Masaccio

The Italian painter Masaccio (1401-1428) was the first great exponent of Renaissance painting. In his brief life he produced four major works utilizing the new discipline of space defined in perspective.

Tommaso di Giovanni, called Masaccio, was born in San Giovanni Valdarno on the day of St. Thomas, for whom he was named. His father, Giovanni Cassai, died when Masaccio was 5; his mother remarried, and a stepsister's husband, the only local painter, Mariotto di Cristofano, in all likelihood took Masaccio on as an apprentice. He probably received the nickname Masaccio (Terrible Tom) to distinguish him from his collaborator Masolino (Little Tom).

Masaccio went to Florence when he was about 20 and very soon joined the most modern and prominent artist group there, headed by the sculptor-architect Filippo Brunelleschi and the sculptor Donatello. Claiming as their own the heritage of Roman antiquity and of Giotto, the great Florentine master of the 14th century, they developed a new art of space and form. It utilized exact perspective invented by Brunelleschi and anatomical realism and applied these skills to narratives depicting critical moments in human relationships. Brunelleschi and Donatello found in the young Masaccio someone who could transfer these concerns into the medium of painting, using as well realistic contrasts of light and shade and the startling novelty of continuous luminous color areas that built forms and almost eliminated drawn edges. All of these innovations were recorded in the handbook on painting written in 1435 by Leon Battista Alberti, which was dedicated to Brunelleschi and alluded to Masaccio.

The Sagra del Carmine, a fresco that was in the cloister of S. Maria del Carmine in Florence, Masaccio's only major lost work, was apparently also his first large project. The Sagra represents the consecration of the church, which took place in 1422, and the painting was executed by 1425. Such a monumental representation of a local current event was apparently an innovation. Some 16th-century drawings have been called copies of it, but this is an error. In 1425 Masolino, a leading painter of the late Gothic style, left for Hungary, and he seems to have bequeathed some work in progress to Masaccio, who came from the same region. This may account for their collaboration on the small altarpiece Madonna and Child with St. Anne. Most of the figures are by Masolino, but the Madonna appears to have been painted by Masaccio over Masolino's outline drawing, and the Christ Child is entirely Masaccio's creation. It reveals a powerful vitality evoked by glowing light and a convincing solidity of forms.

Probably also of 1425 is Masaccio's first fresco, usually called the Trinity, in S. Maria Novella, Florence. A new approach to its remarkable use of perspective, often cited as typical of the time but actually more complex by far than any other cases, has been stimulated by recent study of the circumstances of its commission, involving the learned prior of the Dominican convent of S. Maria Novella. Probably much helped by Brunelleschi in rendering the perspective, Masaccio used it to support the theological theme, the relation of the Trinity and Crucifixion, where one figure, Christ, participates in both themes and thus illustrates the dual nature of Christ as immortal God and suffering man, a doctrine, "Corpus Domini," of special concern to Dominicans. The realistic perspective spaces are cut into compartments that underline this presentation.

In 1426, as an unusually full set of documents reveals, Masaccio painted a polyptych for S. Maria del Carmine in Pisa, Donatello apparently being his sponsor. It was later disassembled, and only some parts survive: the Madonna and Child Enthroned, the central panel; two small saints, St. Paul and St. Andrew; the pinnacle with the Crucifixion; and the predella and framing columns. While the central panel recalls the thickset bodies and glowing vigor of the earlier Madonna and Child with St. Anne, the tiny scenes of the predella introduce Masaccio's narrative art, with strong, sometimes ugly people bathed in warm color and situated in tightly orchestrated spaces.

Brancacci Chapel

That is the style of Masaccio's last and greatest work, the frescoes of the Brancacci Chapel in S. Maria del Carmine, Florence. The work, begun by Masolino for the merchant Felice Brancacci, was probably resumed by him in 1427, when he returned from Hungary, but now in collaboration with Masaccio, who did half of it, six scenes. Five are stories from the life of St. Peter, and the sixth is the Expulsion from the Garden of Eden, a "preface" painted in the narrow thickness of the entrance archway.

