PIERO DI COSIMO (1462-1521), the name by which the Florentine painter Pietro di Lorenzo is generally known. He was born in Florence in 1462, and worked in the bottega of Cosimo Rosselli (from whom he derived his popular name). He had the gift of a fertile fantastic imagination, which, as a result of his journey to Rome in 1482 with Rosselli, became directed towards the myths of classic antiquity. In Rome he assisted his master with the frescoes in the Sistine chapel. He 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," of the late Benson collection. The "Immaculate Conception," at the Uffizi, and the "Holy Family," at Dresden, are good examples of his religious pictures. Piero was distinguished for his landscapes and their cheerful accessories. The only known portraits that can be
definitely ascribed to him are, at the National Gallery, 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 Dulwich. Vasari related that Piero excelled in designing pageants and triumphal processions for the pleasure-loving youths of Florence. Piero di Cosimo exercised considerable influence upon his fellow pupils Albertinelli and Bartolommeo della Porta and was the master of Andrea del Sarto. Examples of his work are also to be found at the Louvre in Paris, the Liechtenstein collec tion in Vienna, the Borghese and Corsini Galleries in Rome, the Berlin Museum, the Spedale degli Innocenti in Florence, and in the collections of Burke in London and Cornwallis West in New lands Manor.
See Vasari Vite; F. Knapp, Piero di Cosimo (Halle, 1899) ; H. Haberfeld, Piero di Cosimo (Breslau, i9o1).