Optical illusions (2)

Surfing on the net net I came across many interesting blogs about painting optical illusions: a very nice and unusual is here and you can see here another one about two bulls walking in the snow.
If you look at this picture very carefully you probably will be able to recognize a portrait formed by many different types of animals: it is one of the masterpieces painted by one of the first optical Italian illusionists, Arcimboldo.
Giuseppe Arcimboldo or Arcimboldi (1527-1593) was one of the painters of the Italian Mannerism. At the beginning of his career Arcimboldo worked as a designer of stained glasses and afterwards he became an expert for theatre illusionistic trickery as well as for creating amazing and strange portraits made up by fruits, animals and objects in general, like for example books, that he “arranged and disposed” on the canvas in a special way in order to form a the shape of a face. Some of his works are very famous in Italy, such as the Four Seasons paintings, that is a composition of flowers for the Spring, of fruits for the Summer, of grapes and leaves for the Autumn and of dried branches, twigs and roots for the Winter.
Arcimboldo was very appreciated in his times and he soon became one of the favourite painters at the royal court in Vienna. The emperors Maximilian II and Rudolph II of Habsburg particularly admired Arcimboldo’s allegorical meanings and jokes in his works. In the 20th Century Salvador Dalì and Surrealistic painters rediscovered Arcimboldo especially for his double images: look, for example, at this picture of vegetables, and now look at the same one upside-down: is it not a wonderful and unexpected face?
Now click here: how many different fishes could you count?
How many types of birds can you see in this picture? Check your answers here!
Do you feel like being an illusionist painter? Look at this blog and learn how to do!