Arcimboldi

The Italian modernist architect counted the Arcimboldi Opera Theater in Milan, the Belém Cultural Center in Lisbon and Barcelona’s Olympic Stadium among his creations, which managed to be contemporary while paying tribute to the classical past.

Seated in her dressing room in the Teatro Arcimboldi here, Ms. Guillem burst out laughing.

“True Policeman” contains a section in the same style, purporting to be a bibliography and summary of the works of a French novelist, J. M. G. Arcimboldi, who in turn is a variant on Benno Archimboldi, the fictitious German novelist Mr. Bolaño created in “2666” to link the first and last sections of that novel.

Another Arcimboldi work is described as “consisting of 99 apparently unrelated two-page dialogues” in which the characters “are fleeing, or chasing each other, or one is chasing and the other is hiding” — a fair description of both “2666” and its brilliant predecessor, “The Savage Detectives.”

Along with him flourished Giuseppe Arcimboldi, selected for his skill in portrait, as the court-painter of Maximilian II., in which office he continued also under the emperor Rodolph.