"This book is an original, cogent account of the singular Florentine painter Piero di Cosimo (1462-1522), providing a concise survey of his life within his social, cultural and literary backdrop. Delving into the artist's deliberately idiosyncratic life, the book shows how Piero chose to live in squalor, and eat nothing but boiled eggs, which (according to Vasari's famous Lives of the Artists) he cooked fifty at a time in his painting glue. This book shows how the artist 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 also won the admiration of leading Florentine families."

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).


Book Information
ISBN 9781789148428
Author Sarah Blake McHam
Format Hardback
Page Count 240
Imprint Reaktion Books
Publisher Reaktion Books