ART OF THE RENAISSANCE Masaccio His Followers

Hello everyone, and in our lecture today we'll be leaving the 14th century and we'll be entering the 15th. However, before we quite leave the 14th, there's this little matter of Black Lake that started in the middle of the 14th century and caused so many deaths. There was a contemporaneous chronicler and his name was Matteo Villani, and in Amazement he wrote that the plague, instead of causing repentance, caused dissipation, so to feast during plague, literally. He is writing that the old toga-like costume of the Florentines was now replaced with very showy-tailed jerkins and the party-colored clothes, all of that adopted from wicked France. He is very unhappy about that. And so began the loosening of old bourgeois standards of the Florentine, and it culminated in a great deal of festivities and ceremonies at the end of the 14th century and, of course, into the 15th century, and all that gave phenomenal spectacle for the artists to depict. Also, he writes that in Florence was established this studio, sort of a place for higher learning, which ultimately will become the University of Florence, and as a result this loosening of morals and loosening of traditions and, of course, higher learning all demanded different art and more interesting art, so to speak, and the painter was positioned in a very good place to provide it. And here we go to Gentile da Fabriano, who was a painter at the time, and he is painting the Adoration of the Magi. Now, because it presented such fantastical opportunity for representation and for representing so many people and so many details, the Adoration of the Magi became one of the most favored theme in Florence, and there was even a club of the Adoration of the Magi, sort of a guild of the Adoration of the Magi, that promoted that particular theme, and it is now in the Uffizi. The painting was commissioned by a Florentine literati, erudite patron of the arts, whose name is Paolo Strozzi, here he is, he is now painted into the picture, and at the arrival of the artist in the city in 1420, at the arrival of Gentile da Fabriano, he took three years to paint it, and it was placed in the new chapel of the Church of Santa Trinita, which Lorenzo Ghiberti was executing at the time, and what we see here is a spectacle, is a great procession of the Florentines, who are, of course, painted as the train of the three Magi. The oldest Magi here is Paolo Strozzi himself, and the younger ones are his sons, and then there is this very, very, very long procession that leads to a town on the hill, with the foremost figures, very carefully depicted, with every detail depicted there and paid attention to. In general, it's still very, well, shall we say, Sienese, very gothic, very spectacular, many, many, many people with a great deal of cluster of heads, and the three Magi right here are painted also as they process. It's a narrative painting that details their, we see them over there too, as they received the message, and then they proceed from, presumably, a town on the hill to, as part of the cavalcade, and finally they arrive right here. The frame was also done by the same shop. The frame is a mostly gothic frame and lots of gold, even though not the background, absolutely phenomenal garments, and the garments are depicted with great, great attention to detail. This was the so-called international style, which was still very gothic, which was also very, very popular in Avignon, where popes were in residence back in the 14th century, and it is somewhat Byzantine in its gloriousness and its luxury. Nevertheless, we see the Madonna here, and she is wearing the beautiful blue robe, which is described in terms of light and shadow. Next to her is Joseph, Christ's child, looks like a child, and, of course, these spectacular figures that are adoring the child. Great narrative details, which sort of hearken to the Sienese love of details as well, and here we have two maids, who are sort of, they're not participating, they're just discussing, you can see them gossiping, you can see them talking to each other about every personage here, and a beautiful architectural detail here of a shed with a little roof, which provides also the opportunity for the painter to show his skill at light and shade, and also at cast shadow. As I said, the narrative detail is plentiful and fascinating, because in the train of the three kings, what we see here are the three kings and an ass, of course, and a cow. Here are the maids, essentially, they're looking at one of the gifts and showing to each other. Now, how much do you think that was? That's what it is. I mean, they're gossiping there, but then here, what's fascinating is not so much the kings themselves, well, of course, their garments are stunning, and here is a beautifully foreshortened servant, who is taking off his spears of the youngest king. The baby is definitely a baby, and he's sort of doing a little patting