Giuseppe Arcimboldo’s “Summer” and a "hieroglyphic profile” of Napoleon in Thomas Hardy's "The Trumpet-Major" (1880)

Thomas Hardy's "The Trumpet-Major" (1880) takes place during the Napoleonic Wars, around 1806 and the Battle of Trafalgar. The novel refers to a caricature of Napoleon that it calls "a hieroglyphic profile", with such features as a hat that is "a maimed French eagle", a face "of human carcases", and an ear that is "a woman crouching over a dying child." I had not heard such images called "hieroglyphic" before, but I know them from the paintings of Giuseppe Arcimboldo (1527-1593), such as those I once saw in the Kunsthistorisches Museum in Vienna: a profile of "Summer", for example, made up of cherries, a peach, a cucumber, and other summer crops. (Andrew Shields, #111Words, 24 November 2024)

Giuseppe Arcimboldo, “Summer”, Kunsthistorisches Museum, Vienna, Public Domain