ROSSELLI, COSIMO. - Painter b. in Florence in 1439, d. there on 7 Jan. 1507. Having begun, as a youth, his artistic education in the workshop of Neri di Bicci, he remained always bound to the teachings of his mediocre master, despite the succession of influences of other artists such as Gozzoli, Pollaiuolo, Perugino and, in his last years, Filippino Lippi.
The lack of elegance in the figures, of unity and coherence in the compositions, of precision in the drawing of the first works, still under the direct impression of Neri di Bicci (Annunciation of the Louvre, 1473; St. Barbara of the Uffizi; Stories of St. Philip Benizi in the cloister of the Annunziata in Florence, 1475), returns in the Crossing of the Red Sea and in the Adoration of the Golden Calf, frescoes of the Sistine Chapel (1481-82), while in the Sermon on the Mount (ibid.), the landscape, through the influence of the artists working near him, has a greater breadth and, through the intervention of his pupil Piero di Cosimo, some figures move in it with an elegant rhythm of an almost Botticellian flavor. But in the Last Supper the recollection of Andrea del Castagno and of Ghirlandaio, or the proximity of Perugino, are not enough to sustain him, to give unity and coherence to the scene.
Nevertheless the Roman lesson was not in vain: in the works that follow, upon his return to Florence, there is a greater solidity, a more correct drawing, a notable search for individuation. Indeed, from this period are his best portraits, and in the paintings executed in S. Ambrogio in Florence (1488-1501), the fresco of the Procession of the Sacrament and the Madonna in Glory, a certain unity of style and dignity in the representation is attained, which already orients itself toward the broader and more monumental forms, of a sixteenth-century character, proper to the Coronation of Mary (1505) in S. Maria Maddalena de' Pazzi, also in Florence. Other works are found in the Uffizi as well as in the various Italian and foreign museums.