I finally got online again at home last week, so I spent a lazy Sunday exploring podcasts and the like, and in the course of that I ran across a radio programme on BBC Radio 4 on the Holy Roman Emperor Rudolf II which sounded interesting. So I click on the appropriate link and on the programme’s webpage I find reproduced a detail of this painting:
Now, I knew this painting, but only insofar as it features on the front cover of the International Treaty on Plant Genetic Resources for Food and Agriculture, and indeed on its website. I suppose I should have known that it is by Giuseppe Arcimboldo, dates from 1591, and represents the said Rudolf II as the mythical Vertemnus, god of harvests and abundance. But I didn’t. I have admired it — and marvelled at how apposite it is as an illustration of the Seed Treaty, with all that agricultural biodiversity — many times, but never really thought about it further. Before now. Which is a pity, because if I had I would also have found out about the similar series of paintings Arcimboldo did on the seasons. And about the website Eat Online, devoted to representations of food and eating in the arts.