on the older king's pate, which also is very human, so a lot of very, very human details, but then he also takes the opportunity not only to portray the great and the wealthy, but also their train, and in their train we see a leopard, we see dogs, we see people fascinated by the spectacle, simple people, and here are the three horses, another leopard, let's see, there are the three horses right here, here they are, there's one leopard, there's another leopard, and these are the dogs, and it's almost as if the three horses are sort of discussing it as well, and gossiping, and then having a brilliant time of it, as you see here, almost laughing. There are even apes and little monkeys that are represented, so as I said, it's just full, full of beautiful, magnificent detail, the painting. Nothing is spared, nothing is cut out, everything is anxious to represent as much as he can, and as a result, the composition, of course, is extremely crowded. I mean, that many horses, and men, and animals, and what have you, could have never fit into the space provided here, but Fabriano just sacrifices this space for the sake of narrative detail, which is somewhat Sienese. Let's see, however, as is the case with so many of these altarpieces, the main theme is commissioned, and the main theme is agreed with the patrons, and therefore has to adhere, more or less, to the agreement. However, there are little narrative details that are called the predella, here they are, and there an artist has a lot more of free will, so to speak, a lot more freedom to do as he likes, and those three predella are very, very important, and here is one of them, and what it shows is what happened before, and this is the nativity, and as we see it, we see the shepherds receiving the message here from an angel that the king is born, and so they will proceed as well. Here are our tomates, the ones that we see gossiping later, it is the same shed, it's the same identical shed, and the play of light is quite remarkable here, because it is Christ's child who is the source of light, and it is from him that light emanates, and everything is lit up, and when we follow the details in the cave itself, they are, as I said, very remarkable, because here Gentile da Fabriano is really interested not only in light and shade, but also in space, this is a convincing space at this point. Poor Joseph is sleeping, the tree is done on a different scale from human beings, but nevertheless, what he seems to be interested in here is the distribution of light, and the distribution of space, and both of those are fascinating. Here's another one, and this is a little more Sienese, and that is what happened after the when Mary and Joseph must escape to Egypt from the wrath of Herod, and here we have the same two maids, almost as if the maids are inseparable from the group, and he likes the maids, and here they are, continue, they continue behind Mary and child, and Joseph, and they're still gossiping. The road is lovely, it's an Italian road, clearly on the way to Egypt, they pass beautiful towns, very medieval Italian towns, which are described, again, with the greatest of details. Instead of the moon, we now have the sun, and as a result, what Fabriano wants to do here is to show the light of the sun, literally distributed everywhere, and covering the whole image, and here is a medieval town. It may look like Siena, actually, with its great towers. There's a tower of the nobleman on the hill. He is very much attempting to describe Florence in a genuinely Italian countryside, Sienese countryside, and here's our shed. It almost as if, I mean, they should be going the other way, the other direction, but they're walking towards the shed, but here the artist just simply takes artistic license to distribute various points of interest as he likes, and now he also wants to show the scene in the town itself. He shows medieval buildings, beautiful medieval buildings. This looks almost like Brunelleschi right here, and Brunelleschi is working at the same time, of course, and our two maids now turn into a beautiful lady and her companion. Inside is the scene of the presentation at the temple. Well, clearly, the goal here is to show the city itself, and then on to balance the beauty and nobility of the lady. He also shows the daily life of the unfortunates. He makes sure to show us that he knows how to intuit perspective, and here we have a peek inside the building. That's Gentile de Fabriani, who still is very much painting in the 14th century tradition, in the tradition of the Lorenzetti, with, of course, the added feature of these brilliant processions and the loosening of the old traditions, and you can feel he just delights in it. But then a man appears, born in 1401. He will be known as Masaccio. He is born Tommaso di Ser Giovanni di Simone, and just as it happens with geniuses, there are these golden nuggets that appear out of nowhere, and that's what happened with