This is the first book on Piero di Cosimo (1461-1521) widely considered one of the most intriguing figures of the Florentine Renaissance - to be written in English for over fifty years. Sharon Fermor presents new solutions to questions the function and iconography that have puzzled commentators hitherto, and examines Piero's approach to pictorial composition and to gesture that contribute to the distinctiveness of his oeuvre. Of crucial importance in this fresh evaluation of Piero's career is the author's explanation of the strategies employed by Vasari for his Life of Piero, written in the mid sixteenth-century. By exposing the misconceptions - many still influential today - that resulted from Vasari's account, she reveals that even Piero's most unusual paintings on mythological themes are in fact coherent and meaningful compositions, and not the product of an isolated eccentric at odds with the artistic community of his time.