Giuseppe Arcimboldo

Born in Milan on 5 April 1527, Arcimboldo spent most of his career as a conventional court painter serving three Holy Roman Emperors in Vienna and Prague, producing religious works and detailed drawings of the imperial menagerie's exotic animals. But alongside that dutiful output, he developed a second practice: grotesque symbolic compositions in which fruits, vegetables, landscapes, fish, books, and inanimate objects were arranged into human forms. The still life portraits amused the court as curiosities, though critics still argue over whether they engaged seriously with Renaissance Neo-Platonism or simply reveled in visual wit. He died in Milan on 11 July 1593, leaving behind a body of work split down the middle - half standard, half strange.