Masaccio. Masaccio is actually a misnomer. I mean, he was clearly called Masaccio, but the accio seems to be a pejorative suffix, because he seemed to be not very careful about washing his own person, died in debt at the age of 27, never really cared to collect money owed to him, so he was called Masaccio, as from Tommaso Masso Masaccio. He was the first great painter of the Quattrocento, which is the 1400s, the 15th century, period in the Italian Renaissance, according to Vasari, who was, well, a first art historian, we can call him. Masaccio was the best painter of his generation because of his skill at recreating life-like figures and movements, as well as a convincing sense of three-dimensionality. Masaccio died at 26, 26 not 27, and little is known about the exact circumstances of his death. We have an altarpiece from him of Madonna and Child, and already here you can see the direction he is taking, because from the formal point of view, he will be completely revolutionary. You almost feel him looking around and saying to himself, lines, lines, lines everywhere, but there are no lines in nature. In other words, what we see as lines is sort of a border between different values of light or different colors. We perceive it in formal terms as lines, but they're not lines. They are the combination of two different values, as I said, or two different colors, and that's what he perceived. From the very beginning, he attempts to represent form without specific lines, but by using contours, which are created when different values, as I said, and colors are placed next to one another. Perhaps the best way to show this is, as you remember from our earlier lectures, this is the earliest among these three by Cimabue, who was the first great painter of Florence, and here she is, and there's still the detail of gold striation here, even though compared to earlier Byzantine altarpieces, she's much more human and soft. Softer still, his contemporary painter by the name of Duccio, right here, who studied in Florence with Cimabue, but then became the founder of the Sienese painting, the Renaissance Sienese painting. The gold striations are gone, the child all the more child, and here we can see Masaccio, who paints about 140 years later, and how completely human she is, how the mass is entirely convincing, how the child is very much a baby child, and what we see here for the first time is the halo in perspective, right here, even though the Madonna herself still has the halo kind of chiseled out of the wood and gilded, but the child has a perspectival halo, which in itself is very, very significant. And the angels are sitting in front playing instruments, a couple of angels on each side, she is sitting in a very convincing throne, the ratio is still different, Madonna is more important than the angels, and Madonna is larger. And here's the comparison between Giotto, who painted in 1310 and 100 years later, Masaccio's, and even though Giotto already gives us a great deal of mass, and a great deal of conviction, Masaccio goes further still. And now we go to one of the greatest places in Italy, a sort of Florentine Sistine Chapel, as they call it, or it's called the Brancacci Chapel, and in the Church of Santa Maria del Carmine, and yes, it's sometimes called the Sistine Chapel of the Early Renaissance, or it could also be called the Arena Chapel of the 15th century. And this is what it looks like, it's not a large chapel, and we'll be looking mostly at these two frescoes. Masaccio worked there, along with Fra Filippi, painted later, and then, but before him, or along with him, was one Masolino, who was actually a teacher of Masaccio, and there's a controversy still going on, even though less so, which ones were painted by Masaccio, which ones by Masolino, so we definitely will be looking at the Masaccio art, right here. It is dedicated to the life of Saint Peter, the whole chapel, and here are the two we'll be looking at. Please note that the light comes from this window, because Masaccio will accommodate for the light, as you see all the shadows here, a cast from that window, as if in reality, and the thing does look so real. But let's go first to the companion pieces, and here is the expulsion from the Garden of Eden. This slide is just to show you the other side, which was done by Masolino, and expulsion from the Garden of Eden. In painting, this is the first complete nudity that is represented. Interestingly, however, during the Counter-Reformation, which will occur in the middle of the 16th century, there will be an attempt to meet the challenge of Luther's reformation with his own weapons, and as such, well, shall we say, prudery, will rule the day, and a number of these nudes will indeed be painted over, not least of them the Last Judgment of Michelangelo, but this too was painted over here. But then, after the restoration of the Sistine Chapel, there was a great movement in restoring a number of great