Piero di Cosimo (b ?Florence, ?1461; d Florence, ?1521). Florentine painter, a pupil of Cosimo Rosselli, whose Christian name he adopted as a patronym. There are no signed, documented, or dated works by him, and reconstruction of his oeuvre depends on the account given in Vasari's Lives. It is one of Vasari's most entertaining biographies, for he portrays Piero as a highly eccentric character who lived on hard-boiled eggs, ‘which he cooked while he was boiling his glue, to save the firing’. The paintings for which he is best known are appropriately idiosyncratic—fanciful mythological inventions, inhabited by fauns, centaurs, and primitive men. There is sometimes a spirit of low comedy about these delightful works, but in the so-called Death of Procris (NG, London) he created a poignant scene of the utmost pathos and tenderness. He was a wonderful painter of animals and the dog in this picture, depicted with a mournful dignity, is one of his most memorable creations. Piero also painted portraits, the finest of which is that of Simonetta Vespucci (Musée Condé, Chantilly), in which she is depicted as Cleopatra with the asp around her neck. His religious works are somewhat more conventional, although still distinctive, and Frederick Hartt (A History of Italian Renaissance Art, 1970) has written that ‘His whimsical Madonnas, Holy Families, and Adorations provide a welcome relief from the wholesale imitation of Raphael in early Cinquecento Florence.’ One of his outstanding religious works is the Immaculate Conception (Uffizi, Florence), which seems to have been the compositional model for the Madonna of the Harpies by his pupil Andrea del Sarto.

Piero di Cosimo (>1461?–1521?). Florentine painter, a pupil of Cosimo Rosselli, whose Christian name he adopted as a patronym. There are no signed, documented, or dated works by him, and reconstruction of his oeuvre depends on the account given in Vasari's Lives. It is one of Vasari's most entertaining biographies, for he portrays Piero as a highly eccentric character who lived on hard-boiled eggs, ‘which he cooked while he was boiling his glue, to save the firing’. The paintings for which he is best known are appropriately idiosyncratic—fanciful mythological inventions, inhabited by fauns, centaurs, and primitive men. There is sometimes a spirit of low comedy about these delightful works, but in the so-called Death of Procris (NG, London) he created a poignant scene of the utmost pathos and tenderness. He was a wonderful painter of animals and the dog in this picture, depicted with a mournful dignity, is one of his most memorable creations. Piero also painted portraits, the finest of which is that of Simonetta Vespucci (Musée Condé, Chantilly), in which she is depicted as Cleopatra with the asp around her neck. His religious works are somewhat more conventional, although still distinctive, and Frederick Hartt (A History of Italian Renaissance Art, 1970) has written that ‘His whimsical Madonnas, Holy Families, and Adorations provide a welcome relief from the wholesale imitation of Raphael in early Cinquecento Florence.’ One of his outstanding religious works is the Immaculate Conception (Uffizi, Florence), which seems to have been the compositional model for the Madonna of the Harpies by his pupil Andrea del Sarto.

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

Piero di Cosimo , 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 the life of primitive man. 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.).

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