Autumn

Arcimboldo reached Vienna in 1562 where he became court painter to the heir to the throne, Maximilian Emanuel, future Emperor Maximilian II of Bavaria, for whom he painted two series of pictures, of the Seasons and the Elements, as allegories of Imperial rule. The pictures were hung according to an elaborate string of associations celebrating the power of the Habsburgs. Of the original set of Seasons only Winter and Summer survive, now in the Kunsthistorisches Museum in Vienna. A full autograph set of the Seasons, commissioned by Maximilian II in 1573 and embellished with floral borders, is in the Louvre, Paris. This painting of Autumn is close in design to an Autumn in a private collection in America that has recently been attributed to Arcimboldo (T. daCosta Kaufmann, in S. Ferino-Pagden, Arcimboldo 1526-1593, exhibition catalogue, Paris, Musée du Luxemburg, Vienna, Kunsthistorisches Museum, 2008, p. 130, no. IV.6).