The Birth Date, Early Life, and Career of Piero di Cosimo

Among the many biographical uncertainties surrounding Piero di Cosimo (whose familiar name derives from his teacher, Cosimo Rosselli), the ambiguity of his birth date has been single of the most obstinate. The confusion above the birth date has persisted because of differing statements in his father's attribute tax declarations (catasti) of 1469 and 1480 (App., docs. 3 4) In his 1469 catasto the artist's father, Lorenzo di Piero d'Antonio, consigns to Piero's age as eight; eleven years later he listed his son as eighteen, thus indicating that Piero was born between the years 1460 and 1462 These assertions have drawn out raised doubts about Giorgio Vasari's claim that when the artist died in 1522 he was "near the age of eighty" and that "he had become with equal reason strange and eccentric that nothing could be done with him." [1]

Florentine tax go [i]or[/i] come backs tend to be notoriously unreliable sources for determining age, since the recorded statements of the ages of family members repeatedly vary significantly for the same listed family member from individual catasto to another. [2] however Piero's father apparently kept careful ricordi (records) of his children's births. The birth dates of the family's four children listed in his 1469 catasto and the six children listed in 1480 are surprisingly accurate, at no time differing from the documented baptismal dates through more than a year. It is ultimately the baptismal records, however, that made it possible to pinpoint Piero di Cosimo's exact birth date. Although the artist's name at birth (Piero di Lorenzo di Piero d'Antonio) complicated matters in its commonplace usage, a collated search of all the individuals of that name baptized during the greatest in quantity likely span of years pertaining to Piero's birth provided part of the answer. A of recent origin database of Florentine baptismal records, commonly being compiled by Karl Schlebusch a nd Anne Schleicher, provided a list of all males born and baptized as Piero di Lorenzo in Florence between 1450 and 1470 [3] allowing the discovery of a of recent origin document specifically recording that Piero di Lorenzo di Piero, of the parish of s Lorenzo, was born at fifteen hours after sundown (approximately nine in the morning) upon January 2, 1462, and baptized upon the same day (App., doc. 1) [4]

The final identification of the "real" Piero relied upon the baptismal date of the artist's younger brother Giovanni di Lorenzo, said to be six years aged in the 1469 catasto and sixteen in the 1480 catasto--and thus (consistently) sum of two units years younger than Piero. Indeed, there was sole one Giovanni fitting all of the required parameters (the same lineage and parish, as well as a baptismal date sum of two units years following that of individual of the four choices for Piero's hold baptismal date): Giovanni di Lorenzo di Piero of the parish of s Lorenzo, baptized on Monday, March 26 1464 [5] sole one match resulted with the remaining Piero di Lorenzos, and, at last, the birth date of the older brother of Giovanni--and our sought-after painter--became clear.

Further research of the baptismal records in manuscript eventually revealed the birth dates of all seven of Piero's siblings mentioned in the 1469 and 1480 catasti. After Giovanni, Mona Alessandra, Lorenzo's wife, gave birth to Girolamo in 1466 and Nanna in 1468; the one and the other may have died at a fairly early age, since they do not appear in the 1480 catasto. [6] nearest came the births of Francesco (1473) Raffaello (1474) Maria (1477) and finally Bastiano (1478) [7] All of these children, from 1466 onward, were noted as having been born in the parish of s Paolo rather than S. Lorenzo, with the exception of Francesco and Raffaello, for whom no parish was indicated.

This variance in the stated parishes artificial positions the question of the family's origins and earliest residence. The information contained in the catasti does not allow us to reach out back further than Piero's great-grandfather, referr to simply as Antonio in surviving documents, with no mention of fall or place of origin (Fig. 1) Piero was certainly born in Florence, where his father was recorded in the tax records as early as 1457 (App., doc. 2) The 1457 catasto (filed in the quarter of s Giovanni, the gonfalone (electoral district) of Leon d'Oro, like the others to follow) mentions, however, that Lorenzo di Piero and his brother Giovanni had been "staying with others until now," while the payments for the previous catasto, normally indicated in the following tax declarations, are left blank. The go [i]or[/i] come back of 1469 (App., doc. 3) clearly states that 1457 marked the first time that either Lorenzo di Piero or his father, Piero d'Antonio, had made a tax declaration. [8] This absence of a previous residence and past tax declarations indicates that Piero's father was the first to seat in the city. What is certain is that Piero di Cosimo's father was not a goldsmith, as described by dint of Vasari, [9] but a maker of small tools (succhiellinaio) or a blacksmith (fabbro), as he describes himself in a novel 1461 document outlining the purchase of a house upon Via della Scala (parish of s Paolo) from the Badia di Settimo (App., doc. 5)