Andrea del Castagno

The Italian painter Andrea del Castagno (1421-1457) was a leading artist in the early Florentine Renaissance.

Andrea del Castagno was born in a village in the hills east of Florence. He is first recorded in Florence in 1440, when he was commissioned to paint frescoes (now destroyed) showing condemned traitors hanged, a traditional job given to little-regarded artists. Like nearly all the major Florentine artists of the age, he visited Venice (1442), where in collaboration with the otherwise unknown Francesco da Faenza he executed a modest set of saints with God the Father on the vault of a chapel in S. Zaccaria. Back in Florence, Andrea designed a window and executed minor works for the Cathedral (1444-1445). His frescoes for the lawyers' guild in Florence (1444-1445, 1447) are no longer extant, nor are his frescoes completing the life of the Virgin (1450-1452) begun by Domenico Veneziano in S. Egidio, Florence.

No records exist for the great frescoes Andrea painted for the Carducci country house and for the convent of S. Apollonia in Florence (these are now assembled in the Castagno Museum, S. Apollonia). For the hall of the Carducci house he painted a Virgin and Child, Adam and Eve, and nine famous persons—a local version of the "Nine Worthies" common on medieval tapestries. In Andrea's version three Florentine poets, three Florentine soldiers, and three famous women are depicted standing in simulated marble niches, both niche and figure hard and bright. From earlier Renaissance artists like Donatello and Masaccio, Andrea learned to paint massive three-dimensional figures, but unlike his predecessors he was not interested in integrating these figures harmoniously with the environment. Rather, he used his knowledge of perspective to make the figures dominate the space.

Andrea began the frescoes for the refectory of S. Apollonia about 1447. On the upper part of the end wall are the Crucifixion, Entombment, and Resurrection; the muscular men in twisting robes are presented on a single plane. On the lower part of the wall is Andrea's famous Last Supper. Thirteen stony figures sit around a long table in front of a paneled marble wall. There is no emphasis on the figure of Christ but some on Judas, isolated on the other side of the table. The room is actually drawn in rather deep perspective, the side walls half as long as the back one, but a shallow space suggested by the table and figures is what spectators register in this single case of elaborate perspective in Andrea's work. The frescoed monument to the general Niccolò da Tolentino (1456) in the Cathedral of Florence, like Paolo Uccello's earlier one to Sir John Hawkwood next to it, is a simulated sculpture; typically, Andrea eliminates Uccello's perspective brackets and flanks the base with muscular shield bearers. Andrea's other late frescoes, a Trinity and a St. Julian in SS. Annunziata, are more relaxed, letting light and air tone down the hard ascetic figures.

Andrea del Castagno died of the plague in Florence on Aug. 19, 1457.

Further Reading

The standard work on Andrea del Castagno is in Italian: Mario Salmi, Paolo Uccello, Andrea del Castagno, Domenico Veneziano (1936; rev. ed. 1938). There is no satisfactory monograph in English. □

Castagno, Andrea del ( Andrea di Bartolo di Bargilla) (b Castagno, nr. Florence, c.1418; bur. Florence, 19 Aug. 1457). One of the most powerful Florentine painters in the generation after Masaccio. Nothing is known of his training, and the first recorded episode in his career dates from 1440, when he painted frescos at the Palazzo del Podestà depicting rebels against Cosimo de' Medici who were sentenced to be hanged by the heels, earning him the sobriquet Andreino degli Impiccati (Little Andrew of the hanged men). These have been destroyed, and Andrea's earliest known surviving works are frescos in the church of S. Zaccaria in Venice (1442), painted in collaboration with an obscure artist called Francesco da Faenza. By 1444 he was back in Florence, designing a stained-glass window for the cathedral, and soon after he began his greatest work, a series of frescos on Christ's Passion for the monastery of S. Apollonia (now a Castagno museum), dominated by one of the most celebrated of all portrayals of the Last Supper (1447). In their emotional vigour and sinewy realism these paintings have been regarded as the pictorial equivalent of the sculpture of Donatello, but they also have something of Masaccio's monumentality. Andrea's other noteworthy works in Florence include a frescoed equestrian portrait in the cathedral—Niccolò da Tolentino (1455–6), a pendant to Uccello's earlier Sir John Hawkwood—and two extraordinarily intense altar frescos for SS. Annunziata (c.1455) showing St Julian Receiving Absolution from Christ and The Trinity Appearing to Sts Jerome, Paula, and Eustochium. Vasari wrote that Castagno murdered his friend Domenico Veneziano, and it was not until the 19th century that it was discovered that Castagno had died young of the plague and that Domenico had in fact outlived him. The story, however, makes it easy to believe that the intensity of his work reflected a fierce temperament.

Andrea del Castagno ( Andrea di Bartolo di Bargilla) (c.1418–57). One of the most powerful Florentine painters in the generation after Masaccio. He is named after his birthplace, Castagno, a village north-east of Florence. Nothing is known of his training, and the first recorded episode in his career dates from 1440, when he painted frescos at the Palazzo del Podestà depicting rebels against Cosimo de' Medici who were sentenced to be hanged by the heels, earning him the sobriquet Andreino degli Impiccati (of the hanged men). These have been destroyed, and Andrea's earliest known surviving works are frescos in the church of S. Zaccaria in Venice (1442). By 1444 he was back in Florence, designing a stained-glass window for the cathedral, and soon after he began his greatest work, a series of frescos on Christ's Passion for the monastery of S. Apollonia (now a Castagno museum), dominated by one of the most celebrated of all portrayals of the Last Supper (1447). In their emotional vigour and sinewy realism these paintings have been regarded as the pictorial equivalent of the sculpture of Donatello, but they also have something of Masaccio's monumentality. Andrea's other noteworthy works in Florence include a frescoed equestrian portrait in the cathedral (Niccolò da Tolentino, 1455–6)—a pendant to Uccello's earlier Sir John Hawkwood—and two extraordinarily intense altar frescos for SS. Annunziata (c.1455): St Julian Receiving Absolution from Christ and The Trinity Appearing to Sts Jerome, Paula, and Eustochium. Vasari wrote that Castagno murdered his friend Domenico Veneziano, and it was not until the 19th century that it was discovered that Castagno had died young of the plague and that Domenico had in fact outlived him. The story, however, makes it easy to believe that the intensity of his work reflected a fierce temperament.

Andrea del Castagno , c.1423–1457, major Florentine painter of the early Renaissance. His first recorded painting (1440; now destroyed), effigies of hanged men, enemies to the Florentine regime, brought him fame in spite of its disconcerting subject. Two years later he was in Venice, frescoing the ceiling of the chapel in San Zaccaria. He returned to Florence and c.1445 began the cycle of the Passion of Christ for the church of Sant' Apollonia. Best known of these scenes is the Last Supper. Castagno combined a rigorous perspective with harsh, metallic lighting that greatly intensified the drama of the scene. He decorated the hall of the Villa Pandolfini with heroic figures, including Pippo Spano, Dante, Petrarch, and Boccaccio. Here the influence of Donatello can be felt, particularly in the vitality and plastic rendering of forms. In the Annunziata Church there is a powerful conception of the Savior and St. Julian. His last dated work is the equestrian statue of Niccolò da Tolentino in the cathedral. Other examples of his art are David (National Gall. of Art, Washington, D.C.) and the Resurrection (Frick Coll., New York City).

Andrea del Castagno. See Castagno.