Piero di Cosimo: Visions Beautiful and Strange

By Dennis Geronimus
(Yale University Press, 2007)

The defining measure of any period lies as much in its surprising exceptions as its norms. In Piero di Cosimo: Visions Beautiful and Strange, Dennis Geronimus, associate professor of art history at NYU, provides a detailed account of one of the most exceptional artists of the Italian Renaissance. Looming ever larger not only in art historical importance but also the popular imagination, Piero di Cosimo (1462-1522) has long remained arguably the most elusive artistic personality of his time. It was in this fellow rule-breaker and lover of experimentation that Leonardo da Vinci found his most receptive heir.

By turns playful and solemn, high and low, Piero’s diverse imagery caught the eye of Florence’s most prestigious patrons and collectors in its imaginative flights. Once adorning the private palaces of wealthy merchant-bankers, his surreal painted fables were to prove irresistible to the likes of Salvador Dalí and Max Ernst five centuries later. Separating the man from the myth, Geronimus returns to the historical realities of Piero’s life and artistic development, yielding a richly textured portrait of a daring master far beyond easy categorization, of his own time and outside it.

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