Giuseppe Arcimboldo (1527 in Milan, Italy - 1593) was a distinctive and eccentric painter who is best known for creating portrait heads made entirely of such objects as fruit or vegetables or flowers or fish or inanimate objects such as books.

In 1562 he became the court portraitist to Maximilian II at the Habsburg court in Vienna and later, to his son Rudolf II, both of whom seem to have admired Arcimboldo"s paintings.
                                                                                                                                                   
He was also the court decorator, costume designer, and general art expert. His style of early pre-surrealist portraiture was much copied by his contemporaries, making it difficult at times to differentiate his painting from that of imitators. Ironically, given the fame of the imaginary portraits, Arcimboldo"s conventional work has been all but forgotten.