PIERO DI COSIMO
(b. 1462, Firenze, d. 1521, Firenze)

The Building of a Palace

1515-20
Oil on panel, 83 x 197 cm
Ringling Museum of Art, Sarasota

This mysterious panel, owned by the Medici in the seventeenth century, was ordered by the guild of the masters of stone and wood (Arte dei Maestri di Pietre e di Legname) in Florence. This highly sequential and disjointed narrative unfolding in an exotic present is now extremely useful to scholars for its accurate depiction of the construction of an idealized Renaissance palace.