Piero di Cosimo

Piero di Cosimo (pyĕˈrō) (dē kôˈzēmō), 1462–1521, Florentine painter, whose name was Piero di Lorenzo. He adopted the name of his master, Cosimo Rosselli, whom he accompanied to Rome in 1482 and assisted in the decorating of the Sistine Chapel. His religious works have charm, but more important are his animated mythological scenes. Commissioned by the Florentine Francesco Pugliese, he painted many works depicting life in a primitive, mythological state. Among these pictures are the Hunting Scene and the Return from the Hunt (both: Metropolitan Mus.); Discovery of Honey (Worcester Mus.); Discovery of Wine (Fogg Mus., Cambridge); and Vulcan and Aeolus (National Art Gall. of Canada, Ottawa). Other well-known works by Piero are the Death of Procris (National Gall., London) and Simonetta Vespucci (Chantilly). The influence of Leonardo da Vinci is evident in some of his work, including the Portrait of a Woman with a Rabbit (Yale Univ.). Piero was also well known as a designer of popular theatricals and processions.

Bibliography

See biography by R. L. Douglas (1946); S. J. Freedberg, Painting of the High Renaissance (1961).

The following article is from The Great Soviet Encyclopedia (1979). It might be outdated or ideologically biased.

Piero di Cosimo

(real name Piero di Lorenzo). Born 1462 in Florence; died there 1521. Italian painter of the Florentine school.

Piero di Cosimo was influenced by Filippo Lippi, Leonardo da Vinci, and Hugo van der Goes. His works combine a sensitivity for the poetic beauty of the world with fantastic images and refined stylization that reflected the tastes of the court (Perseus and Andromeda, Uffizi Gallery, Florence). The artist’s faithful rendering of landscape and the mannered quality of his figures also characterize his portraits (Portrait of Simonetta Vespucci, Condé Museum, Chantilly).

REFERENCE

Bacci, M. Piero di Cosimo. Milan [1966].

Piero di Cosimo

1462--1521, Italian painter, noted for his mythological works

Collins Discovery Encyclopedia, 1st edition © HarperCollins Publishers 2005

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"Yet another book on Raphael or another book on Botticelli is nice, but perhaps not as needed as a really careful look at Piero di Cosimo."

The beauty and eccentricity of Piero: neglected Renaissance artist gets exhibit

The well-known picture of Piero di Cosimo as a Renaissance eccentric is therefore largely due to Vasari.

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It is with Piero di Cosimo il Vecchio, and his son, Lorenzo the Magnificent, that the use of diamond ring devices, both as personal and family symbols, is a visually documented occurrence.

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To quote a well-known example: Piero di Cosimo's two panels representing episodes of Bacchus's life (The Discovery of Honey, Worcester, MA, The Worcester Art Museum; and The Misfortunes of Silenus, Cambridge, MA, Fogg Art Museum) have been compellingly interpreted by Erwin Panofsky as visual commentaries on 'the early history of man'.

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The high point of the exhibition is provided by the Florentine Piero di Cosimo (1462-1521).

"Masterpieces of European Painting from the Toledo Museum of Art" at The Frick Collection, New York. October 29-January 5, 2003. (Exhibition note)

The Ashmolean gallery has been in its present ambience since 1908, augmented by private gifts, such as the incomparable collection of Northern European still-life paintings presented by the husband of Daisy Linda Ward in memory of his wife, herself an accomplished painter in that exacting genre, and by pictures such as Piero di Cosimo's Forest Fire, awarded by the National Art-Collections Fund.

Picture galleries outside London: The Ashmolean Museum, Oxford

1 A minor inconsistency is that the alphabetical index of painters contains the sequence Piero di Cosimo, Piero della Francesca and Pinturicchio [ILLUSTRATION FOR FIGURE 1 OMITTED], while the actual sequence in the collection Artists' Lives is Piero della Francesca, Piero di Cosimo and Pinturicchio.

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Anne Barriault's contribution on the life of Piero di Cosimo is appropriately placed within the section on Vasari and poetry, for she suggests that the biography, "a song of loss" (192), is constructed according to the conventions of the pastoral elegy, a common poetic form in the sixteenth century.

Reading Vasari

Piero di Cosimo: The Poetry of Painting in Renaissance Florence

Human nature: Stephen Campbell examines the unsettling qualities of Piero di Cosimo's paintings

But when his son Piero di Cosimo (1416-69) attempted to claim patronage rights to the main altar of the Cathedral in 1447, he was politely rebuffed.

Medici funerary monuments in the Duomo of Florence during the fourteenth century: a prologue to "the early Medici"