Reappraising Piero di Cosimo's serpents: the role of vipers in Renaissance Florence

Abstract

There are two works of Piero di Cosimo's which predominantly feature serpents, Portrait of Simonetta Vespucci (c. 1480–85) and Saint John the Evangelist (1504–05). For 500 years these snakes have been generally assumed to be vipers or asps. In fact, both snakes are drawn with such detail that they are recognizable as a harmless species of snake commonly occurring in Europe, the Western Whip Snake (Hierophis viridiflavus). If we can discern what Piero knew of these snakes and whether he made a conscious choice to not portray a venomous snake then that information might lead to a clearer understanding of his iconographic intent. A journey into Renaissance Florence reveals a citizenry in near‐constant fear of plague and a world where vipers took on an outsized significance due to their inclusion in a widespread antidote to the plague, theriac. As a result we find a populace – in particular, apothecaries, viper‐catchers and snakehandlers – that, from necessity, was more attuned to its snake fauna than we had imagined. This was a knowledge that Piero and other artists, due to their close association with apothecaries, would have had readily available to them and which may have informed their artistic choices.