Piero di Cosimo
Biography of Italian Renaissance Painter.
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Piero di Cosimo
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Piero di Cosimo (1462-1522)Contents • Biography |
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One of the most innovative Old Masters, the Florentine painter Piero di Cosimo is best known for his unusually fanciful Early Renaissance painting, a late example of which is his late mythological canvas entitled Perseus Liberating Andromeda (1515, Uffizi, Florence). Another of his extraordinary contributions to Renaissance art, is his canine masterpiece Death of Procris (c.1500, National Gallery, London). He also produced numerous conventional examples of altarpiece art, as well as decorative panels for furniture. In addition, he painted some memorable Renaissance portraits, such as the Portrait of Simonetta Vespucci (1485-90, Musee Conde, Chantilly). His unusual style of painting was merely part of an eccentric, bohemian lifestyle, which included a repetitive diet of hard-boiled eggs. One of the most creative of second generation artists, who surfaced during the Italian Renaissance, Piero di Cosimo was also a student of the Netherlandish Renaissance, and his imaginative works are part of the tradition of fantasy exemplified by such painters as Hieronymus Bosch (1450-1516), Giorgione (1477-1510), Lorenzo Lotto (1480-1556), and Hans Baldung Grien (1484-1545). |
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According to his father's income tax return of 1480, Piero di Lorenzo, known as Piero di Cosimo (1461/62-1522), was in the bottega of Cosimo Rosselli (1439-1507), a Florentine painter of considerable popularity and reputation during the second half of the quattrocento. From Rosselli, Piero also took the name "di Cosimo," indicating a particular affection for his teacher. Since Piero was not salaried in 1480, it is likely that he had already achieved a degree of independence in the workshop by this time, presumably after a period of training. Piero had a career of over forty years as a practicing painter, but his works are poorly documented and the facts surrounding his life are fragmentary and uninformative. He may have been in Rome in 1481 and 1482 with Cosimo Rosselli, who, as we have seen, was one of the masters active on the fresco painting in the Sistine Chapel. Piero di Cosimo is listed in the records as head of the family with his brothers in 1498, and sometime between 1503 and 1505 he was inscribed in the Confraternity of St. Luke. He was among the artists and artisans who formed the commission to evaluate the various proposed sites for the placement of Michelangelo's marble sculpture David (1501-4), and in the same year, 1504, he was entered in the painters' guild. In 1506 he was paid for an oil painting of a Madonna (not identified), in 1507 for festival decorations, and in 1510 he worked for Filippo Strozzi. Five years later he produced decorations for the triumphal entry of Pope Leo X into Florence. From what is known, then, Piero di Cosimo appears to have spent almost his entire artistic life involved in the Renaissance in Florence, or nearby. If the documents are practically of no help in establishing Piero's career and an acceptable chronology, the account given by Giorgio Vasari (1511-74) is among that author's most sympathetic biographies. Vasari, much taken with Piero's art, even owned a painting by the master. However helpful and rich Vasari's version of his life may be, with its heavy emphasis on Piero's eccentricities, it cannot be used as a substitute for contemporary documentation. Piero, some critics have suggested, moved from the orbit of Cosimo Rosselli to further training elsewhere. He seems at least to have made a careful study of Andrea del Verrocchio (1435-88), Filippino Lippi (1457-1504), and Domenico Ghirlandaio (1449-94). |
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Visitation with Sts. Nicholas and Anthony Abbot The altarpiece of the Visitation with Sts. Nicholas and Anthony Abbot (National Gallery of Art, Washington DC) can be dated to a period around 1489 to 1490, when the frame was provided. Made for the Capponi family chapel in Santo Spirito, this painting must be the starting point for any stylistic discussion of Piero's art. No doubt Piero painted many works before this one, but none is documented except for a signed and dated painting of the Immaculate Conception still in San Francesco in Fiesole (1480), the inscription of which is not contemporary with the picture; it does betray a reliance upon Cosimo Rosselli. In the background of the Visitation are two subthemes: the Adoration of the Child on the left and the Massacre of the Innocents on the right; on the facade of a distant church is represented still another subject, the Annunciation. By the time Piero painted this altarpiece he was obviously a fully developed and stylistically independent artist, and whatever he may have absorbed from his teacher or teachers is well integrated into his art. The carefully centralized, decisively plotted composition combines the meeting of Mary and Elizabeth with patron saints of the Capponi family in the same space. The saints occupy the bottom half of the panel and are closer to the spectator, with the Christological elements set in the upper zone, within a bright, high sky and diversified landscape. The buildings on both sides of the middle ground create a visual funnel leading to the infinite distance. On the raised stage-like platform on the right beside a withering tree unfolds the Massacre and behind it is a Romanesque city. Style of Painting Influenced by Flemish Art Piero's figural style here reflects a sculpturesque regard for massive