Summer

The story of Summer

It is a man in profile until you look again, and then it is a peach for a cheek, a pea pod for teeth, a cherry earring, a cucumber nose, and a coat woven out of wheat with the artist's name stitched into the collar. Arcimboldo painted Summer in 1573 as one of a set of four seasons for the Habsburg emperor, who apparently found them hilarious and gave them away as gifts. This version is in the Louvre. The joke has been copied for 450 years and has never been improved.

On a wall, Summer is a warm, sunny painting with a dark ground. The dominant colors are gold wheat, peach, red cherry, and green leaves against near-black, so it glows in a kitchen, a dining room, a pantry wall, or a breakfast nook, and it suits farmhouse, eclectic, Mediterranean, and anything-goes interiors where a little wit is welcome. It is a vertical portrait, and the detail is the fun, so we offer it at the Mini, 8 × 9.9 in, the Petite at 11 × 13.6 in, and the Small at 12 × 14.9 in. The Small is the size for a wall of its own; the Petite is right in a pair or a quartet.

The obvious partner is Arcimboldo's Winter, the gnarled tree-stump face from the same set, and Vertumnus is the emperor himself done in fruit. Anguissola's The Chess Game is the other Mannerist painting in our catalog with a real sense of play. More from Giuseppe Arcimboldo.

Printed in our studio from a public-domain photograph of the Louvre panel, with every seed and stalk left legible.