In the first scene, St. Peter Baptizing, a jostling crowd is arranged in a semicircle, much as in the predella of the Pisa polyptych. In the famous Tribute Money (the rare subject was probably chosen to propagandize for an income tax reform in Florence of the same year) Masaccio simplified the grouping, making a more skeletal geometry but also giving each figure a massive grandeur. The Expulsion takes this geometry of spatial siting of each figure to an extreme, and the figures of Adam and Eve have powerful emotional expressiveness.

The three remaining scenes, on a lower tier, are spatially more complex and sketchier in brushwork-advanced work not reached by other artists for some generations. In the Miracle of the Shadow, St. Peter and St. John walk forward, and three cripples are shown in recession in stages of being cured; where the two groups pass each other, the miracle happens, and theme and geometry coincide. In St. Peter and St. John Distributing Alms, another reference to Florentine fiscal policy, Masaccio employs a complex W-shaped space. The Raising of the Pagan King's Son was partly repainted 50 years later; for unknown reasons Masaccio went to Rome, where he died at the age of 26.

Further Reading

Ugo Procacci, All the Paintings of Masaccio (1962), is brief but authoritative. A full and up-to-date account is Luciano Berti, Masaccio (1967). □

Masaccio ( Tommaso di Ser Giovanni di Mone Cassai) (b Castel San Giovanni [now San Giovanni Valdarno], nr. Florence, 21 Dec. 1401; d Rome, ?June 1428 [or perhaps 1429]). Florentine painter. Although he died aged only 26 or 27, he brought about a revolution in painting and he ranks alongside his friends Alberti, Brunelleschi, and Donatello as one of the founding fathers of the Renaissance. His affectionate nickname, which may be translated as ‘hulking Tom’ or ‘sloppy Tom’, was given to him, so Vasari says, because he was so completely absorbed in art that ‘he refused to give any time to worldly matters, even to the way he dressed’.

Masaccio became a member of the painters' guild in Florence in 1422, but nothing is known of his training, the tradition that he was taught by Masolino, later his collaborator, now being discounted. The earliest work attributed to him is the S. Giovenale triptych (1422, S. Pietro, Cascia di Reggello), which is somewhat uncouth but reveals a totally individual spirit in its rejection of all Gothic elegance and concentration on the weight and bulk of the figures. Instead of learning from contemporary painters, Masaccio looked back to Giotto for inspiration, recapturing the gravity of feeling and grandeur of form that characterized his work. But whereas Giotto set his figures in space intuitively, Masaccio grappled with and solved the problem of creating a completely coherent and consistent sense of three dimensions on a two-dimensional surface, his work thus becoming part of ‘the bed-rock of European art’ (in Kenneth Clark's phrase). His enormous achievement was based on his mastery of the new science of perspective and his use of a single consistent light source to define the structure of the body and its draperies. Among contemporary artists he was closest in spirit to Donatello. Both artists were less concerned with surface appearances and isolated detail than with the underlying construction of objects and both excelled at the depiction of emotion with great force and directness.

Masaccio has left three great works to posterity in which he enunciated his new principles: a polyptych (1426) for the Carmelite church in Pisa (the central panel is in the National Gallery in London, and the other ten surviving panels—probably representing about half the original total—are in the Gemäldegalerie, Berlin, the Getty Museum, Los Angeles, the Museo di Capodimonte, Naples, and the Museo Nazionale, Pisa); a fresco cycle, done in collaboration with Masolino, on the life of St Peter (with additional scenes of the Temptation of Adam and Eve and the Expulsion from Paradise) in the Brancacci Chapel of S. Maria del Carmine, Florence (c.1425–8); and a fresco of the Trinity in S. Maria Novella, Florence (c.1428). Masaccio moved to Rome in 1428, leaving the frescos in the Brancacci Chapel unfinished, and died so suddenly that Vasari said ‘there were some who even suspected he had been poisoned’. Vasari adds that ‘during his lifetime he had made only a modest name for himself’, and certainly many of his Florentine contemporaries and successors were unmoved by his innovations. He was a great inspiration to the progressive masters of the next generation, however ( Fra Angelico, Filippo Lippi, Piero della Francesca), and Vasari records a whole roster of major artists, including Leonardo, Michelangelo, and Raphael, who studied his work with profit.