draperies, robust proportions, vast expressive hands, and a dedication to figural volume, all ingredients he shares with monumental painters of the second generation. Since his life falls late in the period and since he presumably was active into the 1520s, Piero's art frequently overlapped the careers of the third generation painters, among them his own gifted pupils, Andrea del Sarto (1486-1530) and probably Fra Bartolommeo (1472-1517), whom he outlived. The intensified reality that is found in Piero's Renaissance paintings, and the range of his fantasy, so much admired by Vasari, are seen in the Visitation and in part can be attributed to an acquaintance with Flemish painting. A realism approaching surrealism is manifested here, for example in the treatment of the balls, attributes of St. Nicholas, on one of which the chapel's space is reflected, or in the precariously balanced account book, or in the bell and crutch of St. Anthony. The effects are achieved partly due to Piero's strong preference for oil painting over tempera, a preference that permitted trompe l'oeil qualities already favoured by some Italian artists, whose origins are linked to currents found in the Northern Renaissance. Piero seeks to build his forms with tonal contrasts. The profile of the Madonna against a bright sky has a thin edge of dark shadow that softens the outline. The modelling within the face is understated, with only the features drawn on a flattened plane. The juxtaposition of light and dark to heighten the distinction between forms is also found in other areas, including the cliff on the left against the pale sky. The colour is bright, intense, unpredictable, while the viscous oil paint is often applied boldly, as in the beards and hair of the seated saints, creating brilliantly executed passages. Another work that can be confidently considered to be by Piero di Cosimo is the Venus, Mars, and Cupid (1490, Gemaldegalerie, Staatliche Museen zu Berlin), once owned by Vasari himself and enthusiastically described by him as follows:
Piero's adherence to a monumental language is revealed in the treatment of the female nude, especially in the robust putti located in the middle distance, posed easily and modelled with convincing volume. He was particularly conscious of a series of contrasts within this winning panel: the two pigeons below, the reclining male and female figures, the foreground dominated by flesh and the landscape background, the playing of dark against light tones, where silhouettes are heightened by light areas added to the edges as seen on the lower border of the Venus or the arms of Mars. Piero also sets lighter forms against dark, as in the branches behind the head of Venus, where the internal modeling is kept to a minimum. Typically, he is deeply aware of the interaction between the basic elements of landscape elements and his narrative, so that figures or groups are relegated to specific pictorial areas with the background landscape painting echoing their arrangements, a usage also found in Leonardo and seen more pointedly in Piero's own Incarnation of Christ with Saints (1505, Uffizi Gallery, Florence). Incarnation of Christ with Saints The three saints on either side in the Incarnation are set in front of cliffs which define their place in the composition, while above them the Adoration of the Child and the Flight into Egypt are represented in another scale. Mary, standing on an imitation marble altar which contains a bas-relief of the Annunciation, is isolated from the other figures by having only pale sky as a background with the white dove representing the Holy Spirit above, on axis. The clouds on either side echo the divisions of the groups as they continue the play of lights against darks. The altarpiece, mentioned by Vasari as in a chapel of the Santissima Annunziata, has been dated to about 1505, when Leonardo da Vinci (1452-1519) was back in Florence painting the Battle of Anghiari, since there are Leonardo-esque features such as the handling of St. John the Evangelist on the extreme left, where the contours and the surface are somewhat softened. Piero di Cosimo is also noted for his portrait art. The portraits of Giuliano da San Gallo (1500, Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam) and Simonetta Vespucci (1485-90, Musee Conde, Chantilly) probably antedate the altarpiece. The same attention to detail in the portrait of Giuliano, primarily an architect, which includes calipers and a feather pen, instruments of his activity, and the more concentrated modelling in the face connect it with the head of St. Jerome in the Incarnation. The sitter appears to be about sixty years of age, although one must be cautious in estimating the age of a portrait subject. We must assume that it was sometimes the desire of the patron to be flattered by being depicted as more youthful than he was, and that painters often complied. Consequently, the apparent age of a subject is rarely a decisive factor for precisely dating a picture. Mythological and History Paintings An important group of panel paintings and canvases associated with Piero illustrates mythological subjects and the early history of man. None of the pictures of this type is documented or dated, but very likely they were part of the furniture decorations in private rooms, and their attribution to Piero is difficult to question. One example is the Vulcan and Aeolus (National Gallery, Ottawa) for which a date in the 1490s is the most reasonable, before Leonardo's return to Florence. The subject matter has been related to the earliest manufacture of tools and buildings, and Piero shows an idyllic scene in which the wild animals and fowl appear unfrightened by the presence of man. The section showing the