PARIS – Following an eight month restoration process, Giuseppe Arcimboldo’s The Four Seasons is back on display at the Louvre, as reported by Artnet News. The set of paintings, which depicts avatars of spring, summer, autumn, and winter as human figures made of botanical elements, has had much of its original color and vitality restored – and a few latter-day additions removed.
Giuseppe Arcimboldo, “Summer,” 1563, oil on canvas, Kunsthistorisches Museum, Vienna [public domain]
Arcimboldo created the original versions of the paintings in the 1560s, which he offered to the Holy Roman Emperor Maximilian II in 1569. Only two of those originals, “Winter” and “Summer,” still survive, hanging today in Vienna’s Kunsthistorisches Museum. Arcimboldo painted several copies at the behest of the emperor; the Louvre’s copies form the only complete set that survives.
Giuseppe Arcimboldo, “Autumn,” 1573, oil on canvas, The Louvre, Paris [public domain]
The paintings can be read as spirits that embody not only the plant life of a given season, but their character and mood as well. Arcimboldo’s “Spring” is a woman made of flowers, her rosy cheeks surprisingly literal, her lace collar composed of daisies, her dress a wild patchwork of leaves and vines. “Autumn,” meanwhile, is a glowering man made of fruits and vegetables rising above a shirt made of wooden slats with a pumpkin for a hat – an incarnation of the harvest season.
According to Artnet News, over time the varnish protecting the surface of the paintings had yellowed and become cloudy, obscuring the artwork and dulling its color. This is a common issue with oil paintings, and restoration experts at art museums have spent decades developing techniques to identify the original colors of a painting and safely restore them. With The Seasons, the restoration team was able to bring out a more vivid range of colors and a greater definition of detail – an effect that Artnet describes as “glowing.”
Giuseppe Arcimboldo, “Winter,” oil on canvas, 1573, The Louvre, Paris. This image shows the painting prior to restoration, with the floral border intact, which obscures the coat of arms on the figure’s coat. [public domain]
But scientific analysis also indicated that some elements of the paintings were later additions – sometimes much later. The Louvre’s copies of The Seasons feature floral borders that don’t appear in the originals held in Vienna. The restorers determined that these borders were added in the 18th and 19th centuries, hundreds of years after Arcimboldo. These floral borders covered up some details from the original paintings, including flowers on the head of “Spring” and the coat of arms of Augustus of Saxony, for whom the painting were commissioned, on “Winter.” In addition, the restorers determined some of the paintings had their sides cut or proportions changed. The restoration team opted to remove the floral borders and restore the original proportions of the paintings.
The Seasons are not the only works by Arcimboldo of interest to modern Pagan viewers; he produced a similar set of paintings, The Elements, which are similar takes on the classical elements of air, water, earth, and fire, humanoid figures made of birds, fish, mammals, and burning logs and candles. (“Fire animals” is a difficult category.) Several of The Elements are also held with the original Seasons paintings in Vienna.
Giuseppe Arcimboldo, “Spring,” 1573, oil on canvas, The Louvre, Paris. This depicts the painting prior to restoration. [public domain]
Together, Arcimboldo’s two collections form an enduring interpretation of ideas at the heart of many modern Pagan traditions – the cycle of seasons and the classical elements. With this restoration, his vision of the seasons – the mushroom-lipped old oak of winter, the peapod teeth and woven-wheat dress of summer – will continue to inspire visitors to the Louvre into the future.
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