Piero di Cosimo (1462–1521)

Italian painter. Born in Florence, where he lived his entire life, he trained in the workshop of Cosimo Rosselli, whose name he took as his own (his given name was Piero di Lorenzo). In 1482 Cosimo traveled to Rome with Rosselli to assist in the painting of the Sistine Chapel. There Cosimo painted a landscape background for Rosselli's fresco of The Sermon on the Mount.

Cosimo specialized in painting scenes from classical mythology, such as The Death of Procris. His vivid imagination inspired the creation of original figures, half human and half animal, set in a naturalistic landscape and serving as symbolic representations of ideas and emotions. Inspired by the ancient Roman writer Vitruvius, Cosimo painted imaginary scenes from a time when the human race led a simpler existence; these works include Hunting Scene, Return from the Hunt, Discovery of Honey, and Discovery of Wine. Such works, which were painted outside the tradition of religious painting, came under official disapproval during the reign of the fanatic Dominican monk Girolamo Savonarola in Florence. Cosimo reacted by taking up Christian subjects, including The Immaculate Conception and The Holy Family. Cosimo also was well known in Florence as a portrait painter, with his most famous work in this vein being the Portrait of Simionetta Vespucci, a picture of the mistress of Giuliano de' Medici. He also trained many of the best Florentine artists of his time, including Andrea del Sartro.

See Also: Florence; Sartro, Andrea del; Savonarola, Girolamo