construction of the first house at the upper right, contrasted to the huts on the opposite side, is particularly effective. The composition appears to be disorganized and haphazardly constructed, as if reflecting the condition of the society represented. On the other hand, the figures are rendered with robust proportions, strong volumetric modeling, and convincing poses. A brilliant example of his late mythological painting is the Perseus Liberating Andromeda (1515, Uffizi, Florence). A gigantic water monster, worthy of Leonardo, dominates the center of this smallish picture. It edges toward the robust but defenseless Andromeda, bound to a tree stump, who would surely have been sacrificed had not the hero, Perseus, son of Zeus, intervened. Set in a highly inventive landscape, shaped like a flattened "V", groups of figures in the foreground witness and lament the expected sacrifice. To make the drama more poignant, Piero shows Perseus, wearing his winged sandals, twice: first, flying into the scene, and second, atop the beast about to deliver the coup de grace, saving the woman who will become his bride. In pictures such as these, Piero's appeal rests on the strength of his drawing, the power of his forms, and the intricacy of the landscape. Furthermore, the depth of his imagination and a facility for understanding the human condition are apparent in the interaction of his figures, both physically and psychologically. Piero was one of the first Florentines to have comprehended his older and remarkable contemporary, Leonardo da Vinci. At the same time, Piero's art quite effectively bridges the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries as well as the second and third generations. As for subject matter, Piero not only produced conventional religious art (mostly altarpieces) and secular portrait paintings, but was also a remarkable if eccentric interpreter of more esoteric and arcane themes. His pupils included the High Renaissance painter Andrea del Sarto (1486-1530) and the Mannerist Jacopo Pontormo (1494-1556). Contemporaries of Piero di Cosimo Andrea Mantegna (1431-1506) and Antonio Pollaiuolo (1432-98) left their distinctive marks far and wide with engravings: a new genre of portable objects produced in multiples they were treasured all over Italy and beyond. Giovanni Bellini (1430-1516) had a long highly productive artistic career that covered over sixty years. He was so open to change even as an elderly man that his late works are worthy equivalents of those by his finest followers, the most prestigious third generation artists: Giorgione (1477-1510), Sebastiano del Piombo (1485-1547) and Titian (c.1485/8-1576). While Antonello da Messina (1430-1479) was solidly anchored in his own time frame, his achievements were such that he had a pan-Italian career and actually exerted a powerful impact on Giovanni Bellini and the entire school of Venetian painting. Unlike Antonello, Melozzo da Forli (1438-94) worked mainly in fresco, though his fresco has survived mainly in fragmentary form. We know that his works affected those artists actively painting the side walls of the Sistine Chapel but Melozzo da Forli's career and impact remains understudied. Antonio del Pollaiuolo had only a local (i.e. Florentine) reputation as a painter and was somewhat overshadowed in this regard by his brother Piero but his bronze sculpture and especially his two papal tombs in Rome had a lasting impact upon later artists, including Michelangelo (1475-1564). Domenico Ghirlandaio and Luca Signorelli (1450-1523), as far as is known, were exclusively painters. Domenico had an active bottega of his own, mainly composed of family members. Michelangelo was among his outside pupils, though he left abruptly before he finished the "course". Signorelli, a complicated intellect, a rare but eccentric inventor as well as an unconventional colourist, had a long career that seems to become provincial after his unrivaled achievements in Orvieto, which must be considered as among the finest pictorial statements of the Early Renaissance. He, too, left an impression upon Michelangelo, especially upon his Genesis Frescoes in the Sistine Chapel. Leonardo da Vinci is not usually studied in his own chronological generation but in the next one simply because of the range of his insights and the precocity of his mind. Yet, as has been shown, his innovations are inevitably stamped by his own moment. The intensity with which he studied flowers, for example, is matched by Botticelli (1445-1510) who portrayed infinite varieties in his painting La Primavera (c.1482-3, Uffizi). Among the lyric painters of this generation, Perugino (1450-1523) and Pinturicchio (1454-1513) from Umbria were considered the finest, having acquired a broad following from Rome all the way to Milan and Venice. They were outstanding decorators, especially Pinturicchio who painted vast papal rooms in the Vatican Palace, only to be eclipsed by another pupil of Perugino's from Umbria, Raphael (1483-1520) of Urbino. The impressive if localized art which matured in Ferrara was unlike the Umbrian style of Perugino. Although less influential in the rest of Italy, its imagery and expressive power remain highly rewarding visually and intellectually, especially to the modern spectator. Among the Venetians who tended toward a more lyric language, Gentile Bellini (c.1429-1507) and Vittore Carpaccio (c.1465-1525/6) were inclined to a conservative spirit. Their art pointed less specifically to the new conquests that marked the paintings of Giorgione and the young Titian than did that of Giovanni Bellini. Paintings by Piero di Cosimo can be seen in some of the best art museums in the world. REFERENCES |
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