Piero di Cosimo, eccentric painter from the Renaissance to the Modern Manner
An opportunity more than just an exhibition. The show, dedicated to Piero di Cosimo “Eccentric painter from the Renaissance to the Modern Manner”, from June 23 to September 27 at the Uffizi Gallery, offers a not-to-be-missed opportunity to discover one of the most interesting Renaissance master, though less well-known than his contemporaries. His talent is comparable to that of Filippino Lippi or Fra’ Bartolomeo, while his attention to nature is the same as Leonardo da Vinci.
The National Gallery in Washington – one of the United States’ most important museums, with collections that include unquestioned masterpieces by such artists as Leonardo da Vinci and Vermeer – also planned a monographic exhibition devoted to Piero di Cosimo. The American event closed on 3 May. The two exhibitions are distinct events rather than two versions of a single exhibition. Even though some thirty or so pictures by Piero di Cosimo feature in both the National Gallery and the Uffizi exhibitions, they are in fact based on two different projects, with a narrower and more strictly monographical approach being adopted in Washington, and a broader approach – comprising roughly 100 works –characterizing the Uffizi event, which also includes drawings by Piero di Cosimo as well as paintings and drawings by several of his contemporaries such as Filippino Lippi, Fra’ Bartolomeo and Lorenzo di Credi.One of the most important work present only in the Uffizi exhibition is a panel depicting the Death of a Nymph from the National Gallery in London, a moving masterpiece whose subject matter is still shrouded in mystery and which has been stimulating other artists’ imagination since the 19th century.
The Uffizi exhibition tracks Piero di Cosimo’s artistic career from his early days as an apprentice in the workshop of Cosimo Rosselli, the master responsible for the name with which he was to become known, given that his real name was Piero di Lorenzo.
But tracking Piero di Cosimo’s work also means plunging into the history of Florence in the Renaissance, from the age of Lorenzo the Magnificent, when Piero produced works of such outstanding quality as the Visitation (Washington, National Gallery), or the cycle with The Early History of Man that he painted for the Del Pugliese family palazzo. Of this cycle, the Uffizi exhibition hosts two Hunting scenes from the Metropolitan Museum in New York and the atmospheric view of a building under construction from the museum of Sarasota.
A section is also dedicated to portraits – among the most superlative of the entire Florentine Renaissance – together with the panel depicting Perseus Liberating Andromeda, dating back to the second decade of the 16th century.
The catalogue, published by Giunti Editore, is edited by Serena Padovani, Elena Capretti, Anna Forlani Tempesti and Daniela Parenti. The exhibition moves along a path showcasing over 100 works, after which the eccentric unconventional personality of Piero di Cosimo becomes better known; an artists who, according to his main biographer Giorgio Vasari, painted in solitude most of his works, leaving us an heritage of valuable works, worth to be known.
