04/06/2025
Perhaps the most quirky painter of the Florentine renaissance...
Piero di Lorenzo di Piero d’Antonio was born January 2, 1462, most likely in Florence, to a goldsmith father. Little is known about his life, and most of his artwork remains undocumented.
Giorgio Vasari paints a colourful picture of the artist, though many of his anecdotes are likely fantastical exaggerations. It is known that Piero studied under Cosimo Rosselli, from whom he took his surname. In fact, he assisted Rosselli in the painting of the Sistine Chapel in 1481. Throughout his life, Piero di Cosimo appears to have been a prominent, and sought-after, artist in Florence, fulfilling contracts for the Strozzi, Pugliese, and Vespucci families.
Piero was known for his professionalism, always completing his commissions. Vasari, however, describes Piero as a somewhat crazy recluse. He acquired a reputation for eccentricity; reportedly, he was frightened of thunderstorms, and so pyrophobic that he rarely cooked his food. He lived largely on hard-boiled eggs, which he prepared 50 at a time while boiling glue for his artworks. He also resisted any cleaning of his studio, or trimming of the fruit trees of his orchard; he lived, wrote Giorgio Vasari, "more like a beast than a man."
Piero di Cosimo died in 1522, at the age of 60, seemingly of the plague.
Pictured here is one of a pair of Tritons and Nereids, both long and thin, that may have been executed around 1505 or 1507.
The pair depict nereids (sea nymphs), satyrs, and tritons—classical creatures with the upper bodies of men, the tails of a fish or dolphin, and, occasionally, horse legs. The two works are more of a frieze of characters than a true narrative.
Tritons and Nereids (1500), oil on panel, 37 x158 cm, Milano, Altomani collection
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Piero_di_Cosimo
