Giuseppe Arcimboldo - Vertumnus and Portrait of Rudolf II con Habsburg

Title: Vertumnus and Portrait of Rudolf II con Habsburg (Vertumnus)
Artist: Giuseppe Arcimboldo (1526-1593)
Date: 1591
Medium: Oil on canvas
Dimensions: 70 x 58 cm

The “Tiger Hunt” is one of four hunting scenes commissioned by Maximilian I of Bavaria in 1615. Rubens painted it after an eight-year stay in Italy (1600-08) where he was very influenced by Baroque masters such as Titian, Tintoretto and Caravaggio.

The composition of the ”Tiger Hunt” is very dense with horses, wild animals and men dressed in different styles (conquistador helmets and armors, Ottoman robes and turbans, Roman togas). The painting drew probably from Leonardo da Vinci’s never-completed fresco, the “Battle of Anghiari”, which Rubens had made a drawing of. The energy, violence and pain that can be seen in the human and animal faces and bodies in Rubens’ painting are uncharacteristic of paintings of the time.