Date: 1498-1510
Artist: Piero Di Cosimo
Location: Galleria degli Uffizi, Florence
Medium: Oil on Panel
Dimensions: 206 cm * 172 cm
Matthew 1:18 “This is how Jesus was born. His mother Mary was engaged to be married to Joseph. But before the marriage took place, While she was still a virgin, she became pregnant through the power of the Holy Spirit.” (5)
Piero Di Cosimo’s life is one of mystery with most of what is known about him coming from the Giorgio Vasari’s biography of his life, which some claim is untrustworthy. That being said some fact are known about Cosimo such as his birth date and the general events of his life. Cosimo was born to Lorenzo di Piero d’Antonio, a blacksmith, and Mona Alessandra in Florence on January 2, 1462.
The earliest record of Cosimo’s career shows him apprenticing under Cosimo Rosselli, from who he derived his surname of Cosimo. Another early record states that by the age of twenty, Cosimo had become a member of the “Compagnia di S. Luca, the painters’ confraternity in Florence” (3). While apprenticing under Rosselli, Cosimo assisted in the painting of the Sistine chapel in 1481, possibly painting the landscape for the sermon on the mount.
In His early career, Piero displayed an interest landscape and animal life as the subjects of his paintings, which was inspired by the naturalism of Hugo van der Goes. After accompanying Rosselli to Rome, Cosimo also began to develop a taste for classical mythology which can be seen in his famous painting, Death of Procis, which depicts a satyr mourning over a nymph with a dog observing, also displays his love of animals as subjects. When Savonarola came to power in Florence, Cosimo converted the subject matter of his paintings to religious themes, in an effort to participate in the religious fervor that had gripped Florence. This painting, The Incarnation of Jesus, is an example of this return to religious themes in the life of Cosimo, and yet it still displays Cosimo‘s love of landscape. On top of these religious and mythological themes, Cosimo is noted as being an important portrait painter with his most famous portrait being of the Florentine noblewoman, Simotetta Vespucci.
In the spirit of the Renaissance Cosimo practiced a variety of artistic mediums other than painting Cosimo was also known in Florence as a prominent designer of processions and pageants. New archival research has found that Cosimo could have practiced manuscript illumination (3). In his life Cosimo had several students including Andrea Del Sarto and Jacopo Pontormo, both influential Italian mannerists.
Concerning Cosimo’s character and personal life, there is much debate. Giorgio Vasari says much about Cosimo in his “Lives,” painting him as highly eccentric, eating massive quantities of hard boiled eggs and being so pyrophobic that he rarely cooked his food. However, according to a criticism by Louis Waldamn, “Vasari emphasized Piero's supposed eccentricities--the solitude, squalor, and impracticality of his life--as a negative foil for the more "normative" character and behavior of other artists portrayed in the Lives, and as an exemplar of the kind of life he felt artists should avoid” (2). Vasari also accused Cosimo of being antisocial which Waldman again rejects by saying about certain documents that “they afford of Piero di Cosimo as a social being, through his relations with fellow artists--such as Jacopo da Pontormo, Lorenzo di Credi, and Nicola di Giovanni Caprini--and with relatives, neighbors, and religious confraternities” (2)
Vasari says that Cosimo became extremely reclusive towards the end of his life, yet Waldman’s argument gives us hope that when he died on April 12, 1522, Cosimo was not alone.
Bibliography
(2) Waldman, Louis Alexander. "Fact, Fiction, Hearsay: Notes On Vasari's Life Of Piero Di Cosimo." Art Bulletin 82.1 (2000): 171. Academic Search Complete. Web. 3 Dec. 2011.
(3) Geronimus, Dennis. "The Birth Date, Early Life, And Career Of Piero Di Cosimo." Art Bulletin 82.1 (2000): 164. Academic Search Complete. Web. 4 Dec. 2011.
(5) The Holy Bibile. New Living Translation. 2nd Edition. 2004. Tyndale House Publishers, Inc. Carol Steam, IL.
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