Water

Arcimboldo dated this head 1566, probably for the emperor Maximilian II, and it belongs to a set of Four Elements that answered the Four Seasons he had painted three years earlier. The two series were designed to be read as pairs, Water with Winter, Fire with Summer, Air with Spring and Earth with Autumn, so that the emperor's court could see its ruler's world ordered from both sides at once. Every part of this profile is a creature from the water, fish, shells, a crab, coral and pearls, and the museum points out a small crown worked into the head, most likely a nod to the emperor himself. The back of the alder panel is inscribed AQUA. From Rudolf II's cabinet of curiosities in Prague it passed to the imperial treasury in Vienna, recorded there in 1748, and joined the picture gallery in 1830.