| Biography of old oil painting master Piero di Cosimo what we can copy |
|
Piero di Cosimo
Italian High Renaissance artist
born 1462 - died 1521
Teacher of:
Andrea del Sarto (1486-1530).
PIERO DI COSIMO (1462-1521), the name by
which the Florentine painter Pietro di
Lorenzo is generally known. Piero di Cosimo was born in
Florence about 1462, and worked in the
bottega of Cosimo Rosselli [1439-1507] (from
whom Piero di Cosimo derived his popular name). |
|
Other influences that can be
traced in his work are those of Filippino
Lippi [c.1457-1504], Luca Signorelli
[c.1441-1523], and Leonardo da Vinci
[1452-1519], and, as has been recently
suggested by Professor R. Muther, that Hugo
van der Goes [c.1440-1482], whose Portinari
altar-piece (now at the Spedale of S. Maria
Novella in Florence) helped to lead the
whole of Florentine painting into new
channels. From him, most probably, Piero di
Cosimo acquired the love of landscape and the
intimate knowledge of the growth of flowers
and of animal life. The influence of Hugo
van der Goes is especially apparent in the
Adoration of the Shepherds, at the Berlin
Museum. Piero di Cosimo had the gift of a fertile
fantastic imagination, which, as a result of
a journey to Rome in 1482 with his master,
Rosselli, became directed towards the myths
of classic antiquity. Piero di Cosimo proves himself a
true child of the Renaissance in such
pictures as the Death of Procris, at the
National Gallery, the Mars and Venus, at the
Berlin Gallery, the Perseus and Andromeda
series, at the Uffizi in Florence, and the
Hylas and the Nymphs belonging to Mr Benson.
If, as we are told by Vasari [1511-1574],
Piero di Cosimo spent the last yeats of his life in gloomy
retirement, the change was probably due to
[Girolamo] Savonarola [1452-1498], under
whose influence Piero di Cosimo turned his attention once
more to religious art. The Immaculate
Conception, at the Uffizi, and the Holy
Family, at Dresden, best illustrate the
religious fervour to which Piero di Cosimo was stimulated
by the stern preacher. |
|
With the exception of the landscape
background in Rosselli's fresco of the
Sermon on the Mount, in the Sistine Chapel,
we have no record of any fresco work from
his brush. On the other hand, Piero di
Cosimo enjoyed a
great reputation as a portrait painter,
though the only known examples that can be
definitely ascribed to him are the portrait
of a warrior, at the National Gallery, (No.
895), the so-called Bella Simonetta, at
Chantilly, the portraits of Giuliano di San
Gallo and his father, at the Hague, and a
head of a youth, at Duiwich. |
|
|
Vasari relates that Piero excelled in
designing pageants and triumphal processions
for the pleasure-loving youths of Florence,
and gives a vivid description of one such
procession at the end of the carnival of
1507, which illustrated the triumph of
death. Piero di Cosimo exercised
considerable influence upon his fellow
pupils Albertinelli [1474-1515] and
Bartolommeo della Porta [1472-1517] and was
the master of
Andrea del Sarto [1486-1530].
Examples of his work are also to be found at
the Louvre in Paris, the Harrach and
Liechtenstein collections in Vienna, the
Borghese Gallery in Rome, the Spedale degli
Innocenti in Florence, and in the
collections of Mr John Burke and Colonel
Cornwallis West in London. A Magdalen from
his brush was added to the National Gallery
of Rome in 1907. |
|
For FULL catalogue pls click "Catalogue" at the TOP of the page.
|
|