Piero di Cosimo acquires a reputation for eccentricity—a reputation enhanced and exaggerated by later commentators such as Giorgio Vasari, who includes a biography of Piero di Cosimo in his Lives of the Artists.

Reportedly, he was frightened of thunderstorms, and so pyrophobic that he rarely cooked his food; he lived largely on hard-boiled eggs, which he prepared fifty at a time while boiling glue for his artworks.

He also resisted any cleaning of his studio, or trimming of the fruit trees of his orchard; he lived, wrote Vasari, "more like a beast than a man".

If, as Vasari asserts, he spent the last years of his life in gloomy retirement, the change was probably due to preacher Girolamo Savonarola, under whose influence he turned his attention once more to religious art.

The death of his master Roselli may also have had an impact on Piero's morose elder years.

The Immaculate Conception with Saints, at the Uffizi, and the Holy Family, at Dresden, illustrate the religious fervor to which he was stimulated by Savonarola.

Fra Bartolomeo had been commissioned to create a fresco of the Universal Judgment for the Ospedale di Santa Maria Nuova, completed by Albertinelli and Giuliano Bugiardini when Baccio became a Dominican friar on July 26, 1500.

Entering the convent of San Marco the following year, he had renounced painting for several years, not resuming until 1504 when he became the head of the monastery workshop in obedience to his superior.

In this year he begins a Vision of St. Bernard for Bernardo Bianco's family chapel in the Badia Fiorentina, finished in 1507.

Soon thereafter, Raphael visits Florence and befriends the friar.

Bartolomeo learns perspective from the younger artist, while Raphael adds skills in coloring and handling of drapery, which is noticeable in the works he produces after their meeting.

With Raphael, he remains on the friendliest terms, and when he departs from Rome, leaves in his hands two unfinished pictures, which Raphael completes.