Add to Collection

Add this item to an existing or new collection.
Harvard Art Museums
Incorrect Username, Email, or Password
Three scenes of a nude man and a crowd around a dead tree.

This painting shows three simultaneous scenes of the same figures painted in the left, right, and center sections of the image. On the left, a group of light-skinned figures stands around a nude elderly man. Two figures hold his head with their hands. One dips his left hand into a bowl. In the middle, the nude man holds a stick while falling off a black horse in front of a gnarled dead tree. On the right, the nude man sits in the foreground while a nude faun-like figure grabs his forearm. A crowd of light-skinned, mostly nude figures sit behind them.

Gallery Text

This panel, along with a companion showing the Discovery of Honey, was probably commissioned as a nuptial gift to adorn the bedchamber in the Florentine palace of Giovanni Vespucci and his bride; both panels are described by the artist and biographer Giorgio Vasari in his Life of Piero di Cosimo. Wasps (vespe in Italian) adorned the family’s coats of arms, and the scenes were certainly chosen as humorous but cautionary tales for the newlyweds. The story is based on passages from Ovid’s Fasti, where Silenus, looking for honey, climbs on the back of his donkey to reach into the hollow of a tree. Inside, he discovers a wasp’s nest, setting off a series of misfortunes: the branch on which he was leaning breaks, and he falls from his donkey, is kicked by an ass, and is stung by the wasps he disturbed. At the left of this panel, Bacchus and Ariadne watch as Silenus’s stings are treated with mud.

Identification and Creation

Object Number
1940.85
People
Piero di Cosimo, Italian (Florence (?), Italy c. 1462 - 1522 Florence(?), Italy)
Title
The Misfortunes of Silenus
Classification
Paintings
Work Type
painting
Date
c. 1500
Places
Creation Place: Europe, Italy, Tuscany, Florence
Culture
Italian
Persistent Link
https://hvrd.art/o/299818

Location

Location
Level 2, Room 2540, European Art, 13th–16th century, The Renaissance
View this object's location on our interactive map

Physical Descriptions

Medium
Oil on panel
Dimensions
80.1 x 129.3 cm (31 9/16 x 50 7/8 in.)
frame: 97.2 x 147.3 x 8.9 cm (38 1/4 x 58 x 3 1/2 in.)

Provenance

Recorded Ownership History
Possibly commissioned from the artist to Guidantonio di Giovanni Vespucci, Florence, c. 1500, gift; to Giovanni di Guidantonio Vespucci and Namiciana di Benedetto Nerli on the occasion of their wedding, Florence, 1500, acquired; by Piero Salviati (1), Florence, 1533, bequeathed; to his wife, Ginevra Bartolini Salimbeni, Florence, 1564, bequeathed; to her daughter Maddalena Salviati, by descent; to Giovanni de’ Bardi di Vernio and his wife, Lucrezia Salviati (daughter of Piero Salviati), by descent; to Cosimo Ridolfi (son of Piero Ridolfi and Maddalena Salviati) sold; to the Baglioni family, acquired; by [Monte Comune (public bank)] to Lodovico Incontri (1676). [Giovanni Freppa, Florence, by 1851]. Sir Thomas Sebright, Beechwood, England, by 1857, by descent?; to Sir Giles Sebright Beechwood, England, until 1935, sold; to Mrs. (Jean) R. Langton Douglas, London and Waycross, Georgia, and Vitale Bloch, London, each as 50% owners, by 1937, sold; to Fogg Art Museum, 1940. (2)

Notes:

(1) Vasari records seeing the painting, along with its companion “The Discovery of Honey” in the Worcester Art Museum (1937.76) in the Palazzo Salviati c. 1550.

(2)The paintings in the Worcester and Harvard Art Museums shared a common provenance until the “Discovery of Honey” was sold in 1937 to the Worcester Art Museum and the “Misfortunes of Silenus” was sold in 1940 to the Fogg Art Museum. The Fogg Art Museum purchased the painting directly from Mrs. Douglas.

Acquisition and Rights

Credit Line
Harvard Art Museums/Fogg Museum, Alpheus Hyatt Purchasing Fund and Friends of Art, Archaeology and Music
Accession Year
1940
Object Number
1940.85
Division
European and American Art
Contact
am_europeanamerican@harvard.edu
Permissions

The Harvard Art Museums encourage the use of images found on this website for personal, noncommercial use, including educational and scholarly purposes. To request a higher resolution file of this image, please submit an online request.

