ROSSELLI, COSIMO. – Painter, born in Florence in 1439, died there on 7 January 1507. Having begun his artistic education as a young man in the workshop of Neri di Bicci, he always remained attached to the teachings of his mediocre master, despite the successive influences of other artists such as Gozzoli, Pollaio, Perugino and, in his final period, Filippino Lippi.
The lack of elegance in the figures, of unity and coherence in the compositions, and of precision in the drawing of his early works, still under the direct influence of Neri di Bicci (Annunciazione in the Louvre, 1473; S. Barbara in the Uffizi; Storie di s. Filippo Benazzi in the cloister of the Annunziata in Florence, 1475), recurs in the Passaggio del Mar Rosso and the Adorazione del vitello d'oro, frescoes in the Sistine Chapel (1481–82), whereas in the Discorso della Montagna (there), the landscape, through the influence of the artists working near him, has greater breadth and, through the intervention of his pupil Piero di Cosimo, some of the figures move with an elegant rhythm of an almost Botticellian character. But in the Ultima Cena, the memory of Andrea del Castagno and Ghirlandaio, or the proximity of Perugino, is not enough to give unity and coherence to the scene.
Nevertheless, the Roman lesson was not fruitless: in the works that followed, after his return to Florence, there is greater solidity, more correct drawing, and a notable search for individuality. His finest portraits indeed belong to this period, and in the paintings executed in S. Ambrogio in Florence (1488–1501), the fresco of the Processione del Sacramento and the Madonna in gloria, a certain unity of style and dignity in the representation is achieved, already tending toward the broader and more monumental forms, of sixteenth-century character, proper to the Incoronazione di Maria (1505) in S. Maria Maddalena de' Pazzi, also in Florence. Other works are found in the Uffizi as well as in various Italian and foreign museums.