The Vegetable Gardener 1590

Giuseppe Arcimboldo painted this oil on panel still life, The Vegetable Gardener, in the late sixteenth century. In it, Arcimboldo arranges produce – onions, carrots, turnips, and more – in a bowl to resemble a human face in profile. When the image is inverted, we clearly see the arrangement as a collection of vegetables. Arcimboldo worked for the Habsburg court in the Holy Roman Empire, and paintings like this one would have been courtly entertainment. They also relate to the Renaissance interest in natural science, and the desire to classify and understand the natural world. In this context, the painting suggests both an appreciation for the bounty of nature and a sense of human control over it. To learn more about the painting, we might consult primary documents such as court inventories or recipe books, and consider the painting’s broader social and intellectual context. Ultimately, the meaning of The Vegetable Gardener resides not only in the image itself, but in its relation to the world around it.