Die Menschwerdung Jesu

Piero di Cosimo had a reputation, even among his contemporaries, for being strange. Vasari, who wrote his life a generation later, described a man who lived on hard-boiled eggs, refused to have his garden tamed, and was terrified of thunder. Some of that wildness leaks into the background here. Behind the calm rank of saints and the Virgin, who touches her belly as the dove descends, the hills break into rocks that seem to take on the shapes of faces and animals, and tiny scenes play out among them, the Adoration of the Magi on one side, the Flight into Egypt on the other. The saints in front are painted as distinct, recognisable individuals, each with his own face rather than a type.