The Four Elements

Joseph Heintz the Elder's 'Four Elements', in the Southampton City Art Gallery, engages the same classical cosmological schema as Arcimboldo's celebrated series — earth, water, fire, and air as the fundamental constituents of matter. For a Rudolfine court painter like Heintz, the Four Elements were both philosophical content and an opportunity to demonstrate range: each element demanded different compositional treatment, different color palettes, and different figure types. Heintz's approach to the subject would have drawn on the established tradition of Spranger and Arcimboldo — his colleagues at the Prague court — while inflecting it through his own particular idiom. The panel format suggests individual works rather than a composite image. Southampton's holding of this Heintz work reflects the dispersal of Rudolfine court art through the European picture market in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries.

On panel, each elemental personification receives treatment appropriate to its theme — earthy tones for Earth, cool blues and silvers for Water, warm reds and golds for Fire, pale atmospheric greys and blues for Air. Heintz's figure style, influenced by his Roman training and Rudolfine court practice, gives the personifications idealized but not excessively elongated forms, distinguishing his approach from Spranger's more extreme Mannerist style.