Masaccio
NAME: Masaccio
ACHIEVEMENT(S): First major perspective painting (“Trinita”)
NICKNAME/ALIAS: Real name: Tommaso di Giovanni di Simone Guidi
DATE AND PLACE OF BIRTH: December 21, 1401, Castel San Giovanni [now San Giovanni Valdarno, Italy]
DATE/PLACE OF DEATH/AGE AT DEATH: June, 1428, Rome. Aged 26
DISCIPLINE: The arts
FIELD: Painting
LANGUAGE: Italian
PARENTS: Giovanni di Simone Cassai; Jacopa di Martinozzo di Dino
SIBLINGS: Giovanni (called Lo Scheggia) (???)
SPOUSE: None
CHILDREN: None
EDUCATION: Unknown
MAJOR WORK: Frescoes in the Brancacci Chapel of the Church of Santa Maria del Carmine, Florence
LIFE AND TIMES:
Masaccio was one of few Renaissance artists who did not come from an artistic family. There is no record of any apprenticeship, but when he was 16, a document described him as a Florentine painter, and three years later, he was inscribed in the Florentine painters' guild, the Arte dei Medici e Speziali.
Masaccio's earliest surviving work is a small triptych, done for the Church of San Giovenale, near his birthplace. Dated April, 1422, about three months after he matriculated in the Florentine guild, it shows the Madonna enthroned, two adoring angels, and four saints. It is now in the Uffizzi Gallery in Florence.
The work displays an unusual originality: its spare composition and the unidealized portrayal of the Madonna and Child are totally unlike contemporary Gothic Florentine painting. The figures reveal an understanding of <influenced by> Donatello*'s revolutionary sculptural style from which Masaccio learned to give expression to the human body.
Masaccio's next important work, a large, multi-paneled altarpiece for the Church of Santa Maria del Carmine at Pisa, dates from 1426. The altarpiece was dismantled in the 18th century and many parts have been lost, but 13 sections exist in museums and private collections. The "Virgin and Child Enthroned", originally at the center of the altarpiece, is in the National Gallery, London, and the "Adoration of the Magi" is in the Staatliche Museums, Berlin.
Around 1427, shortly after completing the Pisa altarpiece, Masaccio began working on the frescoes of the Brancacci Chapel in the Florentine Church of Santa Maria del Carmine. He was commissioned to finish scenes depicting the St. Peter stories after the artist Masolino had abandoned the job. The frescoes are considered Masaccio's masterpiece.
Although it has been a matter of debate through the years, most historians credit Masaccio with the "Expulsion of Adam and Eve" (or "Expulsion from Paradise"), "Baptism of the Neophytes," "The Tribute Money," "St. Peter Enthroned," "St. Peter Healing the Sick with His Shadow," "St. Peter Distributing Alms," and part of the "Resurrection of the Son of Theophilus".
Masaccio's Brancacci paintings are distinguished by high drama. His figures are created with strongly differentiated areas of light and dark, giving them a three-dimensional aspect. The most famous of his frescoes, "The Tribute Money," rivals Michelangelo's "David" as an icon of Renaissance art. It shows the debate between Christ and his followers over the morality of paying tribute to earthly authorities, and is populated by monumental figures remarkable for their weight and gravity in a setting of remarkable realism.
Between 1425 and 1427, Masaccio painted what was probably his last Florentine work, the fresco of "The Trinity" in the Church of Santa Maria Novella. This represents the Holy Trinity (Father, Son, and Holy Spirit) set in a barrel-vaulted hall before which kneel two donors.
Masaccio has painted the deep, coffered vault using a near-perfect system of linear perspective in which all the orthogonals recede to a central vanishing point, a method developed in Florence about 1410 by architect <influenced by> Brunelleschi*. "The Trinity" is the first surviving example of the systematic use of perspective in a painting.
The architectural setting of "The Trinity" is derived from contemporary buildings by Brunelleschi which, in turn, were much influenced by classical Roman structures. Masaccio and Brunelleschi, who met and became friends, shared a common artistic vision that was rational, human-scaled, and inspired by the ancient world.
In May, 1428, Masaccio left Florence for Rome, where he died before the end of June. He left neither a workshop nor any pupils to carry on his style.
Nevertheless, his paintings, though few and done for patrons and locations of only middling rank, made an immediate impact, influencing an entire generation of important Renaissance artists in the mid-15th century, including <influenced> Lippi* (a pupil of Masaccio), Fra Angelico, Andrea del Castagno, and <influenced> della Francesca*.
Masaccio was most influential about 75 years after his death, when his monumental figures and sculptural use of light inspired <influenced> da Vinci*, <influenced> Michelangelo*, and <influenced> Raphael*, the chief painters of the High Renaissance.
ASSESSMENT: Though his artistic life was a brief six years, Masaccio transformed Florentine painting and laid the groundwork for Western art
EXTRA CONNECTIONS: Influenced <influenced> Alberti*, <influenced> Uccello*
ONELINER: Masaccio, the first perspective painter
BIBLIOGRAPHY:
EB
Grove Dictionary of Art
Spike, John T., Masaccio,, New York & London: