Summer

A profile head bursts with ripe produce: a cucumber nose, a peach cheek, a chin of pears and a garlic-clove ear, the whole face woven from the fruits and vegetables of high summer, finished with a collar of plaited straw. Arcimboldo signs this one cleverly, his name worked into the woven shoulder. Part of the Four Seasons made for the Habsburg court, Summer personifies the year at its peak of abundance and, by extension, the flourishing of imperial rule. Witty and faintly grotesque at once, it belongs with Winter, Autumn, and Spring, also in this collection.