The Concise Oxford Dictionary of Art and Artists (372 page)

 
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(
c.
1462–1521?).
Florentine painter, a pupil of Cosimo
Rosselli
, whose Christian name he adopted as a patronym. There are no signed, documented, or dated works by him, and reconstruction of his
œuvre
depends on the account given in
Vasari's
Lives
. It is one of Vasari's most entertaining biographies, for he portrays Piero as a highly eccentric character who lived on hard-boiled eggs, ‘which he cooked while he was boiling his glue, to save the firing’. The paintings for which he is best known are appropriately idiosyncratic—fanciful mythological inventions, inhabited by fauns, centaurs, and primitive men. There is sometimes a spirit of low comedy about these delightful works, but in the so-called
Death of Procris
(NG, London) he created a poignant scene of the utmost pathos and tenderness. He was a marvellous painter of animals and the dog in this picture, depicted with a mournful dignity, is one of his most memorable creations. Piero also painted portraits, the finest of which is that of Simonetta Vespucci (Musée Condé, Chantilly), in which she is depicted as Cleopatra with the asp around her neck. His religious works are somewhat more conventional, although still distinctive, and Frederick Hartt (
A History of Italian Renaissance Art
, 1970) has written that ‘His whimsical Madonnas, Holy Families, and Adorations provide a welcome relief from the wholesale imitation of
Raphael
in early Cinquecento Florence.’ One of his outstanding religious works is the
Immaculate Conception
(Uffizi, Florence), which seems to have been the compositional model for the
Madonna of the Harpies
by his pupil
Andrea del Sarto
.

 
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Pietà
.

Term (Italian for ‘pity’) applied to a painting or sculpture showing the Virgin Mary supporting the body of the dead Christ on her lap. Other figures, such as St John the Evangelist or Mary Magdalene, may also be included. The theme, which has no literary source, originated in the early 14th cent. in Germany and was more popular in northern Europe than in Italy. However, the most celebrated of all Pietàs is that by
Michelangelo
in St Peter's, Rome; and one of the most sublime is that painted by
Titian
for his own tomb (Accademia, Venice). The subject is not always clearly distinguished from the scene known as the Lamentation. However, whereas the Lamentation represents a specific moment from Christ's Passion, between the Descent from the Cross and the Entombment, the Pietà is a timeless devotional image.

 
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(1714–85).
French sculptor. He studied under J.-B.
Lemoyne
and then in Rome (1736–9). In this early career he endured poverty and sickness (his studies in Rome were made at his own expense and he walked there from Paris), but after he was received into the Académie Royale in 1744 with his rapturously acclaimed
Mercury
(Louvre, Paris;
terracotta
model in the Met. Mus., New York), he rapidly went on to become the most successful French sculptor of his period. He was a superb craftsman and highly versatile and inventive, equally adept at small
genre
pieces and the most grandiloquent tomb sculpture. As a portraitist he was noted for his warmth and vivacity. His most famous works are the startling nude figure of Voltaire (Institut de France, Paris, 1770–6) and the spectacular and majestic tomb of Maurice of Saxony (designed 1753) in St Thomas, Strasburg.

 
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pigment
.

Any substance used as a colouring agent, particularly the finely ground particles that when held in suspension in a
medium
constitute a paint. Most pigments are now manufactured synthetically, but historically they have been made from a great variety of mineral, plant, and animal sources: the brown colour
sepia
, for example, comes from the inky secretions of the cuttlefish, and ultramarine blue was originally made from the semi-precious stone lapis lazuli. The history of pigments is a highly specialized field with little practical importance today for artists who use commercial paints, but it is often vitally important to the expert in relation to authentication and attribution.

 
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