The Death of Procris

A woman lies on her side in a landscape, bearing fatal wounds on her neck and hand. A grieving satyr kneels by her head, gently touching her shoulder, while a large brown dog watches from the right. The background shows a calm body of water with distant hills, populated by various shorebirds and dogs.

The painting interprets a tragedy from Ovid's Metamorphoses through the lens of Renaissance natural philosophy, specifically exploring the empathy between humans, hybrid creatures, and animals. It reflects the intellectual environment of late 15th-century Florence, where artists like Piero di Cosimo engaged with Lucretian ideas about the early, 'primitive' state of humanity and the natural world.