In the Spirit of Arcimboldo: Onomastic Portraits in Portuguese Baroque Poetry

Abstract

Poetic portraits—particularly of women—constitute a recurrent motif in Portuguese Baroque poetry. Certain texts within this corpus appear to transpose into the literary domain the compositional technique associated with the Italian painter Giuseppe Arcimboldo. In these instances, the human body is metaphorically reconstructed through the substitution of its various parts with heterogeneous elements such as flowers, jewels, or confections. This paper examines three poems that constitute a distinctive subcategory within this tradition. Uniquely, these texts replace anatomical features not with tangible objects, but with onomastic elements—specifically anthroponyms, noble titles, and toponyms. The resultant juxtapositions and substitutions are frequently underpinned by wordplay, drawing on homonymy or phonetic resemblance to quotidian vocabulary to evoke the form, color, or dimension of the corresponding bodily features.