Piero di Cosimo

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.