WASHINGTON, DC.- The National Gallery of Art has acquired the Four Seasons in One Head (c. 1590), a rare and important masterpiece by Giuseppe Arcimboldo, on the occasion of the exhibition Arcimboldo, 1526 -1593: Nature and Fantasy, on view in the East Building, September 19, 2010 through January 9, 2011. The artist’s delightfully bizarre heads have been frequently copied and imitated. The Four Seasons in One Head is one of fewer than 20 examples by the master in existence. The purchase, which was made possible by the Gallery’s Paul Mellon Fund, makes this work the only undisputed painting by Arcimboldo in a public collection in the United States. The painting was presented publicly for the first time in the 2007-2008 Arcimboldo retrospective held at the Louvre, Paris, and the Kunsthistorisches Museum, Vienna. “No one who has ever seen one of Arcimboldo’s amazing heads—in a museum, a surrealist spoof, or a commercial advertisem