The study of Piero di Cosimo belongs no less to the history of the imagination than to the history of art. As was true for Giorgio Vasari five centuries ago, Pieroâs intensely personal visual language remains a moving target for modern scholars. Yet, as surprising and strange as his pictorial solutions appear, we have never known as much about Piero as we do today. Freed from the powerful spell of Vasariâs biography-cum-cautionary tale, the Piero that emerges is not solely a conjurer of the uncanny, but a sensitive observer of the emotions, the natural and manmade worlds, humans and beasts, surfaces and coloristic effects, phenomena material and ephemeral.
The conference from which the thirteen essays in this volume spring provided a forum for international scholars to continue the ongoing conversation and to ask new questions. The latter address Pieroâs relationship to his artistic contemporaries, north and south of the Alps; the masterâs Marian imagery; his intellectual engagement with classical traditions; the dual themes of naturalism and exoticism; and the latest technical findings. Topics of investigation thus range as broadly as Pieroâs own versatile production, uniting diverse fields and methods, traversing regional boundaries, and often venturing far beyond Florenceâs city walls, into the wild.
Contributors are Ianthi Assimakopoulou, Marina Belozerskaya, Jean Cadogan, Elena Capretti, Alessandra Galizzi Kroegel, Dennis Geronimus, Guy Hedreen, Sarah Blake McHam, Anna Teresa Monti, Paula Nuttall, Roberta J.M. Olson, Lesley Stevenson, Lisa Venerosi Pesciolini, and Elizabeth Walmsley.
Dennis Geronimus, Ph.D. (Oxford University, 2001), is Associate Professor of Italian Renaissance Art and Chair of the Department of Art History at New York University. He is the author of Piero di Cosimo: Visions Beautiful and Strange (New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 2006), and co-curator (with Gretchen Hirschauer) of the exhibition Piero di Cosimo: The Poetry of Painting in Renaissance Florence, held at the National Gallery of Art, Washington, in 2015. He is presently at work on a book devoted to Jacopo da Pontormo, to be published by Yale University Press.
Michael W. Kwakkelstein, Ph.D. (Leiden University, 1994), is Professor of Italian Renaissance Art and Art Theory at the Department of History and Art History at Utrecht University, and Director of the Dutch University Institute for Art History in Florence. He is the author of Leonardo da Vinci as a Physiognomist. Theory and Drawing Practice (Leiden: Primavera Pers, 1994) and guest curator of the exhibition Leonardo da Vinci: The Language of Faces (Teylers Museum, Haarlem 2018). He has published various articles on Leonardo da Vinci and other Italian Renaissance artists. Currently he is writing a book on Leonardo for Singel Uitgeverijen (2020).
âExtremely valuable for the ongoing study of Piero di Cosimo.â
Gretchen A. Hirschauer, National Gallery of Art, Washington, DC. In: Renaissance Quarterly, Vol. 75, No. 1 (Spring 2022), pp. 229â231.
Contents
Foreword: Directorâs Remarks List of Figures Notes on Contributors
Introduction: Telling Tales: The Kaleidoscopic Art of Piero di Cosimo (1462-1522) âDennis Geronimus 1 From Ancilla Domini to Madonna del Parto: Observations on Piero di Cosimoâs Marian Imagery âAlessandra Galizzi Kroegel 2 Lâaltare Del Pugliese nella chiesa dello Spedale degli Innocenti: un esempio di dialogo fra pittura e scultura âElena Capretti 3 Real or Imagined? Exotic Animals in Piero di Cosimoâs Mythologies âMarina Belozerskaya 4 The âFantasiaâ of the Cricket in Piero di Cosimoâs Vulcan and Aeolus âSarah Blake McHam 5 Rara Avis: Piero di Cosimo and the Birds He Painted âRoberta J.M. Olson 6 Piero di Cosimoâs Nymph and the Hallmark of Artemis âIanthi Assimakopoulou 7 Beautiful Monsters: The Language of Empathy and Grief in Piero di Cosimoâs Representation of Animals and Human-Animal Hybrids âDennis Geronimus 8 The Question of Centaurs: Lucretius, Ovid, and Empedokles in Piero di Cosimo âGuy Hedreen 9 Piero di Cosimo and Netherlandish Painting âPaula Nuttall 10 Piero and Ghirlandaio: Drawing the Figure âJean K. Cadogan 11 Deconstructing the Underdrawing in Piero di Cosimoâs Construction of a Palace âElizabeth Walmsley 12 La ricomposizione di un Piero di Cosimo perduto: il restauro della Pala con Lo Sposalizio mistico di S.Caterina e della Lunetta con i due Angeli che sorreggono la corona âAnna Teresa Monti e Lisa Venerosi Pesciolini 13 Piero di Cosimo: Two Angels Return to Florence from Edinburgh âLesley Stevenson
Index
All readers interested in Italian Renaissance art, as it relates specifically to the artistic career of the Florentine painter Piero di Cosimo (1462-1522) and his engagement with artistic contemporaries both north and south of the Alps. The anthologyâs contributing authors break new ground in subjects ranging from Pieroâs altarpieces and mythological works to broader treatments of his engagement with natural world, be it his closely observed studies of birds and exotic beasts or his fantastic, invented human-animal hybrids.