PIERO di COSIMO. — Painter, born in Florence in 1462, died perhaps in 1521. He was one of the most singular personalities of the late Tuscan Quattrocento, on account of the bizarre inventiveness of his imagination—also evident in the lively details that animate the backgrounds of sacred scenes—his subtle psychological insight, and his delicate sensitivity to problems of light: qualities that did not fail to influence the art of Florentine painters at the beginning of the sixteenth century.
He studied under Cosimo Rosselli, with whom he collaborated on the frescoes (Preaching on the Mount, Healing of the Leper) that the latter executed in the Sistine Chapel (1481). Returning to Florence’s cultured and refined milieu (he was a friend of Poliziano), he drew from it the elements for the extravagant 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 cassone panel with the Story of Jason, probably painted for the Albizzi-Tornabuoni wedding (1486). Dating from approximately the same period are: 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 by Animals (Oxford, Ashmolean Museum). These paintings may be identified as the panels that, according to Vasari, Francesco del Pugliese, patron of the Arte della Lana, had commissioned for the decoration of a room. Generally assigned to this same period, in which the influence of Signorelli, Filippino, and Botticelli replaced his initial Rossellian manner, are the panel with Venus and Adonis (or Venus and Mars, Berlin, Kaiser Friedrich Museum) and the presumed portrait of Simonetta Vespucci (Chantilly, Musée Condé). Douglas, however, assigns these to the early years of the sixteenth 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, which also reveals a direct knowledge of Flemish art. Connected with the Visitation are 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), in which P.’s chiaroscuro asserts itself with personal accents; and the two Bacchanals (Cambridge, Mass., Fogg Museum of Art; Worcester, Mass., Museum of Art), notable for their extravagant inventiveness and vibrant chiaroscuro.
lica, that of reporting on all the phases according to the documents collected in the best sources, and especially in the Archives of the Vatican. P. first published a series of monographs, which he subsequently gathered together and completed in his masterpiece La Russie et le Saint-Siège (5 vols., Paris 1896–1912), which for a long time will remain highly authoritative in this field. An excellent bibliophile and on good terms with the intellectuals of his
Leonardo’s influence, following his return to Florence in 1500, predominates in P.’s last paintings, especially in their treatment of chiaroscuro: the portraits of Giuliano di Sangallo and Francesco Giamberti (The Hague, Gallery), the Portrait of a Lady as Magdalene (Rome, Galleria Corsini); the two altarpieces, the moving Pietà of Perugia (Galleria nazionale dell’Umbria) and the Immaculate Conception of the Uffizi; as well as several mythological panels (Stories of Perseus and Stories of Prometheus in the Uffizi, in Munich, and in Strasbourg).