El jurista

By 1566 Arcimboldo was court painter to the Habsburgs and famous for heads built entirely out of other things, usually flowers or fruit that flattered the sitter. This one does the opposite. The face of the lawyer is assembled from plucked chicken carcasses and dead fish, cold and slippery, with the mouth dragged down into a sneer, and the body is nothing but a bundle of legal documents. It is a joke with teeth, aimed at the whole legal profession. The Stockholm museum lists the sitter as the German jurist Ulrich Zasius, though the picture works as a type more than a portrait. Look closely and the trick reverses in your eye, a pile of grim little objects one moment and a whole scowling man the next. This first version came to the Nationalmuseum from Gripsholm Castle in 1866.