frescoes. This one as well was restored, and lo and behold, we see that indeed it was portrayed as nude. What is fascinating about it, it's not only a very realistic-looking nudity, but the fact is they're being expulsed from Paradise. Here is Saint Michael with his sword, essentially kicking them out, and they're going to do it to a desolation, which also is portrayed in their faces. Adam is covering his face, but Eve's face looks like a mask. The lines here were meant to be gold at first because they're leaving Paradise, but what is really, really fascinating is that because the light comes from Paradise, their cast shadows really should be extending from then forward, because that's where the light comes from. But what Masaccio here portrays is that their cast shadows are formed by the real light, not the artificial light of Paradise, but the true light of nature, and that in fact these two miserable, beautiful bodies are walking toward the light, the light of knowledge. And then we go to the fresco that's called the Tribute Money, and here one truly sees the accomplishment of Masaccio, because he realized that not only there's such a thing as a vanishing point perspective, as formulated by Brunellesco, but there's also such a thing as aerial perspective. Not only figures diminish as they recede backwards, but they also become more blurry, as in the case with these mountains. And it was a genius discovery. It was a true discovery of naturalistic representation. He also appears to give the same scale here to architecture and to human beings, and this too is a narrative painting. Now the story here is that Christ and his disciples come to the town of Capernaum on the lake of Galilee, and as they walk into the town here, a Roman official demands tax from them. And well, they're poor, they do not have any money, and Christ then tells Peter right here, well, go to the lake, you're a fisherman, get a fish, catch a fish, and you will find a gold piece inside that fish. And that's exactly what happens. Peter goes to the lake, catches the fish, finds the gold piece, and then pays that same man right here. We see Peter three times, one, two, three. We see the Roman official two times, once and twice. And then the disciples are here. All the halos are now in perspective, as you see here. The vista disappears into the aerial perspective, and for the most part, very few lines are used, and the contours, the forms are drawn by combinations of color. What is used here is not only the vanishing point, not only the aerial or atmospheric perspective, it's also called, but something that's called isoscephaly. And as you see, even though the participants form a circle in recession, all the heads exist on the same plane. And this feature was actually discovered by the ancient Greeks for the balance and harmony of the composition. And this isoscephaly is very much used by Masaccio as well. Now, the faces that he represents, for the most part, are, again, naturalistic coarse faces of fishermen and laborers, with the only exception of this face of the young Saint John. And this face is quoting ancient Greek or ancient Roman sculpture. As you see here, there's Peter with the fish, and the lines on his toenails are used to show that, well, these men do not have sandals. They walk around barefoot. And thus we have, this is, as I said, in Florence, in the Brancacci Chapel, and one of the greatest frescoes that ever was painted. He then paints, very much under the influence of Brunelleschi, whom he knows, he paints the Holy Trinity, with the Virgin and Saint John and the donors on each side. And this fresco is located in in Florence. Now, the central image is painted in the so-called which is the Throne of Mercy. And the Throne of Mercy, here's an image, having God the Father above, then the Holy Spirit in between, and crucified Christ underneath. So, one underneath the other. That's the expression, the Throne of Mercy. And that's how he paints it here. Christ's Child on Mary's lap is called the Throne of Wisdom, and this one is called the Throne of Mercy. But it's not even the Throne of Mercy that's fascinating here, but the Brunelleschi architecture, as it is represented in the Diminishing Perspective. This is all painted, and at the bottom, Masaccio paints this momento mori, which is, and there's a skeleton lying here, and the saying above is, I once was what you are, and what I am, you also will be inviting the us to contemplate, of course, our mortality. The architecture, as I said, is very Brunelleschian. We have Corinthian capitals right here on the pilasters, then Ionian capitals here, and if one draws a line from Corinthian to the Ionian capitals, one finds the focal point right here at the bottom. The story goes, apocryphal story, is that Christ was crucified on Golgotha, which is the mount of the skull, and this is where Adam presumably was buried, so Christ's blood then purified the original sin, and when you see