Piero di Cosimo

(1462-1521)
The years of his creative work occurred in the transition from early to High Renaissance. A disciple of Cosimo Rosselli, Piero di Cosimo was accompanied by his teacher during a trip to Rome, where he was invited in 1482, along with Botticelli, Perugino, Domenico Ghirlandaio and murals for the Sistine Chapel. By 1486 Piero di Cosimo had already begun to work independently and has been commissioned by a Florentine merchant Francesco Pugliese to decorate a room in his palace paintings on mythological subjects. Two scenes of hunting (New York, . Metropolitan Museum of Art) and forest fires (Oxford, . Ashmolean Museum), . created in 1490-1500-ies, . are allegories of the ancient history of mankind, . transition from the Stone Age to the Iron, . from the primitive state of civilization, . creativity and creative work,
. Piero di Cosimo found inspiration in the works, with their inside power and a powerful naturalism, such as works by Signorelli and Pollaiolo.
When creating works on religious subjects Piero di Cosimo could not compete with Botticelli and Filippino Lippi: he had never been able to achieve the same graceful lines. In the painting, Venus and Mars (1490-ies, Berlin - Dahlem) Piero di Cosimo trying to imitate a famous product of Botticelli on the same subject, is much more refined and spiritualized.

Since about 1500, when Leonardo da Vinci returned to Florence after a seventeen-year absence, has become a tangible impact on his painting by Piero di Cosimo. In the last pictures appeared soft shadows and Sfumato (hazy, vague contours). He switched from a mixed technique - tempera and oil - to the work of only one oil. In this technique the artist created one of the most famous of his works - Portrait of Simonetta Vespucci (c.. 1490, Chantilly, Museum Conde).

The most famous was the picture of Piero di Cosimo mature period of art - Death of Procris (London, National Gallery). Here and the general mood, and the landscape with sinuous lines of the shore and the hill a second form of the body of a dying nymphs. Even in old age, when the forces began to leave the artist, he continued to work, and one of his later paintings - Perseus and Andromeda (c.. 1515-1520, Florence, Uffizi Gallery).