The Death of Procris

Piero di Cosimo's The Death of Procris shows the heroine lying on a bed of grass and wild flowers, a wound on her neck and blood staining her left arm and right hand. To her left, a kneeling faun leans over her with a tender gesture, while on the right a dog watches the scene. The subject comes from Ovid's Metamorphoses: Procris, jealous of her husband Cephalus, spied on him from behind a thicket and was killed by the javelin he threw, mistaking her for prey. Some scholars, however, doubt that this is the myth at all and describe an undetermined mythological scene, perhaps inspired by a play staged in Ferrara in 1487. The horizontal format suggests the panel may have been intended for a cassone, a bridal chest common in Renaissance Florence. The dogs and birds in the background, along with the dawn sky, have been read as allusions to alchemy, a field Piero knew through his master Cosimo Rosselli. This symbolic interpretation is suggestive but remains debated.

Painter

Piero di Cosimo

Date

1495

Medium

oil paint, poplar panel

Dimensions

65 × 184 cm

Museum

National Gallery, London

Genre

mythological painting

Depicts

major trauma, Procris, dog, satyr, black hair, blond hair, faun, male toplessness

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