Summer

Summer was painted in 1563, in the same season-by-season set as Winter, for the Habsburg court in Vienna, where Arcimboldo had arrived the year before. It is the most crowded of the heads. A cucumber curves into a nose, a peach makes the cheek, a pod of peas opens as the mouth, and cherries, plums and grapes pile up into hair, with ears of grain at the top. The whole thing is built from what a kitchen garden and an orchard gave in high summer. An artichoke sits on the chest like a brooch. The body is a coat of woven straw, and Arcimboldo used it to sign. Follow the braid along the collar and down the shoulder and you can read his name and the date 1563, woven into the straw itself.