Nel segno di Arcimboldo: ritratti in veste onomastica del Barocco portoghese

Poetic portraits, mostly of women, are quite common in Portuguese poetry of the Baroque period. Some of these texts seem to transpose on the realm of literary creation the technique of the Italian painter Giuseppe Arcimboldo. Indeed, in them the different parts of the body are replaced by assorted items such as flowers, jewels or sweets. The paper addresses three poems that represent a special case within the mentioned category. In fact, these are texts in which the various anatomical details are replaced by onomastic elements: anthroponyms, titles of nobility or toponyms. Depending on the case, the juxtapositions and substitutions are justified by puns that, by relying on homonymy or phonetic affinity with commonly used words, refer to the shape, color or size of the related part of the body.