Madonna and Child Enthroned with Sts. Peter, John the Baptist, Dominic and Nicholas of Bari

Piero di Cosimo is one of the most eccentric figures in late Quattrocento Florentine painting — Vasari describes him as almost reclusive, eating only hard-boiled eggs and refusing to have his studio cleaned. This early Madonna Enthroned with Sts. Peter, John the Baptist, Dominic, and Nicholas (c. 1483) predates the mythological works for which he is best known, but already shows his characteristic quality: figures who seem to inhabit their own interior world, slightly removed from the viewer. The inclusion of Dominic and Nicholas alongside the more common Peter and John suggests a commission for a Dominican or charitable institution, as Nicholas was patron of multiple guilds and confraternities.

Piero di Cosimo's early style shows strong influence from his teacher Cosimo Rosselli, but with a proto-Leonardesque softness in the landscape backgrounds and a tendency to let atmospheric haze blur distant forms. The saints' faces are individually characterized with an attentiveness to personality that gives the sacra conversazione unusual psychological variety. Sfumato-like transitions in the flesh modeling point toward the atmospheric concerns that would dominate his later mythological paintings.