Publication History

  • Gustav Friedrich Waagen, Galleries and cabinets of art in Great Britain: being an account of more than forty collections of paintings, drawings, sculptures, mss., &c. &c. visited in 1854 and 1856, and now for the first time described, John Murray (London, England, 1857), p. 327
  • Giorgio Vasari, Le Vitte de'più eccellenti pittori scultori ed architettori, ed. Gaetano Milanesi, G. C. Sansoni, Editore (Florence, 1879), pp. 141-142
  • Hermann Ulmann, "Piero di Cosimo", Jahrbuch der Königlich Preuszischen Kunstsammlungen, Staatliche Museen zu Berlin--Preussischer Kulturbesitz (1896), Vol. 17, pp. 120-142, p. 129
  • Fritz Knapp, Piero di Cosimo: ein Übergangsmeister vom Florentiner quattrocento zum cinquecento, Verlag von Wilhelm Knapp (Halle, Germany, 1899), pp. 86-87
  • Paul Schubring, Cassoni: Truhen und Truhenbilder der italienischen Frührenaissance, Ein Beitrag zur Profanmalerei im Quattrocento, Verlag von Karl W. Hiersemann (Leipzig, 1915), p. 312-313, no. 392 [as by Bartolommo di Giovanni]
  • Erwin Panofsky, "The 'Discovery of Honey' by Piero di Cosimo", Worcester Art Museum Annual (Worcester, Massachusetts, 1936-1937), Vol. II, pp. 33-43, pp. 34-36, 41, 43, fig. 2. fig 9,
  • "The Discovery of Honey", Worcester Art Museum News Bulletin and Calendar (Worcester, MA, October 1937), Vol. 3, No. 1, pp. 1-2, p. 1
  • Georges Pudelko, "Piero di Cosimo, Peintre Bizarre", Minotaure (Paris, May 15, 1938), Vol. 5, No. 11, p. 24, repr.
  • Piero di Cosimo, exh. cat., Schaeffer Galleries (New York, 1938), p. 26, under cat. no. 5
  • Erwin Panofsky, Studies in Iconology: Humanistic Themes in the Art of the Renaissance, Oxford University Press (NY) and Oxford University Press (UK) (Oxford, England, 1939), pp.59-60, repr. as fig. 32, plate XVIII
  • Jane Watson, "News and Comment", Magazine of Art (Washington, D.C., May 1940), Vol. 33, pp. 304-10, 317, pp. 304-306, repr. p. 304
  • Carol Rothschild, "Recent Museum Acquisitions", Parnassus, College Art Association of America (May 1940), Vol. 12, No. 5, pp. 46-50, 56, pp. 47-48, repr. p. 47
  • The Fine Arts: The Misfortunes of Silenus, by Piero di Cosimo, Boston Evening Transcript (Boston, April 13, 1940), Part Five, p. 7, repr.
  • R. Langton Douglas, "The Fall of Man by Piero di Cosimo", The Burlington Magazine (June 1945), Vol. 86, No. 507, pp. 134-139, pp. 137-138
  • Robert Langton Douglas, Piero di Cosimo, University of Chicago Press (Chicago, IL, 1946), pp. 61-64, repr. as plates XLIV and XLV (detail)
  • Paola Morselli, "Ragioni di un pittore fiorentino: Piero di Cosimo", L' Arte (Milan, 1958), pp. 3-65, pp. 21, 49
  • Paola Morselli, "Saggio di un catalogo delle opere di Piero di Cosimo", L'arte (Milan, January - March 1958), Vol. 23, pp. 67-92, p. 76
  • Bernard Berenson, Italian Pictures of the Renaissance: a list of the principal artists and their works, with an index of places. Florentine School., Phaidon Publishers and New York Graphic Society (Greenwich, CT, 1963), p. 175
  • Everett Fahy, "Some Later Works of Piero di Cosimo", Gazette des Beaux-Arts (Paris, April 1965), pp. 201-212, pp. 201-203, 211
  • Mina Bacci, Piero di Cosimo, Bramante (Milan, Italy, 1966), pp. 92-93, cat. no. 36
  • Burton B. Fredericksen and Federico Zeri, Census of Pre-Nineteenth-Century Italian Paintings in North American Public Collections, Harvard University Press (Cambridge, MA, 1972), p. 164
  • Andrea Kirsh, "Worlds Below: An Investigation of Infrared Reflectography" (thesis (certificate in conservation), Straus Center for Conservation and Technical Studies, April 1973), Unpublished, pp. 1-25 passim
  • Mina Bacci, L'opera completa di Piero di Cosimo, Rizzoli (Milan, 1976), pp. 92-93, no. 35, repr. as tav. IL, L (detail), and LI (detail)
  • Paul Barolsky, Infinite Jest: Wit and Humor in Italian Renaissance Art, University of Missouri Press (Columbia and London, 1978), p. 49, repr. as fig. 2-16
  • Everett Fahy, Italian Paintings at Fenway Court and Elsewhere, Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum (Boston, 1978), p. 41
  • Caroline Houser, Dionysos and His Circle: Ancient Through Modern, exh. cat., Fogg Art Museum (Cambridge, 1979), pp. 62-64, cat. no. 42, repr. p. 63
