Piero di Cosimo

Piero di Cosimo (also known as Piero di Lorenzo) (January 2, 1462 [After much uncertainty, Piero's birth date was identified in the parish reconds of San Lorenzo by Dennis Geronimus, "The Birth Date, Early Life, and Career of Piero di Cosimo", "The Art Bulletin" 82.1 (March 2000:164-170); Geronimus was able to rely on the consistency of Lorenzo di Piero d'Antonio's reports of his children's ages at the "catasti" of 1469 and 1480, and a new database of Florentine baptismal records.] – April 12, 1522) was an Florentine painter.

Biography

The son of a Florentine goldsmith, Piero was born in Florence and apprenticed under the artist Cosimo Rosseli, from whom he derived his popular name and whom he assisted in the painting of the Sistine Chapel in 1481.

In the first phase of his career, Piero was influenced by the Netherlandish naturalism of Hugo van der Goes, whose "Portinari Triptych" (now at the Spedale of Santa Maria Novella in Florence) helped to lead the whole of Florentine painting into new channels. From him, most probably, Cosimo acquired the love of landscape and the intimate knowledge of the growth of flowers and of animal life. The manner of Hugo van der Goes is especially apparent in the "Adoration of the Shepherds", at the Berlin Museum.

He journeyed to Rome in 1482 with his master, Rosselli. He proves himself a true child of the Renaissance by depicting subjects of Classical mythology in such pictures as the "Venus, Mars, and Cupid", "The Death of Procris", the Perseus and Andromeda series, at the Uffizi, and many others. Inspired to the Vitruvius' account of the evolution of man, Piero's mythical compositions show the bizarre presence of hybrid forms of men and animals, or the man learning to use fire and tools. The multitudes of nudes in these works shows the influence of Luca Signorelli on Piero's art.

During his lifetime, Cosimo acquired a reputation for eccentricity—a reputation enhanced and exaggerated by later commentators. [Fermor, Sharon. "Piero di Cosimo: Fiction, Invention, and Fantasia. " Reaktion Books, 1997; pp. 7-9 and ff.] Reportedly, he was frightened of thunderstorms, and so pyrophobic that he rarely cooked his food; he lived largely on hard-boiled eggs, which he prepared 50 at a time while boiling glue for his artworks. He also resisted any cleaning of his studio, or trimming of the fruit trees of his orchard; he lived, wrote Vasari, "more like a beast than a man."

If, as Vasari asserts, he spent the last years of his life in gloomy retirement, the change was probably due to Savonarola, under whose influence he turned his attention once more to religious art. The death of his master Roselli may also have had an impact on Piero's morose elder years. The "Immaculate Conception with Saints", at the Uffizi, and the "Holy Family", at Dresden, best illustrate the religious fervour to which he was stimulated by the stern preacher.

With the exception of the landscape background in Rosselli's fresco of the "Sermon on the Mount", in the Sistine Chapel, we have no record of any fresco work from his brush. On the other hand, Piero enjoyed a great reputation as a portrait painter: the most famous of his work is in fact the portrait of a Florentine noblewoman, "Simonetta Vespucci", mistress of Giuliano de Medici. According to Vasari Piero excelled in designing pageants and triumphal processions for the pleasure-loving youths of Florence, and gives a vivid description of one such procession at the end of the carnival of 1507, which illustrated the triumph of death. Piero di Cosimo exercised considerable influence upon his fellow pupils Albertinelli and Bartolomeo della Porta, and was the master of Andrea del Sarto.

Giorgio Vasari includes a biography of Piero di Cosimo in his "Lives of the Artists".

Vasari gave Piero's date of death as 1521, and this date is still repeated by many sources, including the Encyclopedia Britannica. [cite encyclopedia | title = Piero Di Cosimo | encyclopedia = Encyclopædia Britannica | volume = | pages = | publisher = Encyclopædia Britannica Online |year= 2006 | id = | url = http://www.britannica.com/eb/article-9059972 | accessdate = 2006-10-28] However, contemporary documents reveal that he died of plague on April 12, 1522.cite journal | last = Waldman | first = Louis Alexander | authorlink = | coauthors = | title = Fact, Fiction, Hearsay: Notes on Vasari's Life of Piero di Cosimo | journal = The Art Bulletin | volume = 82 | issue = 1 | pages = 171–9 | publisher = |month= March | year= 2000 | url = http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m0422/is_1_82/ai_63910540| doi = 10.2307/3051370 ]

elected works

*"Portrait of Simonetta Vespucci" (c. 1480) Oil on panel, 57 x 42 cm, Musée Condé, Chantilly, France
*"Story of Jason" (1486) National Gallery of South Africa, Cape Town
*"The Visitation with Saints Nicholas and Anthony" (1489-1490) Wood, 184 x 189, National Gallery of Art, Washington
*"Venus, Mars, and Cupid" (1490) Wood panel, 72 x 182 cm, Staatliche Museen, Berlin
*"St. Mary Magdalene" (1490s) Tempera on panel, 72,5 x 76 cm, Galleria Nazionale d'Arte Antica, Rome
*"Mystical Marriage of St. Catherine of Alexandria" (1493) Oil on panel, Ospedale degli Innocenti, Florence
*"Allegory" (1500) Panel, National Gallery of Art, Washington
*"St. John the Evangelest" (1504-1506) oil on panel, Honolulu Academy of Arts
*"The Discovery of Honey" (c. 1505-1510) Oil on panel, Art Museum, Worcester, Massachusetts
*"Vulcan and Aeolus" (c. 1495-1500) Oil and tempera on canvas, National Gallery of Canada, Ottawa
*"The Finding of Vulcan on Lemnos" (1495-1505) Oil and tempera on canvas, Wadsworth Atheneum, Hartford, Connecticut
*"Perseus Frees Andromeda" c. 1515, Oil on wood, 70 x 123 cm, Uffizi, Florence
*"Giuliano da San Gallo" (c. 1500) Wood panel, 47,5 x 33,5 cm, Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam
*"The Death of Procris" (c. 1500) Oil on panel, 65 x 183 cm, National Gallery, London
*"Virgin with Child, St. John the Baptist and an Angel" (c. 1500-1510) Oil on panel, diameter 129 cm, São Paulo Art Museum, São Paulo
*"The Adoration of the Christ Child" (1505) Oil on wood, Galleria Borghese, Rome
*"Immaculate Conception with Saints" (c. 1505) Wood panel, 206 x 172 cm, Uffizi, Florence
*"The Misfortunes of Silenus" (c.1505-1510) Oil on panel, Fogg Art Museum, Cambridge, Massachusetts
*"The Myth of Prometheus" (1515) Oil on panel, Alte Pinakothek, Munich
*"The Building of a Palace" (1515-1520) oil on panel, 83 x 197 cm, Ringling Museum of Art, Sarasota, Florida
*"Madonna and Child with Saints and Angels" (c.1520) oil on wood panel, Philbrook Museum of Art, Tulsa, Oklahoma

References

*1911