Piero di Cosimo

Piero di Cosimo, or more correctly Piero di Lorenzo (Florence, circa 1461 - Florence, April 12, 1522), was an Italian painter

The son of Lorenzo di Piero d'Antonio, artisan "buckwheat" of modest condition, was born in 1461 or 1462 in Florence in via della Scala, the first of four brothers, Giovanni, Girolamo and Vanna

It is documented in 1480 as a not-worn apprentice in the shop of the painter Cosimo Rosselli, from which he will take the name Cosimo has known, says Vasari: "... he took it more than willingly, and among many disciples that he had, seeing him grow, With years and with virtue he brought him love as a son, and for that he kept it always "

In 1481 he was in Rome with the master to work in the Sistine Chapel: "... called by Pope Sisto, to make the stories of the chapel, in which one of which Piero made a beautiful country ... And because he portrayed nature very excellently, he did Rome of many portraits of people reported, and especially that of Verginio Orsino and Ruberto Sanseverino, who dealt in those histories. Then again, the Duke Valentino, the son of Pope Alessandro Sesto; What painting today, which I know, is not found; But well the cardboard in his hand, and it is next to the reverend and virtuous Messer Cosimo Bartoli proposed by Saint John »

He returned to Florence in 1483 and 1488 is the Sacred Conversation, now at the Galleria degli Spedale degli Innocenti: "It was a very friend of Piero sending him the Innocents, and wanting to make a table that went to church entrance to man missing To the chapel of Pugliese, she went to Piero, who with her ease led her to the end, but before she despaired of the expedition, that there was never an order to see her if not over, and how much it seemed to him strange, and for l Friendship and to put it all over for the day of money and not to see what he was doing, he himself proved that he did not want to give him the last pay if he did not see the work. But threatened by Piero that he would do what he had done, He was forced to give him the rest, and with greater anger than before to have patience to put it on, and in this are really very good things "

On October 13, 1489, the Capponi family paid 6 florins to the craftsman Chimenti del Tasso for the altarpiece of the chapel of the Florentine church of Santo Spirito, the Visor blade, now in the National Gallery of Washington

In 1498 he was still a resident of Via della Scala, head of household and owner of property inherited by his parents, with houses, vineyards and olive trees in Carmignano. In 1503 he joined the Society of San Luca, the brotherhood of the artists, and May 8, 1504 all Art of Doctors and Speziali On March 10, 1506, the nuns of the convent of San Cresci in Valcava, in Mugello, sent to Naples an unidentified Madonna

At the beginning of the sixteenth century, Piero went on to further emphasize the singularities of his style, moving away from the dominant artistic debate. Sacred painting became more severe and intense for him, the profane, veiled by complex symbolisms

Around 1500-1505, the artist painted three spallers for his great commissioner, Francesco Del Pugliese, with scenes of the primordial life of men unable to control and use fire: the first panel, the Hunting, presents human semides, satyrs, centaurs And animals fighting fiercely ignorant of the danger posed by the fire that sprouts in the background, in the second, the Return from hunting, are the first forms of community life and the use of primitive construction techniques, in the third, the Fire in Forest, a man dressed in clothes, aware of the fire, tries to catch terrified cattle

Erwin Panofsky connected these two panels with two volcanoes and volcanoes and Eolo masters of humanity to these three panels: in the first volcano, flown by the Olympus, he was rescued by the girls of Lemno; In the second, adult volcano, assisted by Eolo, works in a primitive forge and shows a man on a tanned horse the use of fire and the techniques of metalworking; In the background, alongside a gentle giraffe, a house with unfinished trunks is being raised, and a family and a sleeper in the foreground allude to both the fact that Vulcan's work starts on the night, and that a new It was civilization

The five paintings, together with others lost, perhaps adorned the Florentine house of the merchant Francesco del Pugliese, two times prior to Florence, Antimedic and Antisavonarolian, banned in 1513 for publicly insulting Lorenzo de 'Medici il Giovane The conception of the slow evolution of civilization Through technical and intellectual progress, rare and heterodox, both in terms of classical and Christian conception, can be found both in Lucrezio and in Vitruvio, the latter quoted by Boccaccio in the Genealogy Deorum. The artist came back on these issues both with two Paintings painted by Giovanni Vespucci with the discovery and gift of wine for men by Bacco, both with two boxes of boxes with the myth of Prometheus and Epimeteo

