Among the strangest artistic compositions of the Florentine Quattrocento is a remarkable work by the now relatively forgotten painter Piero di Cosimo, housed at the National Gallery of Canada in Ottawa and entitled “Vulcan and Aeolus.” or “An Allegory of Civilization” (around 1490). Although he is the subject of the painting, the god Vulcan, founder of both industry and civilization, is relegated to the left corner of the canvas, an elderly man working at the fires of his oven alongside the god of the wind Aeolus, who cares. the bellows.
The painting itself is filled with characters indifferent to the presence of the god. A man and a woman cuddle up to their baby, another man sleeps curled up in a fetal position, three craftsmen appear to be building a wooden house, a handsome and curious young man on horseback approaches Vulcan and a giraffe walks in the distance ahead a hazy blue sky. horizon. The difficult-to-analyze perspective only adds to the surrealism of the scene. As Rutgers University art historian Sarah Blake McHam explains in her well-argued, erudite, and elegant new book. Piero di Cosimo: eccentricity and pleasure (2024), part of British publisher Reaktion’s Renaissance Lives series, it is a “composition unlike any other during the Renaissance”, a “confusing, even disconcerting” work.
McHam relays the compelling argument that Di Cosimo may have derived this imagery from an obscure myth of Philostratus, in which every year on the island of Lemnos all fires would be extinguished as a ritual sacrifice to the ancient gods. “Following this purification, they brought back fire,” she writes, “a haunting emblem of the return of life.” Beyond this, she suggests that “Vulcan and Aeolus” can be read as an allegory of di Cosimo’s time and place – the Renaissance in Florence like the proverbial ovens cooled by the bellows of classical ideas.
The last comprehensive academic study of the painter was that of Dennis Geronimus in 2006. Piero di Cosimo: Beautiful and strange visions, who himself had only a handful of previous scholarly works to fall back on, including a 1968 essay by Jean-Louis Vaudoyer and a 1946 book by Robert Langton Douglas. Capitalizing on a growing interest in di Cosimo due to exhibitions in Washington DC and Florence in 2014 and 2015 respectively, McHam’s book provides an ideal introduction to a painter widely known only to specialists, but who Giorgio Vasari was among the most important of his generation. By dividing his study into headings rather than organizing it chronologically (i.e. “Portraits”, “Altarpieces”, “Private Devotional Paintings”, etc.), McHam gives a rigorous and coherent account of the importance of the artist.
By far the most interesting parts of the book are those dealing with di Cosimo’s treatment of mythological figures. As McHam writes, “he took subjects such as centuries-old Greco-Roman myths or recently discovered secular writings and responded to them with verve and originality.” Nearly 40% of di Cosimo’s output was devoted to secular subjects, making him one of the most fully inspired Renaissance painters by being fully captivated and familiar with the pagan history of Italy. Di Cosimo’s paintings are full of satyrs and centaurs, titans and gods, all in a bucolic, sylvan and rustic setting. Little remains of his biography, this man who, as Vasari wrote, “was very strange”, but it is difficult not to wonder if he was of the party of Dionysus, and he knew it.
The true measure of di Cosimo’s beautiful Renaissance pagan soul can be seen in a work such as “Perseus Liberating Andromeda” (c. 1510-1515). at the Offices, in which the eponymous character stands atop a monstrous leviathan, the sea monster, an aquatic chimera composed of several different creatures, woolly, scaly and equipped with tusks. Although this dragon must be slain, it remains a beast as wonderful as it is dangerous, just like the world imagined by the Renaissance.
Piero di Cosimo: eccentricity and pleasure (2024), published by Reaction booksis available for purchase online and in bookstores.
