If Filippino became an eccentric through pressure of circumstances, Piero di Cosimo[[48]] was one by nature. Born in 1462, he soon came under the dullest of masters, Cosimo Rosselli. To Cosimo’s four hopeless frescoes in the Sistine Chapel he added certain vivacious features, and there he learned to know some of the ablest artists of his day. Always a bachelor and recluse, he pursued serious studies in imitation of such stern realists as Antonio Pollaiuolo and Luca Signorelli. He lived sordidly in his bottega, literally from hand to mouth, on the eggs which he boiled in his glue pot, in weekly batches. Alone he planned strange mythologies, bestially pungent, and there he thought out odd terrible pageants which shocked and enthralled his Florence. And as he made these bizarre inventions, he mocked them and himself. His admirations were shifting—now Signorelli, again the Flemish realists and Leonardo: incompatible attractions.
Fig. 144. Piero di Cosimo. Cleopatra.—Chantilly.
You may sense his quality in two wall panels, now in the Metropolitan Museum,[[49]] made for some palace. Piero had read over the legend of primitive man as told by Ovid, and quickly his mind bred phantoms. First he conceived a state where dominion trembled between man and the brute creation. Savage men with the unfair advantage of fire are exterminating the beasts, among whom fight those half-men, the centaurs, Figure [143]. In the companion panel the mood changes abruptly from strife and tumult to the quaintly pastoral strains of a stone-age minuet. We assist at a troglodyte water-party. Lovely woman dominates the new scene. The now domesticated centaur proudly bears her. In courtly fashion skin-clad warriors hand her into a rude pleasure raft which may perhaps waft the picnickers to the joys of a cannibal feast. These inventions have immense fantastic power, and their real originality by no means precludes the suspicion that the artist is smiling at his own ingenuity and at our complaisance.
Fig. 145. Piero di Cosimo. Death of Procris.—London.
Take again his Cleopatra, Figure [144], at Chantilly. The snub-nosed Florentine beauty airs her abundant charms in a romantic landscape, while the asp does his by no means disagreeable duty. What a travesty of the dignity of Plutarch, and how fetching it is as distinguished burlesque!
Cautiously and perhaps grudgingly, in the early years of the new century, Piero follows the improvements of Leonardo. This influence is palpable in the Rescue of Andromeda, in the Uffizi. The chained princess carelessly displays her appetizing attractions, while the leering and hungry dragon lurches on the beach and surveys his prey. High up in the sky is hope, in the brisk, knightly figure of Perseus. A musical party lolls deliciously on the strand, equally prepared to enjoy a heroic rescue or a monster at feeding time. We are in the superbly irresponsible world of the fairy tale, and the thrilling raconteur has his clever tongue in his cheek.
Exceptionally, as in that wistful poesy, The Death of Procris, Figure [145], at London, Piero is serious enough. The girlish body lies very quiet amid meadow flowers. A puzzled faun and a more comprehending hound are very touching mourners amid the unregarding beasts and birds of a tranquil lake-side afternoon. Such refinements of sentiment are often the compensation for an unstable spirit. The vein is rare in Piero, who, aside from his mythological ironies and quite conventional religious pieces, is also a vivacious portraitist as the galleries of New Haven, Conn., the Hague, and London attest.
Piero lived on till 1521, surviving both Leonardo and Raphael. The greatest artistic effort of modern times had spent itself before his eyes, and he had mostly been content to be witty. He represents at least a fine scorn of his flimsy training, and remains a consummate type of the artist who lives, like a bear in winter, on his own fat.