Masaccio's younger brother, Giovanni di Ser Giovanni (1406–86), was also a painter, known by the nickname Lo Scheggia (the splinter); this presumably indicates he was slight in stature or marks his connections with woodworking (his grandfather made wooden boxes and much of his own work consisted of decorating objects such as cassoni and deschi da parto).

Masaccio ( Tommaso di Ser Giovanni di Mone Cassai) (1401–28/9). Florentine painter. Although he died aged only 26 or 27, he brought about a revolution in painting and he ranks alongside his friends Alberti, Brunelleschi, and Donatello as one of the founding fathers of the Renaissance. His affectionate nickname, which may be translated as ‘Hulking Tom’ or ‘Sloppy Tom’, was given to him, so Vasari says, because he was so completely absorbed in art that ‘he refused to give any time to worldly matters, even to the way he dressed’. He became a member of the painters' guild in Florence in 1422, but nothing is known of his training, the tradition that he was taught by Masolino, later his collaborator, now being discounted. The earliest work attributed to him is the S. Giovenale Triptych (1422, S. Pietro, Cascia di Reggelio), which is somewhat uncouth but reveals a totally individual spirit in its rejection of all Gothic elegance and concentration on the weight and bulk of the figures. Instead of learning from contemporary painters, Masaccio looked back to Giotto for inspiration, recapturing the gravity of feeling and grandeur of form that characterized his work. But whereas Giotto set his figures in space intuitively, Masaccio grappled with and solved the problem of creating a completely coherent and consistent sense of three dimensions on a two-dimensional surface, his work thus becoming part of ‘the bed-rock of European art’ (in Kenneth Clark's phrase). His enormous achievement was based on his mastery of the new science of perspective and his use of a single consistent light source to define the structure of the body and its draperies. Among contemporary artists he was closest in spirit to Donatello. Both artists were less concerned with surface appearances and isolated detail than with the underlying construction of objects and both excelled at the depiction of emotion with great force and directness.

Masaccio has left three great works to posterity in which he enunciated his new principles: a polyptych (1426) for the Carmelite church in Pisa (the central panel is in the National Gallery in London, and the other ten surviving panels—probably representing about half the original total—are in the Gemäldegalerie, Berlin; the Getty Museum, Los Angeles; the Museo di Capodimonte, Naples; and the Museo Nazionale, Pisa); a fresco cycle, done in collaboration with Masolino, on the life of St Peter (with additional scenes of the Temptation of Adam and Eve and the Expulsion from Paradise) in the Brancacci Chapel of S. Maria del Carmine, Florence (c.1425–8); and a fresco of the Trinity in S. Maria Novella, Florence (c.1428). Masaccio moved to Rome in 1428, leaving the frescos in the Brancacci Chapel unfinished, and died so suddenly that Vasari said ‘there were some who even suspected he had been poisoned’. Vasari adds that ‘during his lifetime he had made only a modest name for himself’, and certainly many of his Florentine contemporaries and successors were unmoved by his innovations. He was a great inspiration to the progressive masters of the next generation, however ( Fra Angelico, Filippo Lippi, Piero della Francesca), and Vasari records a whole roster of major artists, including Leonardo, Michelangelo, and Raphael, who studied his work with profit.

Masaccio's younger brother, Giovanni di Ser Giovanni (1406–86), was also a painter, known by the nickname Lo Scheggia (‘The Splinter’); this presumably indicates he was slight in stature or marks his connections with woodworking (his grandfather made wooden boxes and much of his own work consisted of decorating objects such as cassoni and deschi da parto).

Masaccio (1401–1428)

Tommaso Cassai, nicknamed “Masaccio” or “Thomas the Absent-Minded,” was an artist of the early Renaissance who broke new ground in the technique of painting. Born in San Giovanni Valdarno, a small town near Arezzo in Tuscany, Italy, Masaccio traveled to Florence, where he joined the city's painters guild as well as a circle of artists, including Filippo Brunelleschi and Donatello, who were developing new ways of depicting the human form and setting it in three-dimensional space. His first major work was a fresco painting, Sagra del Carmine, done for the cloister of Santa Maria del Carmine in Florence. This work, one of the first large paintings to render a contemporary event, was completed by 1425 but since that time has been destroyed.

