"McHam takes the reader back to the delighted experiences of Piero di Cosimo’s first viewers, who not only enjoyed their physical beauty but the conversation and learned intellectual exchanges that they originally provoked. McHam discusses Piero’s paintings by type – mythologies, altarpieces, portraits – and clarifies the demands that each placed on the artist, bringing the reader close to Piero’s creative process. This book will re-insert Piero’s unusual paintings into the mainstream of Renaissance art history."

John T. Paoletti, Wesleyan University

"Piero di Cosimo was a master of magical thinking. In clear and compelling prose, Sarah Blake McHam situates Piero in his time without losing sight of his art’s strange poetry, ranging from the marvelous to the disarmingly prosaic, be it the depiction of a delicate lapis lazuli vase or the bristly silhouette of an errant pig. While prone to pictorial joking and the most unconventional transformations of Greco-Roman myth, Piero is reaffirmed by McHam as nothing if not successful, all the more so for his originality and daring."

Dennis Geronimus, New York University

"Piero di Cosimo’s bizarre paintings inspired the Surrealists – and are celebrated in Sarah Blake McHam’s myth-busting new study . . . In her informative study Piero di Cosimo, the artist, less celebrated than his direct peers Botticelli, Leonardo and Michelangelo, appears as an underappreciated figure in the history of Renaissance art . . . In Blake McHam’s hands, the full scope of Piero’s talent is explored . . . This book does a wonderful job of exploring Piero’s context . . . Without the facts required to write a biography, this is a delightful, diligent study of the most playful, surprising artist of the Renaissance."

Daily Telegraph