s Processes and Techniques

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