On December 8, 1515, he was paid 58 florins for work done at the occasion of a visit to Florence on November 20, of Pope Leo X

The Liberation of Andromeda, in the Uffizi, is mentioned by some as his latest work, although more recent studies date back to 1510 or 1513. He wrote Vasari: "... a picture of small figures when Perseus releases Andromeda from the monster, It is in some beautiful things ... never did Piero's most vague painting or the finishing of this, as it is not possible to see the most bizarre navel or the whimsical of what he imagined to paint Piero with the most proud attitude of Perseus, who in the air perched with his sword; There is fear and hope between Andromeda, beautiful face, and here many people with strange clothes singing and singing, where are certain heads laughing and rejoicing to see liberated Andromeda, who are divine; The country is beautiful and a sweet and graceful color, and how much one can combine and shade colors, carried this work with extreme diligence »

Vasari reported as the date of his death in 1521: "So strangely strangely lived his imaginations, so that one morning he was found dead on a scale, the year MDXXI; And in San Pier Maggiore he was burial. "Actually, contemporary documents remind the dead artist of plague on 12 April 1522

Piero di Cosimo was an unusual, sophisticated, original artist who still amazes today for his unrest and freedom of invention. His contribution to the artistic landscape of the era is a dissonant note and, precisely for this reason, of great fascination

His paintings include heterogeneous cultural references, ranging from the anniversary of the Flemish Primitives to Leonardo's expressive charge, to the nervous instability of Filippino Lippi. This eclecticism makes him an outsider who has always been in balance between nostalgic returns to the past and sudden impulses Towards the mannerism Vasari went on to tell his singular personality, calling it "abstract and diffrent ingenuity"

"He was sometimes so intent on what he was doing, that by reasoning something, as it would be, at the end of reasoning, he had to resort to bargaining, being brainwashed to his other fantasy. And he was just as much a friend of The loneliness that he did not like, except when he thought he could only go out and cast his castles in the air

He was continually locked up, and he did not let himself be working, and he had a man's life more humane than human beings. He did not want the rooms to sweep, he wanted to eat at the time that hunger came, and he did not want to catch or pot The fruits of the garden, indeed let the vines grow, and the branches on the ground, and the figs, never could be, nor the other trees, but rather content to see every thing as nature, save that the things of it Nature has to keep her guarding her without doing anything else she often looks at animals or herbs or anything that nature does by instinct and many times; And he had a contentment and a satisfaction that was all about him and replied to him in his reasoning so many times that sometimes he was, if he liked it, to annoy Fermavasi resigned to consider a wall where he had been long gone Spat down by sick people and outbreaks the battles of the cavalry and the most fantastic cities and larger countries that you would ever see; Similar to the clouds of the air. Diede works in oil paintings, having seen certain things of Lionardo smoked and finished with that extreme diligence, which Lionardo used when he wanted to show art, and so Piero liking that way he tried to imitate him, Though he then went far beyond Lionard and the other extravagant manners: how good it can be said that he was almost changing what he was doing. And if Piero had not been so abstract and had taken more account of himself in Which he did not do, he made known to him the great wisdom he had, in a manner that he would have been worshiped, where he was more crazy for his bestiality, yet that he did not hurt himself except himself in the end and benefit And useful with works to his art

And in reality, one knows in what he sees of his very different and abstract spirit from others, and with some subtlety in investigating certain subtleties of nature, penetrating, without looking at time or effort, only for his delight and pleasure art; And she could not have been otherwise because she fell in love with her, she did not care for her comfort, and she was continually eating so hot that, to resurrect the fire, she bore her when she was baking the glue; And you are not, or eight at a time, but fifty, and holding them in a sport, consumed little by little. In which life so enjoyably enjoyed, that the other appetion to him seemed like servitude. He was bored by the piagner de 'putti , The slaying of men, the sound of bells, the cantor of the friars; And when the water's sky flooded, he liked to see it ruined it from the roofs and crumpled on the ground. He was terribly afraid of the sails, and when it was overwhelming, he was wrapped in his coat and clenched the windows and the door of the room , He went to a canton until he was in rage. In his reasoning he was so different and varied, that he sometimes said so good things he was doing from the laughter of others ...

