The Forest Fire
Piero di Cosimo, 1505
The Forest Fire is an oil on panel by Piero di Cosimo, dated to around 1505 and held at the Ashmolean Museum in Oxford. Its subject was unusual for the period: no human figures take the lead, and the scene is instead one of animal panic. Deer, birds and other creatures flee in several directions as a fire spreads through the woods, so the viewer's eye moves across the composition following that restless motion. Among the animals are both recognisable species and imaginary ones, which reinforces the work's inventive character. Its literary source is usually linked to the fifth book of Lucretius's poem On the Nature of Things, which describes the origin and development of life and civilisation. For this reason the painting is often counted among the earliest Renaissance landscapes in which nature itself is the real subject, rather than a backdrop for a religious or mythological story.
- Painter
- Piero di Cosimo
- Date
- 1505
- Medium
- oil paint, panel
- Dimensions
- 71 × 202 cm
- Museum
- Ashmolean Museum, Oxford
- Genre
- landscape painting
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