La Découverte du miel

This long panel was made to sit above the wainscoting in a Florentine bedroom, one of a pair painted for Giovanni Vespucci, a young relative of Amerigo, the navigator then setting out for the New World. The subject comes from Ovid: satyrs and their companions banging pots and pans to drive a swarm of bees into a hollow tree, the moment humans first find honey. Piero di Cosimo read it as a story about how rough early people slowly learned the comforts of civilisation. That old tree is half a face, its knots working into a grimace. Piero had a reputation, recorded by Vasari, for living like a half-wild man himself, eating only boiled eggs. The panel has been in Worcester since 1937.