Thursday, February 27, 2014

ARCIMBOLDO'S SPOOKY HEADS


448 years ago the Italian painter Giuseppe Arcimboldo, painted 4 spooky heads for the Emperor. 
Arcimboldo lived in the Emperor's castle in Prague, Bohemia (now Czech Republic).   It was the coolest and the largest castle in Christendom and there lived 2 Emperors, Maximilian and his son Rudolf.  Its was bit like Hogwart’s Castle, only long, long ago. They loved magic and exotic animals and they wanted to find the Philosopher’s stone that would turn metal into gold.  They had an even crazier idea: they wanted to turn the elements into humans and Arcimboldo had a plan:

4 SPOOKY HEADS?
Step back and what do you see?
Now come closer and what do you see?
Write down what you find!

ART DETECTIVES
They are paintings that stand for something else-an idea and a hidden message.
Clue: once you name the place where each group of animals lives, you will have figured out 3 symbols.
What makes up the 4th head?
Now name all 4 elements.

HIDDEN MESSAGE
In the Four Elements Arcimboldo shows us the Emperor’s love for animals and science but there is a hidden message within the puzzle: POWER.  
The Emperor thinks he rules over humans, the earth, the skies, the waters and has guns to fire at his enemies.

FIRE
The necklace with the ram pendant is called the "Order of the Golden Fleece", which the Emperor bestows on his bravest knights. Remember your Greek Myths: “Jason, the Argonauts and the Golden Fleece”?

Find the double-headed eagle, the coat of arms of the Emperor.

Zoom in on the lower right and you will find the artist's signature in Latin: Josephus Arcimboldus Mlnensis. F.

STEP BY STEP
He studies the animals and makes many drawings on paper.
A carpenter slices a piece of wood sideways, lets it dry and sands it until smooth.
Arcimboldo mixes powdered minerals or plants with linseed oil to make oil paints.
Covers panel with a dark ground, gesso (chalk+water) or dark brown paint to make a smooth surface, one can't paint on raw wood.
Makes a fine under-drawing with charcoal, pencil, thin paint or even taking the back of a brush to push the outlines into the wet paint.  
Builds up the paint by applying many layers with brushes made of animal hair.  First layer of paint is thick and opaque (lots of pigment) and then each layer after is more transparent (more oil, less pigment).  This is called glazing and makes the painting look rich and luminous.

FUN FACT
Did Arcimboldo paint all four?  NO
One is a COPY (painted by someone else)-which one is it?
HINT: look at them carefully side-by-side and see which ones are really powerful and scary and are painted with rich paint. One is bit flat (one layer of paint) and looks more like a poster, can you see the difference?

Will you draw a crazy head? GO!

-Earth, Oil on wood panel, 70 x 48.5 cm, private collection, Austria
-Water, Oil on alder wood, 66.5 x 50, Kunsthistorisches Museum
Vienna, Austria
-Air, WATCH OUT-copy, 70 x 48,5 cm, Private collection, Basel
-Fire, Oil on lime wood, signed lower right, 66.5 x 51 cm, 
Kunsthistorisches Museum Vienna, Austria

More on Arcimboldo:


THE EMPEROR’S HARE BY ALBRECHT DÜRER

Albrecht Dürer, Hare, 25 x 23cm,
Watercolor and body color, heightened with white body color
Albertina, Vienna
THE EMPEROR’S HARE BY ALBRECHT DÜRER
500 years ago Albrecht Dürer painted the most famous hare of all time.

WHY DID DÜRER PAINT THIS CHUBBY LITTLE HARE?
He loved nature, animals and plants and saw beauty in the simplest and smallest things and turned them into great works of art.  At one point this hare belonged to Emperor Rudolf II.

CAN A HARE SIT STILL?
To me it looks like he is ready to jump out of the picture into the field, so Dürer needs to make a quick sketch to outline the shape of the animal.

HOW DID HE PAINT IT?
Before he grabs the hare to sit for him he needs to prepare:

A piece of paper to measure 25.1 x 22.6 cm on which he paints a base in cream colored watercolor. The yellow spots in the background are not painted.  They are called “foxing” and come from moisture getting into the paper.

Mixing pigment with water makes watercolor. For the highlights on the whiskers and the white hairs he needs a thicker, more opaque, less transparent paint.  To make this paint called gouache, one needs white chalk and water and mix it with gum arabic (sap from a tree) that binds the chalk and water together.

After making the sketch Dürer builds up many layers of brush strokes to give form to the muscles and bones.  Then come the different shades of hair, each one a single and sure brush stroke, from the short fluffy fur on top to the longer rougher hair on the side.  At the end he dots and draws the white highlights.  He can’t make any mistakes.  If you have used watercolor before you’ll know how hard it is for the colors not to run into each other. Every painted hair has to be put in the right place and dry before he paints the next one.

WHERE DOES THE LIGHT COME FROM?
Hint: look at the shadow the hare casts on your right.

ART DETECTIVES: WHERE WAS IT PAINTED?
Zoom in on the eye…...


you will see the reflection of the studio window in his eye!

AD 1502
Albrecht Dürer paints his initials or “monogram” on all his pictures.  He wants people to know that they are looking at Dürer’s world.  The hare now lives at the Albertina museum in Vienna, Austria.

Why don’t you print the page and copy the hare with your very own monogram and date?

If you like this hare, look at Dürer’s other animals and paintings of himself looking like Christ with very, very long hair. He even draws himself stark naked!