Very few other works of Masaccio's have survived into modern times, but on these paintings rests his reputation as a highly skilled and original painter. He collaborated with Tommaso Masolino on a polyptych, or multipaneled altarpiece, for the church of Santa Maria del Carmine in Pisa. This work was broken apart and found its way to several museums. The central panel, the Madonna and Child Enthroned, was flanked by portraits of Saint Paul and Saint Andrew.

Masaccio also completed an important series of frescoes in the Brancacci chapel of the Church of Santa Maria del Carmine in Florence, as well as a fresco of the Trinity in the church of Santa Maria Novella. The Brancacci chapel fresco was commissioned by Felice Brancacci to Masaccio and his collaborator Masolino da Panicale. The paintings include depictions of biblical events, set in a classical world: the Expulsion from the Garden of Eden, Tribute Money, St. Peter Baptizing, Miracle of the Shadow, and St. Peter and St. John Distributing Alms. Inspired by the new sculpture of Donatello's, Masaccio composed powerfully expressive and monumental figures, an important change from the slender, ethereal figures of the saints that were a tradition in European Gothic art. He depicted a wide range of emotional expression and more realistic human emotion, skillfully used light to sharpen and define contours, and incorporated classical architecture to reflect the new respect artists were showing for the works of the ancient Romans. The invention of artificial perspective by Brunelleschi also had an important impact on Masaccio. The painter used foreshortening of the figures and perspective as a means of guiding the spectator of the paintings to certain elements of the work, and of setting the figures in a more dramatic, natural world. This approach revolutionized painting and set the stage for the monumental and powerfully realistic paintings of the Renaissance.

The Brancacci chapel frescoes became a place of pilgrimage and study for many major Italian artists, including Michelangelo Buonarroti, Leonardo da Vinci, Sandro Botticelli, Andrea del Verrocchio, Andrea del Sartro, and many others. Before completing this work, however, Masaccio left for Rome, where he died at the young age of twenty-six.

See Also: Brunelleschi, Filippo; Donatello; Florence; painting

Masaccio , 1401-1428?, Italian painter. He is the foremost Italian painter of the Florentine Renaissance in the early 15th cent. Masaccio's original name was Tommaso Guidi. He was enrolled in the guild of St. Luke in 1424. Most of the creations of his brief lifetime have perished. Only four remain that are attributed to him without question: a polyptych (1426) painted for the Church of the Carmine, Pisa, many of its panels dispersed (now in London, Pisa, Naples, and Vienna) and some lost; the great Trinity fresco in Santa Maria Novella, Florence, which revolutionalized the understanding of perspective in painting; the Virgin with St. Anne (Uffizi), an early work in collaboration with the painter Masolino da Panicale ; and his masterpiece—a major monument in the history of art—the frescoes in the Brancacci Chapel of Santa Maria del Carmine, Florence, begun by Masolino and completed many years later by Filippino Lippi . Leaving the chapel unfinished, Masaccio went to Rome, where he died. Masaccio's independent works in the chapel include Expulsion from Eden, Peter and John Healing the Sick, Peter and John Distributing Alms, Peter Baptizing, The Raising of the King's Son, and The Tribute Money. These frescoes had a great impact on Florentine painting and were for generations the training school and inspiration of painters, among them Michelangelo and Raphael. Masaccio imparted a new sense of grandeur and austerity to the human figure. He used light to give dimension to the contour and achieved a classic sense of proportion. At the same time he created a diversity of character within a unified group and emphasized the range of emotional expression in heroic individuals. Masaccio is remembered primarily for his innovative use of perspective. His originality and imagination place his work in the tradition of Giotto and Michelangelo.

Bibliography: See studies by L. Berti (1967) and B. Cole (1980).

Masaccio (1401–28?) Florentine painter of the early Renaissance, b. Tommaso Giovanni di Mone. His three most important surviving works are: a polyptych (1426) for the Carmelite Church, Pisa (now in London, Berlin, and Naples); a fresco cycle that he created with Masolino, portraying the life of Saint Peter, in the Brancacci Chapel, Santa Maria del Carmine, Florence (c.1425–28); and the Trinity fresco in Santa Maria Novella, Florence (c.1428).

http://www.christusrex.org/www2/art/brancacci.htm; http://www.kfki.hu/~arthp/html/m/masaccio