Reframing Arcimboldo's 'Librarian'

Abstract

Giuseppe Arcimboldo's The librarian (ca. 1566), an illusionary painting of a man made out of books, has traditionally been interpreted as an amusing caricature of the Hapsburg court historiographer Wolfgang Lazius. However, given the formal similarities between 'The librarian' and the illustration of the book fool in Sebastian Brant's famous Ship of fools (Narrenschiff, 1494), it is likely that contemporary viewers associated the painting with Brant's satire of slothfully ignorant book collectors. This paper employs The librarian 's similarities to the character of the book fool as a starting point for a reexamination of the painting's significance. Building on my previous discussion of the painting, I present new avenues of enquiry involving texts such as the 'Philobiblon' (The love of books, 1345) by Richard de Bury, Bishop of Durham, as well as Reformation imagery and the context of the Hapsburg court. Viewing the painting through the framework of other literary and artistic works, this essay begins to conceptually 'reframe' the painting within the larger context of the artist's cultural milieu.