Reopening the book on Arcimboldo's Librarian.

The Librarian (ca. 1566) is a well-known painting by Giuseppe Arcimboldo, a court artist for the Hapsburg emperors Ferdinand I, Maximilian II, and Rudolf II. Arcimboldo's "composite portrait" of a librarian cleverly assembled from a pile of books has been interpreted narrowly as a parody of librarianship and of intellectualism in general, due in part to Sven Alfons's identification of the librarian as the court historiographer, Wolfgang Lazius. This reevaluation of The Librarian attempts to broaden the conventional view held by art historians and librarians. Considered within the context of late Renaissance book culture (particularly, Sebastian Brant's Ship of Fools), Arcimboldo's humor takes on a new signification. The Librarian may have targeted not those who love learning but rather materialistic book collectors more interested in acquiring books than in reading them.

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The Librarian (ca. 1566), a painting by Giuseppe Arcimboldo of a gentleman cleverly constructed from a pile of books, is a fixture in the visual history of the library profession (figure 1). (1) Nearly four hundred years after its creation, an article about this image was featured in the Library Journal. (2) Citing the art historian Sven Alfons, the article identifies the painting as a portrait of the Habsburg court historiographer Wolfgang Lazius, a "vain and proud pseudo-scholar." The author states that the painting was designed as a cruel joke to ridicule Lazius. Despite this negative interpretation, the article concludes with the happy assurance that "the members of the library profession will surely want to welcome him to their ranks and claim him as their very own." (3)

If contemporary librarians are reluctant to embrace this image, they are not without justification. The painting has been interpreted as a parody of librarianship and of intellectualism, supported by Alfons's identification of Lazius. (4) The following reevaluation of The Librarian and of Alfons's work attempts to expand the prevailing view of the painting held by art historians and librarians. When the interpretive process is not constrained by an emphasis on identifying a particular individual and is broadened to include the context of contemporary Renaissance book culture (particularly, The Ship of Fools), The Librarian takes on a new signification. Arcimboldo's joke may have targeted not those who love learning but rather materialistic book collectors more interested in acquiring books than in reading them.

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Arcimboldo and His Interpreters

Giuseppe Arcimboldo (1527?-1593) was a Milanese artist who worked at the courts of the emperors Ferdinand I, Maximilian II, and Rudolf II in Vienna and Prague from 1562 to 1588. (5) Though Arcimboldo is known to have produced tapestries and stained-glass windows, designed festival staging and costumes, and painted frescoes and portraits, he was and is most famous for his ingenious paintings of composite heads assembled from objects associated with the portraits' allegorical subjects. His series of The Four Seasons (1563) seems to be the first use of this approach and offers a typical example of this technique; the allegorical figure of Spring is a profile bust composed of carefully observed flowers that bloom at that time of year. (6)

Arcimboldo's composite heads were widely celebrated and imitated by his contemporaries but were relatively forgotten until participants in the twentieth-century art movements of Dada and surrealism rediscovered them, bringing them to the attention of art historians. (7) In this context, scholars were inclined to view the paintings as surreal amusements. (8) Historians have often erred by seeing nothing but clever humor in Arcimboldo's work and by reading their own sense of humor into his. The connotations of humor must be carefully contextualized in order to be helpful rather than misleading. (9)

Thomas DaCosta Kaufmann has written extensively about Arcimboldo's cultural milieu and argues against traditional reactions to the artist's work: "Arcimboldo's paintings can be seen not as bizarre fancies, but as the expression of the complicated intellectual world of the late sixteenth century." (10) Paul Barolsky also advises caution regarding the interpretation of humor. He suggests looking to artistic "clues" in the attempt to find hints of past significance. (11) He writes, "Parodies of style may be identified, at least tentatively, if we can determine the predominant stylistic conventions of the period." (12)

Though recent scholarship has taken a more inclusive and nuanced approach to Arcimboldo's oeuvre, The Librarian has not particularly benefited from this type of treatment. The extensive exhibition catalog, The Arcimboldo Effect: Transformations of the Face from the Sixteenth to the Twentieth Century, includes essays by scholars who employ a variety of interpretive methodologies in exploring the multifaceted significance of Arcimboldo's…