The archive / Renaissance / Vertumnus
Vertumnus
Giuseppe Arcimboldo · 1526–1593
3 variations + a matched story print, every standard frame ratio. sRGB · up to 300 DPI · personal-use license.
Print it your way — at home, a local shop, or a gallery print delivered to your door. See the printing guide →
Sizes in the download
Print-ready files at every standard frame ratio below — the full image, nothing cropped:
The print is crisp at 300 DPI up to about 30×40″, and stays sharp at 150 DPI from across the room, out to about 40×60″.
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The work
An emperor built entirely from fruit.
Arcimboldo assembled the whole face from fruits, vegetables and flowers. He painted the panel in 1591 as a gift for his former employer, the Holy Roman Emperor Rudolf II, casting him as Vertumnus, the Roman god of the seasons and of change.
How it reached Sweden
Listed as 'a face of fruit,' it left as plunder.
On the transport list it is item number 351, described in four plain words: 'a face of fruit.' The painting left Prague as war booty. In 1648 Swedish troops under Hans Christoph von Königsmarck captured Prague Castle and its art collections, and the emperor in his coat of produce went north with the haul.
Why it ended up here
Out of fashion, it slipped from royal hands.
By the mid-17th century the same heaped fruit looked merely odd: Arcimboldo's style had gone out of fashion. So the painting passed not to Queen Kristina but to one of her subjects, landing in the estate of Per Brahe the Younger at Bogesund Castle. Magnus Brahe moved it to Skokloster sometime between 1828 and 1845. Whether Rudolf II liked the gift, or where he kept it, no one knows.
There is a certain ugliness more beautiful than any beauty.— Gregorio Comanini, in the poem accompanying the painting, c. 1591
The file & the facts
- Title
- Vertumnus
- Artist
- Giuseppe Arcimboldo
- Year
- 1591
- Medium
- Oil on panel
- Original
- 70.5 × 57.5 cm
- Collection
- Skokloster Castle, Sweden
- Rights
- Public-domain painting · open access · Skokloster Castle (Skoklosters slott), Sweden — SKO 11615; scan by Erik Lernestål / Wikimedia Sverige (CC0, courtesy)
- File
- sRGB · JPEG · 150–300 DPI
