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拍品專文
Giuseppe Arcimboldo’s invention of the teste composte – heads ingeniously constructed from blossoms, fruits, roots and bark – remains among the most audacious feats of late Renaissance allegory. Conceived at the Habsburg courts of Vienna and Prague, where the Milanese painter served Ferdinand I, Maximilian II and Rudolf II, they delighted contemporaries as visual paradoxes – portraits and still-lifes in one, yet also potent political emblems of dynastic power. Few cycles capture the conceit with greater resonance than the Four Seasons, a celebration of imperial dominion couched in the language of natural abundance.
The present set, dated 1573, belongs to this celebrated tradition and follows the autograph cycle of the same year in the Musée du Louvre, Paris. Complete workshop repetitions of the Seasons are exceptionally rare: as Thomas DaCosta Kaufmann has observed, the few variants documented in early inventories and sales were frequently dispersed and are now difficult to identify solely from their descriptions (op. cit.). By contrast, the present group survives intact, preserving both the compositional sequence and the heraldic programme of the Louvre prototypes. Most striking is Winter, which retains the crossed swords of Saxony on the mantle – the electoral arms – signalling the political charge of the commission, while Summer preserves Arcimboldo’s painted inscription. As Kaufmann has observed, this heraldic substitution reveals their role within the machinery of diplomatic gift exchange. In that same year Maximilian ordered a cycle as a gift for Augustus, Elector of Saxony, whose support was crucial at the Imperial Diet; payment to Arcimboldo is recorded in 1574. As Sylvia Ferino-Pagden has shown (op. cit., 2007), the inclusion of the crossed swords of Saxony transferred the cycle’s symbolic compliment from Habsburg sovereignty to Wettin authority, consolidating Augustus’s allegiance and, with it, the election of Rudolf II as imperial heir.
The iconography is more than playful artifice. Each head embodies the produce of its season: Spring bursts with flowers and foliage; Summer ripens into corn, cucurbits and cherries; Autumn is vintage and harvest, its torso bound by the staves of a wine barrel; Winter withers into a gnarled stump, clad in ivy and fungus. Read in their courtly context, the Seasons exalt dynastic power – under the Elector’s harmonious rule, the mutable cycles of nature are unified within a single, ordered vision. Arcimboldo’s paradoxical heads thus serve as portraits of the realm itself, where the abundance and variety of nature are reconciled into a harmonious image of empire.
The set has enjoyed widespread acclaim. Legrand and Sluys catalogued them among the Arcimboldesques (op. cit., 1955); Kaufmann later identified them as a significant workshop repetition of the Louvre cycle (op. cit.); and landmark exhibitions from The Arcimboldo Effect (Venice, Palazzo Grassi, 1987) to Ferino-Pagden’s monographic show (op. cit., 2007) have placed them in dialogue with the Paris originals. Though variants survive in Landshut and the former Gottorf collections, their fragmentary state contrasts with the present set’s fidelity and integrity. Outside museums, few coherent groups have endured; the survival of this cycle, complete and enriched by distinguished provenance, confers upon it exceptional importance.
This fusion of artifice and allegory accounts for their extraordinary afterlife – imitated by contemporaries, collected across Europe and rediscovered centuries later by the Surrealists, who recognised in Arcimboldo a proto-modern master of metamorphosis. Yet for their first audience they were deeply serious images: courtly allegories of dynastic continuity, power and cosmic order. This complete set stands as one of the most eloquent witnesses to Arcimboldo’s dual genius as entertainer and political image-maker – an artist whose vision, at once playful and profound, continues to resonate across five centuries.
A note on the provenance:
The history of the present set entwines it with one of the most storied dynastic sagas of the seventeenth century. Tradition holds that the canvases were acquired in Prague by Elizabeth Stuart, Queen of Bohemia – the ‘Winter Queen’ – who, following her exile in 1620, brought them to England. Presumably gifted to her stalwart ally William, Lord Craven, they were housed at Ashdown House in Berkshire, which he built as her intended refuge. There they remained with his descendants until their sale in London in 1963. Subsequently, they entered the collection of Colin Tennant, 3rd Baron Glenconner – an emblematic figure of mid-century British society, celebrated for his close friendship with Princess Margaret and for transforming the Caribbean island of Mustique into a haven for artists, aristocrats and royalty. Tennant’s discerning eye and flair for the theatrical found a fitting counterpart in Arcimboldo’s imaginative artifice: his ownership of The Four Seasons continued their history of association with courts, both real and symbolic. They were later acquired by Sir Peter Moores, philanthropist and collector, whose Peter Moores Foundation purchased Compton Verney House in 1993 and established Compton Verney Art Gallery there in 2004; his patronage quietly shaped some of the most significant cultural initiatives in post-war Britain. They resurface here as rare survivors of Arcimboldo’s most emblematic invention, enriched by an illustrious provenance and a modern chapter of discerning taste.
