**PIERO di COSIMO** – Painter, born in Florence in 1462, died perhaps in 1521. He is one of the most singular figures of the late 15th-century Tuscan school, for his bizarre flights of fantasy—evident even in the lively details that animate the backgrounds of sacred scenes—for his subtle psychological penetration, and for his delicate sensitivity to problems of light: qualities that were not without consequence for the art of Florentine painters at the beginning of the 16th century.
His master was Cosimo Rosselli, with whom he collaborated on the frescoes (*Sermon on the Mount, Healing of the Leper*) that Rosselli executed in the Sistine Chapel (1481). Returning to the cultured and refined environment 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 which was to become one of the favorite themes of his painting. One of his earliest works seems to have been the panel of a nuptial cassone with the *Story of Jason*, painted probably for the Albizzi-Tornabuoni wedding (1486). Almost contemporary are: *Battle of the Centaurs and the Lapiths* (London, National Gallery); *Vulcan and Aeolus* (Ottawa, Museum); *Ille and the Nymphs* (New York, Duveen collection, formerly Benson), two *Hunting Scenes* (New York, Metropolitan Museum) and a *Festa protestata populated by animals* (Oxford, Ashmolean Museum); paintings in which one might recognize the panels commissioned, according to Vasari, by Francesco del Pugliese, patron of the Arte della Lana, for the decoration of a room. Also generally assigned to this period, in which the influence of Signorelli, Filippino, and Botticelli replaced the initial Rossellian approach, are the panel with *Venus and Adonis* (or *Venus and Mars*, Berlin, Kaiser Friedrich Museum) and the supporting portrait of *Simonetta Vespucci* (Chantilly, Musée Condé), which Douglas assigns instead to the early years of the 16th century, considering them, along 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 there also appears a direct knowledge of Flemish art. 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*, c. 1500), paintings in which Piero’s chiaroscuro asserts itself with personal accents; as well as the two *Bacchanals* (Cambridge, Mass., Foggy Museum of Art; Worcester, Mass., Museum of Art) notable for their fanciful invention and vibrant chiaroscuro.
The influence of Leonardo, who returned to Florence in 1500, is predominant, especially in the sense of chiaroscuro, in Piero’s last paintings: the portraits of *Giuliano di Sangallo* and *Francesco Giambetti* (The Hague, Gallery); the *Portrait of a Lady as Magdalene* (Rome, Corsini Gallery); 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, Munich, and Strasbourg).