Piero Di Cosimo (1461/62--1522) was characterised in Giorgio Vasari's Lives of the Artists (1550) as an eccentric, who lived on a diet of hard-boiled eggs, and hated the sound of children crying, men coughing, and friars chanting. Yet Piero was a successful artist in Florence, celebrated for his imaginative and often unorthodox treatment of classical themes, and for his fascination with nature. The Forest Fire in the Ashmolean Museum is one of his most beautiful and enigmatic pictures.