The present set, dated 1573, belongs to this celebrated tradition and follows the autograph cycle of the same year in the Musée du Louvre, Paris. Complete workshop repetitions of the Seasons are exceptionally rare: as Thomas DaCosta Kaufmann has observed, the few variants documented in early inventories and sales were frequently dispersed and are now difficult to identify solely from their descriptions (op. cit.). By contrast, the present group survives intact, preserving both the compositional sequence and the heraldic programme of the Louvre prototypes. Most striking is Winter, which retains the crossed swords of Saxony on the mantle – the electoral arms – signalling the political charge of the commission, while Summer preserves Arcimboldo’s painted inscription. As Kaufmann has observed, this heraldic substitution reveals their role within the machinery of diplomatic gift exchange. In that same year Maximilian ordered a cycle as a gift for Augustus, Elector of Saxony, whose support was crucial at the Imperial Diet; payment to Arcimboldo is recorded in 1574. As Sylvia Ferino-Pagden has shown (op. cit., 2007), the inclusion of the crossed swords of Saxony transferred the cycle’s symbolic compliment from Habsburg sovereignty to Wettin authority, consolidating Augustus’s allegiance and, with it, the election of Rudolf II as imperial heir.
The iconography is more than playful artifice. Each head embodies the produce of its season: Spring bursts with flowers and foliage; Summer ripens into corn, cucurbits and cherries; Autumn is vintage and harvest, its torso bound by the staves of a wine barrel; Winter withers into a gnarled stump, clad in ivy and fungus. Read in their courtly context, the Seasons exalt dynastic power – under the Elector’s harmonious rule, the mutable cycles of nature are unified within a single, ordered vision. Arcimboldo’s paradoxical heads thus serve as portraits of the realm itself, where the abundance and variety of nature are reconciled into a harmonious image of empire.
The set has enjoyed widespread acclaim. Legrand and Sluys catalogued them among the Arcimboldesques (op. cit., 1955); Kaufmann later identified them as a significant workshop repetition of the Louvre cycle (op. cit.); and landmark exhibitions from The Arcimboldo Effect (Venice, Palazzo Grassi, 1987) to Ferino-Pagden’s monographic show (op. cit., 2007) have placed them in dialogue with the Paris originals. Though variants survive in Landshut and the former Gottorf collections, their fragmentary state contrasts with the present set’s fidelity and integrity. Outside museums, few coherent groups have endured; the survival of this cycle, complete and enriched by distinguished provenance, confers upon it exceptional importance.
This fusion of artifice and allegory accounts for their extraordinary afterlife – imitated by contemporaries, collected across Europe and rediscovered centuries later by the Surrealists, who recognised in Arcimboldo a proto-modern master of metamorphosis. Yet for their first audience they were deeply serious images: courtly allegories of dynastic continuity, power and cosmic order. This complete set stands as one of the most eloquent witnesses to Arcimboldo’s dual genius as entertainer and political image-maker – an artist whose vision, at once playful and profound, continues to resonate across five centuries.
A note on the provenance:
The history of the present set entwines it with one of the most storied dynastic sagas of the seventeenth century. Tradition holds that the canvases were acquired in Prague by Elizabeth Stuart, Queen of Bohemia – the ‘Winter Queen’ – who, following her exile in 1620, brought them to England. Presumably gifted to her stalwart ally William, Lord Craven, they were housed at Ashdown House in Berkshire, which he built as her intended refuge. There they remained with his descendants until their sale in London in 1963. Subsequently, they entered the collection of Colin Tennant, 3rd Baron Glenconner – an emblematic figure of mid-century British society, celebrated for his close friendship with Princess Margaret and for transforming the Caribbean island of Mustique into a haven for artists, aristocrats and royalty. Tennant’s discerning eye and flair for the theatrical found a fitting counterpart in Arcimboldo’s imaginative artifice: his ownership of The Four Seasons continued their history of association with courts, both real and symbolic. They were later acquired by Sir Peter Moores, philanthropist and collector, whose Peter Moores Foundation purchased Compton Verney House in 1993 and established Compton Verney Art Gallery there in 2004; his patronage quietly shaped some of the most significant cultural initiatives in post-war Britain. They resurface here as rare survivors of Arcimboldo’s most emblematic invention, enriched by an illustrious provenance and a modern chapter of discerning taste.