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# Pareidolia from Arcimboldo's portrait of Rudolf II to the divination of Natasha Rostova
- URL: https://theparnassian.com/en/predlagaiu-vspomnit-dzhuzeppe-archimboldo-i-ego-portret-imperatora-rudolfa-ii-v-obraze-vertumna-po-sluchaiu-togo-chto-ia-prismotrelsia-k-babushkinomu-pledu/
- Published: 2022-11-22T09:11:02.000Z
- Updated: 2026-10-02T18:52:46.000Z
- Author: Alexandr Radayev
- Tags: Art, Books, Monarchies, Observations, Science

I propose we recall Giuseppe Arcimboldo and his portrait of Emperor Rudolf II as Vertumnus, on the occasion of my having taken a closer look at my grandmother's blanket. The phenomenon itself, in which people see the outlines of faces and creatures in the patterns, stains and details of objects that actually exist, is called pareidolia. I think everyone has at least once noticed the face of the Mother of God in motley curtains or a wicked grin in the folds of a pillow. And although pareidolia is regarded as a variety of sensory illusion and is often counted among the signs of psychosis, it is a rather natural and evolutionarily comprehensible phenomenon: the brain, after all, must be able to penetrate the camouflage of predators, of dangerous beasts lurking in thickets or half-darkness. On the other hand, pareidolia might also be said to include the fortune-telling of Natasha Rostova and Sonya with the aid of two mirrors and a candle, when Sonya imagined that she saw him, whether Prince Andrei or Nikolai, lying and smiling, and something blue or red. Later, when Natasha does at last stand at Prince Andrei's deathbed, she and Sonya will decide that this was precisely what had appeared to her in that fortune-telling; they will recall it once more and come to believe that what she had glimpsed then was not red but most certainly pink, like the blanket with which Prince Andrei was now covered