this rock-like formation painted in these early paintings, that means to represent Golgotha, but Masaccio goes further, and he actually represents as if Adam's skull. There are a number of ways that one can designate geometry in this painting, so all, this is a coffered ceiling, all the lines are represented as continuing that focal point right here, and if one looks at the main painting here, it is all divided by perfect geometry, by perfect squares and circles, and if we were visually to look at it from the side, this is what's meant to be. Here are the donors, and Saint John here, and Mary, Christ, and the Father, which is fascinating in itself, and when one does stand in front of it, let me see, when one does stand in front of it, one does feel as if you're looking into a true niche. It's done quite extraordinarily. Here are the two donors. It's unclear what Saint John is looking at, to be honest, because he's not looking up at the face of Christ. He's kind of looking at cloth that is almost slipping off. God only knows what's holding it, but you feel almost as if it's about to slip, and Saint John keeps wondering probably the same thing. Mary seems inscrutable. She sort of offers us the sacrifice of her son. The halos, again, are done in perspective, and here are the two donors. As we noticed with Palastrozzi already, now the donors are, well, shall we say, arrogant enough, hubristic enough to, in fact, be placing themselves in the same space with Christ. Not quite the case here, because while the main niche contains our throne of mercy with Mary and John, still the two donors are sort of on our side rather than in the niche with the others. Here they are, man and wife, and this is our right here, all painted. That's Masaccio. He died 26, 27, and after him there was really no one in Florence for a while. The only man who was there was Fra Angelico, and he was known, his contemporaries, as Fra Giovanni da Fisoli, coming from the town of Fisoli, near Florence, brother John from Fisoli, and by Vasari he was known as Fra Giovanni Angelico, brother John, the angelic ones, for his devotion, his brilliance, and his humility. All the frescoes that he did at Saint Marco, he never accepted either promotion or fee, and this is one of his annunciations. We have met annunciations before. He places, now he places his annunciation inside a perfect Renaissance portico, and Mary is very obedient and seems to be very agreeable. Here is a beautiful angel with his rainbow wings as he kneels to her. There's a garden there, and the garden has no gate, and the garden, in a way, allegorizes Mary's virginity. Everything is beautiful. Everything is untouched, and there is no entrance, and we know that as the angel announces his words to Mary, behold, the maiden, the virgin, shall conceive. That's when incarnation of Christ takes place inside of her. There's still, there's still some Gothic vestiges, as you see, with the pointed arch, and then Fra Angelico paints this beautiful altarpiece, and he also actually paints it for Paolo Strozzi, and here's Paolo Strozzi himself with his children, and this is Descent from the Cross, and it seems, at first glance, sort of almost like Gentile di Fabriano, very, very crowded, beautiful colors, but when we start looking at it, you see the detail right there with the noble castle and those beautiful Italian trees, done all in perfect detail, and what appears to be Gothic, well, the frame is very Gothic, and that, of course, that distracts our attention from the scene itself, and here, if you just look at the scene, we see how different it is from Gentile di Fabriano, because, first of all, every person is given his space. Every person is portrayed very much in light and dark. The middle triangle, the composition, very much detailed and very balanced. At this point, well, the Northern Renaissance, which is very detailed, oriented up in Bruges and in Flanders, and it's influencing Italian Renaissance in a way of beautiful, beautiful details here, as we see in the grass and the flowers, and then, of course, the background. On the one hand, there's the background of beautiful natural vista. On the other side is the background of a city. Where he got the idea of a ziggurat, I do not know, but that's what he's painting here. The clouds are retreating, because, as we remember, during Christ's crucifixion, storm came on, but now that he's dead, and here you can see the rock where Adam was buried, and as his blood now, and you see the blood falling on the rock, now that the original sin was cleansed, the clouds are going away. And let's see, Virgin Mary is here, and Mary Magdalene, John, perhaps, Nicodemus, and Saint John of Arimathea. Interestingly, some of the figures he gives are old halo, that's kind of nailed from the back of the head, but then either Nicodemus or Joseph of Arimathea, he gives a Masaccio halo. And here's the detail on our right side, right here, and this is what I call