David Brown, curator, Italian and Spanish paintings, National Gallery of Art, and Sylvia Ferino-Pagden, curator, Italian Renaissance painting, Kunsthistorisches Museum, Vienna. Sixteen examples of the composite heads painted by the Italian Renaissance master Giuseppe Arcimboldo, bizarre but with scientifically accurate components, are on view together for the first time in the United States at the National Gallery of Art, Washington. On the occasion of the exhibition Arcimboldo, 1526-1593: Nature and Fantasy, David Brown and Sylvia Ferino-Pagden unravel the mysteries behind his work.