Museo Civico "Ala Ponzone"
Room of the 16th Century
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The Gardener
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The Gardener
Giuseppe Arcimboldi (1526-1593)
Arcimboldo
(1526-1593)
Painting
This painting is not currently on display because it has been loaned to the exhibition “Inventing Nature: Leonardo, Arcimboldo, Caravaggio” at Palazzo Te in Mantua, from September 26, 2026, to January 10, 2027.
Giuseppe Arcimboldi, a well-known artist of the emperor Rodolfo II d’Asburgo’ court, is famous especially for his magnificent “composite heads” and “reversible pictures”, like the one portrayed in this painting. The Gardener represents a cup full of vegetables: if you turn it upside down it becomes the bizarre and chubby face of a peasant. The artwork shows some Nordic characteristics and strong links with the world of the alchemy and of the Phytognomica by Giovan Battista Della Porta who thought that the plants could treat the illnesses of the body parts which present their same shapes.
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