Arcimboldo was a wizard, a creator of fantastic transmutations. He thoroughly inspected the vegetable and animal worlds and then rearranged them, according to unpredictable hierarchies and montages, into human faces—and his composing game could expand or contract, as in the magnificent, recently rediscovered “The Four Seasons in One Head.” The striking image of “Fire” (1566), is in reality an apologia for the Emperor’s military triumphs, alluding to the war against the Turks begun that year; but it is above all an anti-pacifist and almost disturbingly modern manifesto. Hair is painted as burning firebrands, a wrinkled brow as a fuse, but then cannons and gun barrels are interspersed with arrogant, immodestly placed Hapsburg emblems such as the collar of the Golden Fleece and the steel for striking fire, culminating with the double-headed eagle of the imperial house.

Arcimboldo’s success at court also derived from his invention of coded portraits, and these became irreverent, humorous calling cards. Here we may mention the bust-length portrayal of Wolfgang Lazius, Maximilian II’s court librarian (c. 1562). Books and nothing but books: one with pages wide open to indicate a shock of hair, one for his nose, another two with red bindings for his lips, a large volume for his shoulder and upper arm, and another for his forearm, with fingers created out of bookmarks. Precision lenses for examining texts stand in for eyes, and the flowing beard is made of martens’ tails, used for dusting off the emperor’s precious books.

In the portrait of the court jurist Johann Ulrich Zasius (1566), the sneering expression is achieved through an assemblage of plucked poultry, while the hale and hearty features of the rubicund “Cook” (c. 1570) are composed of piglets, roasted to perfection and set under a pewter soup bowl hat, worn at a rakish angle and with a lemon slice for a brooch and a serving platter for a collar.

The same kind of jocular painting, with the image only becoming clear when turned upside down, is also found in the “Vegetable Gardener” (c. 1590), whose ample pot stuffed with onions, turnips and other vegetables is magically transformed into cheeks, eyes, nose and beard. For Arcimboldo, mankind is to be celebrated as an integral part of nature. But at the same time, human faces become a representation of vanitas (the vanity of all things) since objects of nature will inevitably decompose; and it is this intellectual contradiction that provides the key to interpreting the Mannerist poetics of Arcimboldo.