Most of Arcimboldo’s remaining works are of collected objects, which have been assembled to resemble people. He used fruits, flowers, vegetables, fish, and books, and other things, (among them slabs of meat), and arranged them in such a way as to not only resemble a person, but the person’s resemblance as well. Due to his strange rendition of the human figure, there is a debate among art critics as to whether or not Arcimboldo’s paintings are the work of a deranged mind. A more likely explanation, however, is that the paintings are a product of the Renaissance era in which he lived, which was fascinated with riddles, puzzles, and the bizarre. If this was the case, then Arcimboldo’s strange depictions were only just catering to the tastes of the time.
Mannerism
Arcimboldo is known as a 16th-century Mannerist. A transitional period from 1520 to 1590, Mannerism adopted some artistic elements from the High Renaissance and influenced other elements in the Baroque period. A Mannerist tended to show close relationships between human and nature.[6] Arcimboldo also tried to show his appreciation of nature through his portraits. In The Spring, the human portrait was composed of only various spring flowers and plants. From the hat to the neck, every part of the portrait, even the lips and nose, was composed of flowers, while the body was composed of plants. On the other hand, in The Winter, the human was composed mostly of roots of trees. Some leaves from evergreen trees and the branches of other trees became hair, while a straw mat became the costume of the human portrait.