  • Kristin A. Mortimer and William G. Klingelhofer, Harvard University Art Museums: A Guide to the Collections, Harvard University Art Museums and Abbeville Press (Cambridge and New York, 1986), no. 170, p. 151, repr.
  • Richard Wollheim, "Painting as an Art [The A.W. Mellon Lectures in the Fine Arts, 1984]", Bollingen Series (Princeton, NJ, 1987), Vol. 35, No. 33, p. 56, repr. as fig. 33 and 34 (detail)
  • Edgar Peters Bowron, European Paintings Before 1900 in the Fogg Art Museum: A Summary Catalogue including Paintings in the Busch-Reisinger Museum, Harvard University Art Museums (Cambridge, MA, 1990)
  • Sharon Fermor, Piero di Cosimo: Fiction, Invention, and Fantasia, Reaktion Books (London, 1993), pp. 81-86, repr. as fig. 29
  • Anne B. Barriault, Spalliera Paintings of Renaissance Tuscany: Fables of Poets for Patrician Homes, Pennsylvania State University Press (University Park, Pennsylvania, 1994), p. 153, cat. no. 11.2, repr.
  • James Cuno, Alvin L. Clark, Jr., Ivan Gaskell, and William W. Robinson, Harvard's Art Museums: 100 Years of Collecting, ed. James Cuno, Harvard University Art Museums and Harry N. Abrams, Inc. (Cambridge, MA, 1996), pp. 166-7
  • Masterpieces of world art : Fogg Art Museum, Arthur M. Sackler Museum, Busch-Reisinger Museum, 1997
  • Malcolm Bull, The Mirror of the Gods: Classical Mythology in Renaissance Art, Allen Lane (London and New York, 2005), pp. 231-232; repr. in b/w as fig. 85
  • Dennis Geronimus, Piero di Cosimo: Visions Beautiful and Strange, Yale University Press (U.S.) (New Haven and London, 2006), pp. 21, 82-83, 100-106, 125, 302 n. 184, and 317 n. 104; repr. in color p. 103 as Fig. 71.
  • Stephan Wolohojian and Alvin L. Clark, Jr., Harvard Art Museum/ Handbook, ed. Stephan Wolohojian, Harvard Art Museum (Cambridge, 2008), p. 64, repr.
  • Maurizia Tazartes, Piero di Cosimo: "ingegno astratto e difforme" (Florence, 2010), p. 91 repr. in color as fig. 40
  • "Frame by Frame: Out on a limb with 'Discover of Honey'; Treasures Tucked Away in our Museums' Permanent Collections", The Boston Globe (Boston, June 21, 2011), p. G3
  • Philippe Morel, Renaissance dionysiaque: Inspiration bachique, imaginaire du vin et de la vigne dans l'art européen (1430-1630), Le félin (Paris, 2014), p. 399, fig. 114
  • Carlo Ginzburg, Paura, reverenza, terrore: cinque saggi di iconografia politica , Adelphi (Milan, 2015), pp. 23-25, fig. 2
  • Antonio Natali and Serena Padovani, Piero di Cosimo 1462-1522: Pittore eccentrico fra Rinascimento e Maniera, exh. cat., Galleria degli Uffizi (Florence, 2015), cat. no. 35b; repr. p. 283; repr. 191, fig. 9; pp. 36, 154, 175, 181, 186, 192
  • Dennis Geronimus and Gretchen Hirschauer, Piero di Cosimo: The Poetry of Painting in Renaissance Florence, exh. cat., National Gallery of Art (Washington, D.C., 2015), pp. 5, 10, 18, 48, 52-53, 75, 77-78, 87-88, 144-48 as cat. 15b, 151, 174, 195, 204 and repr. in color pp. 74 (detail), 144 (detail), and 147
  • Nicholas Hall, Dawn Ades, Oliver Berggruen, and J. Patrice Marandel, Endless Enigma: Eight Centuries of Fantastic Art, exh. cat., David Zwirner Books (New York, 2018), pp. 31-33, repr. p. 32 as fig. 1

Exhibition History

  • Master Paintings from the Fogg Collection, Fogg Art Museum, Cambridge, 04/13/1977 - 08/31/1977
  • Dionysos and His Circle: Ancient through Modern, Fogg Art Museum, Cambridge, 12/10/1979 - 02/10/1980
  • Re-View: S422 Ancient & Byzantine Art & Numismatics, Harvard Art Museums/Arthur M. Sackler Museum, Cambridge, 04/12/2008 - 06/18/2011
  • 32Q: 2540 Renaissance, Harvard Art Museums, Cambridge, 11/16/2014 - 01/07/2015; Harvard Art Museums, Cambridge, 09/01/2016 - 01/31/2017; Harvard Art Museums, Cambridge, 07/18/2018 - 01/01/2050
  • Piero di Cosimo (1462-1522): Painter-Poet of Renaissance Florence, National Gallery of Art, Washington, 02/01/2015 - 05/03/2015; Galleria degli Uffizi, Florence, 06/23/2015 - 09/27/2015

Subjects and Contexts

  • Google Art Project

Related Works

Verification Level

This record has been reviewed by the curatorial staff but may be incomplete. Our records are frequently revised and enhanced. For more information please contact the Division of European and American Art at am_europeanamerican@harvard.edu