Piero di Cosimo: Eccentricity and Delight (Renaissance Lives) - Hardcover

McHam, Sarah Blake

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 1789148421 ISBN 13: 9781789148428

Publisher: Reaktion Books, 2024

Synopsis

'In Blake McHam's hands, the full scope of Piero's talent is explored . . . a delightful, diligent study of the most playful, surprising artist of the Renaissance.' - Daily Telegraph

The singular Florentine painter Piero di Cosimo (1462–1522) led a deliberately idiosyncratic life: he chose to live in squalor and ate nothing but boiled eggs, which, according to Vasari's famous biography, he cooked fifty at a time in water used to prepare his painting glue.
Sarah Blake McHam delves into the social, cultural and literary backdrops of this artist’s life. She shows how Piero became the favourite of sophisticated patrons, who were eager to decorate their residences with pagan Greco-Roman mythological subjects. Piero's vividly imagined portrayals led to his cornering the market on these commissions. At the same time his more orthodox, but never ordinary, religious altarpieces and private devotional paintings won the admiration of leading Florentine families. This original, richly illustrated account explores the fascinating life of one of Renaissance Italy's most intriguing figures.

About this title

About the Author

Sarah Blake McHam is Professor of Art History at Rutgers University, New Jersey, USA and author of Pliny and the Artistic Culture of the Italian Renaissance: The Legacy of the 'Natural History' (2013).

Edition details

• Publisher: Reaktion Books
• Publication date: 2024
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 1789148421
• ISBN 13: 9781789148428
• Binding: Hardcover
• Number of pages: 240