the ziggurat, the Mesopotamian ziggurat, right there, and these are the clouds. Ultimately, the painters after Masaccio will split into two groups, and with two generations. The one generation will be active before the middle of the 15th century, and then the next generation active after the middle of the 15th century. And the first generation will be very much under the influence of Donatello, Brunelleschi, and Ghiberti, and they will be very concerned with the problems of light and shade, with anatomy, with perspective. And then the second generation, they will already have the oils, as opposed to only fresco or tempera, and therefore they will try to work with the oils and not concerned with landscapes and action. Now, most of them, most of these realists, early realists, will sacrifice, in fact, details of composition, and sometimes even pictorial effect, to their researchers. And one of the most curious of them, and eccentric of them, is someone by the name of Paolo Cello. He will die in 1475. He was a painter and a mathematician, and fascinated, obsessed, with the problems of perspective. And here, for instance, is one of the, I think there are two or three, this very large series of battles at San Romano that was, the series was commissioned from Cello by a Medici cousin. And here we have a young prince on this hobby horse, and another hobby horse here, that, and they're battling in front of a hedge, of citrus, and then the background is disappearing. As I said, he's definitely sacrificing composition for the sake of perspective, because squaring his forms, he is a predecessor of sorts of cubism, and he's squaring these forms to simplify the problems of placing and foreshortening. And that's how we get these, with these hobby horses, because that's what they look like. It all looks like a game, it doesn't look like a real battle. And not only this, he uses the fallen armor, the fallen spears, as squares on the floor to delineate his perspective, and there's even a fallen soldier who is dying in perspective as well. So they're very charming, they're very eccentric, these paintings, and they're very interesting from the point of view of modern art, and that these problems of cubism and reducing forms to their geometric elements was being thought about back in the 15th century, not only in the early 20th. The word Vasari tells us that he would wake up in the middle of the night and exclaim, what a lovely mistress's perspective, making his wife very jealous. But here you see the lengths he went into to investigate it. Here's another delightful painting of his, Saint George and the Dragon. Well, I said that this is before the middle of the century, but clearly these people who lived longer, they painted afterwards as well. It's just that their principles were established before the middle of the century. This story is taken from a popular collection of saints' lives. It's called The Golden Legend, and it was written by Jacobus de Voragine, an Italian chronicler and Archbishop of Genoa in the 13th century. And here too is the freedom of an artist to do as he likes, because the two scenes here are placed together. The story is that ultimately Saint George wounds the dragon and then instructs the princess to leash the dragon, at which point the dragon becomes her pet, essentially, and listens to everything she says. But then Saint George ultimately kills him anyway. And here we have, again, a very cubist image of a little princess, looks almost Piero delle Francesco's princess. And here's the poor wounded dragon, even though he has no desire to kill anybody. And the princess has a chain attached to him and is prepared to lead him anywhere. And the dragon seems to be prepared to go anywhere. But Saint George still wants to show his masculinity. And there he is, killing the dragon nonetheless. There's a tiny little sliver of a moon right there, a serpent. And the clouds here, the eye of the hurricane, are all aligned with the sphere of Saint George and with the wings of the dragon. Thus, Uccella, who will remain an eccentric for the rest of his life, he will be laughed at by his contemporaries, and he is very much cherished by us. Still, another painter who came from the Venetian region. And his name, as a result, is Domenico Veneziano. This is called Saint Lucy's Altarpiece. And right here is the Madonna. And the saints are Saint John the Baptist and Saint Zenobbios, right here. And we have Saint Lucy, who was the titular of the church where the painting was situated, and Saint Francis on the side, who resided in that church at his arrival in Florence in 1211. What strikes us immediately is the colors. They're so very different from the former colors that we saw in other frescoes, the Florentine colors. They're Venetian colors. Venice will always have the coloristic palette of its own, and the colors will always be very remarkable, very eccentric, very different from often straightforward Florentine