The eccentric paintings of Piero di Cosimo (1462-1522) have intrigued people ranging from Giorgio Vasari to the Surrealists—André Breton described him as the “ultimate incarnation of what was best in the Renaissance.” But it is only now, nearly 500 years after his death, that the Florentine artist is being honoured with his first retrospective. The exhibition, opening in Washington, DC, and going on to Florence, will be remarkably complete, reassembling nearly all his surviving paintings. There will be 34 fully accepted works (plus four attributed paintings), leaving only half a dozen or so which could not be borrowed.

The 16th-century art historian Vasari described Piero as a solitary person, “more animal than human,” who never cleaned his rooms and allowed his garden to grow wild.