Arcimboldo. The Signs of Man Volume 7

Milan: Franco Maria Ricci, 1980. Book. Illus. by Arcimboldo. New. Silk. Signed by the Publisher. First Edition. Folio. First edition. Limited to 3000 books and numbered. SIGNED BY THE PUBLISHER, Franco Maria Ricci on the colophon page. Folio. Black orient silk binding with color pastedown in black orient silk clamshell case. Titles in gilt. On Cartiere Milliani pastel blue hand-made paper. 175 pp. plus 5-pp. fold-out illustration. Color plates and wash illustrations throughout. A true masterpiece of the book arts. Arcimboldo was born in Milan in 1527, the son of Biagio, a painter who did work for the office of the Fabbrica in the Duomo.[1] Arcimboldo was commissioned to do stained glass window designs beginning in 1549, including the Stories of St. Catherine of Alexandria vitrage at the Duomo. In 1556 he worked with Giuseppe Meda on frescoes for the Cathedral of Monza. In 1558, he drew the cartoon for a large tapestry of the Dormition of the Virgin Mary, which still hangs in the Como Cathedral today. In 1562 he became court portraitist to Ferdinand I at the Habsburg court in Vienna, and later, to Maximilian II and his son Rudolf II at the court in Prague. He was also the court decorator and costume designer. King Augustus of Saxony, who visited Vienna in 1570 and 1573, saw Arcimboldo's work and commissioned a copy of his "The Four Seasons" which incorporates his own monarchic symbols. Arcimboldo's conventional work, on traditional religious subjects, has fallen into oblivion, but his portraits of human heads made up of vegetables, fruit, sea creatures and tree roots, were greatly admired by his contemporaries and remain a source of fascination today. Art critics debate whether these paintings were whimsical or the product of a deranged mind. A majority of scholars hold to the view, however, that given the Renaissance fascination with riddles, puzzles, and the bizarre (see, for example, the grotesque heads of Leonardo da Vinci), Arcimboldo, far from being mentally imbalanced, catered to the taste of his times. In original publisher's shipping box. New in new slipcase..