Discovery of Honey by Piero di Cosimo

Piero di Cosimo's Discovery of Honey is one of the most delightfully eccentric paintings in the Florentine Renaissance, depicting the mythological moment when Bacchus and his companions discovered honey as part of the story of early civilization's development. Combining Ovid's Fasti with his own primitivist imagination, Piero creates a world of satyrs, nymphs, and rough mortals in a landscape of ancient trees, filling his panel with the boisterous activity of beings who stand at the threshold between animal and human life.

The panel employs carefully layered tempera on prepared wood, with the systematic building of form through tonal gradations and the controlled application of highlights that characterize professional Italian workshop practice.