Summer

Giuseppe Arcimboldo was an Italian painter best known for creating imaginative portrait heads made entirely of objects such as fruits, vegetables, flowers, fish, and books. 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. Arcimboldo also tried to show his appreciation of nature through his portraits.

In Summer, the human portrait was composed of various summer flowers and plants—I love cucumber as a nose. This painting, formerly thought to be a workshop replica, is now considered an authentic variation of the Summer in Vienna. Because of the similar dimensions and support, the Autumn on loan to the Denver Art Museum and the Winter in the Menil Collection, Houston probably belonged to the same series.