Piero di Cosimo, The Liberation of Andromeda (1510/ 1513).

 

Piero di Cosimo, The Liberation of Andromeda (1510/ 1513).
Photo Uffizi Gallery.

 

Nearly 500 years after his death, Piero di Cosimo (1462–1522), an Old Master painter and inspiration to surrealists including André Breton, will be having his first solo exhibition, reports the Art Newspaper.

The exhibition, which will open at the National Gallery in Washington, D.C. February 1, will be a comprehensive look at the idiosyncratic artist and his work offering up 34 original works by Piero and four attributed paintings.

Giorgio Vasari, a 16th century painter and art historian known for penning the seminal art historical text The Lives of the Artists, once described Piero as an unhygienic, solitary person, "more animal than human." Vasari reported that Piero died alone, having been found by his few friends at the base of his staircase. Curator at the National Gallery, Gretchen Hirschauer and associate professor of Italian Renaissance art at NYU, Dennis Geronimus, wanted to pull back the veil of mystery that shrouds the underrated Piero, a contemporary of Botticelli, Leonardo, and Michelangelo.