Roman God of the seasons

Giuseppe Arcimboldo (1527 - July 11, 1593) was an Italian painter best known for creating imaginative portrait heads made entirely of objects such as fruits, vegetables, flowers, fish, and books - that is, he painted representations of these objects on the canvas arranged in such a way that the entire collection of objects formed a recognizable image of the portrait subject.

In 1562 he became court portraitist to Ferdinand I Habsburg court in Vienna and, later, Maximilian II and Rudolph II to his son in the court of Prague. It was also the court decorator and costume designer. King Augustus of Saxony, who visited Vienna in 1570 and 1573, saw Arcimboldo's work and commissioned a copy of his "Four Seasons" which incorporates his own monarchic symbols.

Arcimboldo's conventional work in the traditional religious subjects, has been forgotten, but his portraits of human heads made of vegetables, plants, fruits, marine animals and tree roots, were much admired by his contemporaries and remain a source of Today's fascination. Art critics debate whether these paintings were whimsical or the product of a deranged mind. Most scholars argue that the point of view, however, that given the Renaissance fascination with riddles, puzzles, and weird Arcimboldo, far from being mentally unbalanced, caters to the tastes of his time.

Arcimboldo died in Milan, who retired after the cessation of Prague. It was during this last phase of his career that produced the composite portrait of Rudolph II and his self-portrait as the Four Seasons. His Italian contemporaries honored him with poetry and manuscripts celebrating his illustrious career.

When the Swedish army invaded Prague in 1648, during the Thirty Years War, many of Arcimboldo's paintings were taken from the collection of Rudolph II.

His works can be found in the Kunsthistorisches Museum in Vienna and the Habsburg Ambras Castle in Innsbruck, the Louvre in Paris as well as numerous museums in Sweden. In Italy, his work is in Cremona, Brescia, and the Uffizi Gallery in Florence.

The Wadsworth Atheneum in Hartford, Connecticut, the Denver Art Museum in Denver, Colorado, the Menil Foundation in Houston, Texas, Candie Museum in Guernsey and the Real Academia de Bellas Artes de San Fernando in Madrid also own paintings by Arcimboldo .

Young girl at a window

Jan Victors or Fictor was a Golden Age Dutch painter who focused primarily on painting the subject of the Bible.

He was known in Haarlem in a catalog taxes in 1722 as a student of Rembrandt van Rijn. Although it is true that Rembrandt worked for, is clear from the girl at a window he had carefully examined the paintings of Rembrandt.

He was only twenty years old when he painted this scene, and look of expectation in the face of the girl shows a remarkable study of character.

Like many painters of Amsterdam after the rampjaar 1672, fell on bad times and took a position as ziekentrooster, a combination of professional work as a nurse and a priest, with the Company Dutch East Indies in 1676. He died shortly after his arrival in Indonesia.

About Douglas Baulch

Baulch was born in Malvern, Victoria, Australia, the only child youngest of three children of Ernest Stanley Baulch. It is commonly known as Douglas Baulch, the same as was used in all his works. Before the first birthday of his father Douglas was sent to fight in France during World War 1, only to return to hospital for the rest of your life is totally disabled until his death eight years later.

This had a traumatic and emotional impact as a small child Douglas seeing and knowing only her father from his deathbed. His father finally died in 1926, when Douglas was only 9 years old.

He still lives in Malvern this created severe stress on him financially and emotionally and family. They are forced to take a more responsible for the house at a very early age. Even while the boy had a love for art drawing happens all the time at home, her mother and sisters Doris Ann and encouraged Gloria.

However, soon after graduating disappointed when given two of his favorite pieces in a private gallery in Melbourne, which then claimed the pieces, was stolen. The gallery closed and his painting was never seen again. From that day on he became lonelier and monitoring the delivery of her artwork in several galleries and therefore significantly less exposed to other friends, like Sidney Nolan.

With the outbreak of World War II, signed a contract for the Royal Australian Air Force working mainly in the north of Australia and the Pacific as a commercial artist, between 1943 and 1945, being commissioned to produce various signs and signaling with the war effort. Then do a portrait of Sir Richard Williams.

He married in 1944 with Lyla Foster, who lived in Glen Iris then Armadale. Upon returning home from the Air Force started a large family with his first son Jeff was born in 1946.

In 1952 he moved to East Doncaster, as he liked the Australian landscape and needed to find a balance between family / financial commitment and his love of landscapes.

Common with the temples of Lower Warrandyte areas should and as an inspiration to portray the rugged terrain and shrubs in the area at the time. The landscape of this period show a natural beauty and positive vision of natural ecosystems and the environment that was not surface with a multiplicity of views, attracting the viewer to take in the scene.