PIERO di COSIMO. - Painter, b. in Florence in 1462, d. perhaps in 1521. He is one of the most singular personalities of the late Tuscan Quattrocento, for the bizarre inspiration of his fantastic invention - evident also in the lively details that animate the backgrounds of his sacred scenes - for his subtle psychological penetration, for his delicate sensitivity to problems of light: qualities that were not without consequences in the art of Florentine painters of the early 16th century.
He had as his master Cosimo Rosselli, with whom he collaborated on the frescoes (Sermon on the Mount, Healing of the Leper) that the latter executed in the Sistine Chapel (1481). Having returned to the cultured and refined milieu of Florence (he was a friend of Poliziano), he drew from it the elements for the fanciful and idyllic reconstruction of that world of pagan myths that was to become one of the favorite themes of his painting. One of his first works seems to have been the panel of a nuptial cassone with the Story of Jason, probably painted for the Albizzi-Tornabuoni wedding (1486). To almost the same period belong: Battle of the Centaurs and Lapiths (London, National Gallery); Vulcan and Aeolus (Ottawa, Museum); Hylas and the Nymphs (New York, Duveen collection, formerly Benson), two Hunting Scenes (New York, Metropolitan Museum) and a Forest Populated with Animals (Oxford, Ashmolean Museum); paintings in which are to be recognized the panels commissioned, according to Vasari, by Francesco del Pugliese, patron of the Arte della Lana, for the decoration of a room. Always to this period, in which the influence of Signorelli, of Filippino and of Botticelli replaces the initial Rossellian attitude, are generally assigned the panel with Venus and Adonis (or Venus and Mars, Berlin, Kaiser Friederich Museum) and the supposed portrait of Simonetta Vespucci (Chantilly, Musée Condé) which Douglas instead assigns to the early years of the 16th century, considering them, together with the panel of the Death of Procris (London, National Gallery), contemporary with the Altarpiece of the Ospedale degli Innocenti. A fundamental work of his maturity is the Visitation (Washington, National Gallery), painted for the chapel of Gino Capponi in S. Spirito, in which a direct knowledge of Flemish art also appears. To the Visitation are linked: the Nativity (formerly Quincy Shaw), the Madonna and Child (Louvre), the tondo with the Holy Family (Dresden, Museum), the aforementioned Altarpiece of the Ospedale degli Innocenti (Madonna and Saints; ca. 1500), paintings in which P.'s chiaroscuro asserts itself with personal accents; as well as the two Bacchanals (Cambridge, Mass., Fogg Museum of Art; Worcester, Mass., Museum of Art) remarkable for their fanciful invention and vibrant chiaroscuro.
The influence of Leonardo, on his return to Florence in 1500, is preponderant, especially for the sense of chiaroscuro, in P.'s last paintings: the portraits of Giuliano di Sangallo and Francesco Giamberti (The Hague, Gallery), the Portrait of a Lady as Mary Magdalene (Rome, Galleria Corsini); the two altarpieces: the pathetic Pietà of Perugia (Galleria nazionale dell'Umbria) and the Immaculate Conception of the Uffizi; as well as some mythological panels (Stories of Perseus and Stories of Prometheus in the Uffizi, in Munich and in Strasbourg).