He did not want the garzoni around him in such a way that any help for his bestiality had come to him. Venivagli wanted to work and for the partaker he could not and Et came in so much anger that he wanted to put his hands down, He was mumbling, or the paddle was falling, or the brushes really, which was Adiravasi's compassion with the flies, and gave him a boredom to the shadow; And so sick of old age and visited by some friends, he was begged to be in harmony with God But it did not seem to have to die, and he held others today in tomorrow It was not that good and I did not believe, because he was zealous, Still in the life he was bestial Sometimes he was thinking of the torments that destroy the bodies for the ailments and how much he suffers who consuming the spirits gradually dies, which is a great misery He said ill of physicians, specialists and Of those who look at the sick, and who make them starve; Beyond the torment of the discs, medicines, christians and other martyrs, such as not being left to sleep, when you are asleep, making a will, seeing your relatives pierce and stay in the room in the dark; And praised justice, which was so beautiful to go to death; And that there was so much air and so much people that you were comforted with the confetti and the good words; You had the priest and the people who prayed for you; And that you went with the angels in heaven; Who had a great deal of luck, who suddenly came out and made speeches and pulled things to the strangest senses that could be heard (Vasari)

Pudelko tried to give an interpretation of Piero's behavior beyond the pure bizarre or even worse "bestiality" attributed to it by Vasari, a well-known "man of order": "An almost morbid anxiety, to avoid all that is normal So as not to escape but to take possession of the essence of things; An instinctive sympathy for curiosity and strangeness, losing oneself as in a game; A heroic need for independence from every social order, masquerading it with a bohemian life, with the search for originality at all cost, through a kind of buffoonry: the passion of a revolutionary obsessed with his ideas, by seeking mystical and magical remedies To improve the world Every great art is revolutionary, but to Piero di Cosimo it is especially important for a revolutionary life, even if sometimes it is expressed in a bizarre way. Look for a primitiveness of existence that it is a rebellion and an escape from its time. Extreme formalism of an extenuated society who, also at the court of Lorenzo de 'Medici, was pleased with mystical speculations, humanistic intellectuals and rhetorical abandonments to romantic nature folklore, inspired a passionate nostalgia for the intact originality and the wild Force of nature Extraneous to whimsical romanticism, there is in him a primordial sense of the cosmos, to whose eternal Laws of life and death he feels to adhere And swings like everyone between an orgy will of life and a deep anxiety of death, which will take on almost paranoid forms and finally the character of an authentic mania of persecution »

Cosimo Rosselli's student, does not undergo any influence; His initial loans come from Filippino Lippi, Domenico Ghirlandaio and Luca Signorelli, then Leonardo derives delicate luminosity and atmospheric values, but remains the original painter for the great imagination and analytic ability that approach him to the Flemings and refuse him The abstraction of the representations based on the drawing, privileging, contrary to Botticelli, the concreteness of the image based on the chromatic values, such as a Venetian

"Through the study of the painting of the Netherlands comes to a subtlety of details that no other Florentine has ever achieved. It is perhaps one of the most characteristic paintings of the painter's youth ... every wrinkle, every face and hands of the two saints seated in Perfectly characterized, they were performed with a cure and love that marvel at a Florentine It is admirable that Piero's disposition to the sensitive figure is so close to that of the Nordic ... The two women staring into their eyes, as in the awareness of destiny Who waits for her ... and while Mary, in greeting and to appease the emotion of the other, puts her left hand on the shoulder of the old Elizabeth, she raises her hand, astonished that the Mother of the Lord has come to her ... are tied In a very strict way, expressing inner participation and a quiet abandonment of their fate Psychologically, is the most beautiful Visitation ever painted in Florence »(Knapp)

In the Madonna with the Child and the Angels, of the Venetian Cini Collection, dated around 1507, "aims at a sharp focus of the figurative image, obtaining it by way of light and chiaroscuro, rationalizing Florentine theses that ... are present In the Portico Triptych of Hugo van der Goes ... Piero can reach ... that effect of open air images that his authentic lyricism enlivens of agresti and meteorological flavor, where the more or less intense and crystalline light, meadows, rocks And the now-now dull, now dull, now-soaky trees immediately penetrate into a climate that is springy, autumn, and frosty ... the almost eloquent afternoon stamp is what comes out of the light of Imminent decline from which the musician angel is invested in full and from which the other figures are gradually cleansed ... "(Zeri)
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