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