colors. Because in Florence, interest will always be on form, interest will always be on perspective, on the problems of light and shade, and color will always be subordinate. With Venice, color will play as important a role as form, always. And then later on, with Titian, color will actually take over. And thus we see these absolutely delightful light salad greens and sensitive blues. The pinks are spectacular. The greens are all different. And here sits the Madonna. The niche is agival, and that's still the remnant of Gothicism, these pointed arches right here. But it is a very Italianite setting with beautiful citrus and open loggia. She is sitting under the upside-down shell. And then Saint Lucy. Well, she was known for, presumably lived under the late empire, under the late Roman Empire. Presumably, again, attracted the eye of one of the emperors in the late Roman Empire, and consequently tore her eyes out so that he would not be attracted to her. And thus she stands here with a little gold platter with her two eyes on the platter. Again, allegedly, God was so pleased with her that he returned her her vision. And this is the story of Saint John the Baptist looking straight at us, giving us the Madonna. And Saint Francis is very much involved with his prayers. This is Saint Xenobius who is standing there blessing the company. And thus we arrive at still another painter. Vasari claims that Castagno was of violent temper, so violent in temper, in fact, that out of jealousy he killed Viniciano. But later records discovered that Viniciano, in fact, lived four years after the alleged date of the murder. So this could not possibly be the case. However, Castagno did come from a mountainous region. And as a result, his art sometimes exhibits this truculence, these aggressions. Sort of Donatello, but without the Donatello skinness. He was a phenomenal painter in fresco, however. And one of the greatest pieces of his, one of the most famous pieces, is the Last Supper in the Church of St. Apollonia. What happened? Here it is. Now, St. Apollonia was a Benedictine convent for nuns, for cloistered nuns. And as a result, this fresco was not really publicly known because it was only done for the nuns in their refectory, in their dining hall, so that they would, they would have their supper and would contemplate the Last Supper in silence. It was also known as a convent for bringing up the noble and the wealthy girls of Florence. And so they would see it as well. And it seems that these girls would tell their mothers about Castagno and his wonderful art. And then he would, in fact, receive commissions from the leading, from the leading families in Florence because the girls were brought up there. And then, of course, Castagno's name was known, despite the fact that these frescoes were not to be viewed publicly. The reason the lower part is so well preserved is because, for whatever reason, it was covered with another plaster wall. And thus, when that wall was removed, the fresco underneath was in a wonderful condition. Whereas, as you see, the fresco above of crucifixion that Castagno also painted is not nearly in as good a condition as the one underneath. Let's see, Santa Polonia, Benedictine convent, not having known, the work must have spoken forcefully of the continued significance of the Eucharistic meal in their own world, well, in the world of the nuns. And, in fact, most of the Last Suppers are painted in the refectories, in the dining halls of nuns or in this case, of nuns. Here, you see how this is the crucifixion and this is the resurrection here. And underneath, on the other hand, the fresco underneath is very well preserved. Let's see, here we have it. With Castagno and then with a number of other painters, the way the Last Supper was painted was that Judas was always sitting on our side, apart from the rest of the apostles. And here too, here sits Judas, Christ is here, John, Peter, and then above them, there is this storm of marble design. And it's the strongest design of all to pay, to bring our attention to these four. What Castagno did here, he almost, not that he knew about it, because Pompeii, of course, was not discovered, but he almost here employs the first style of the Pompeian fresco, which involved painting real stone, painting real marble, to making an impression as if real stone was used. Everything here is painted as if it is marble, so to give an appearance of a real tomb. Griffins on each side harken back to Roman times. Apostles are all sitting on the side and compositionally, many of the gestures on the left repeat the gestures of the right, thus making it a very cohesive and balanced statement. Interestingly, by now they are very much thinking about perspective, but in this case Castagno lets Uccello do his own perspective. Where is it? Because if we draw lines around the lines on the ceiling, they will not come to one point. But nevertheless, the impression here entirely is heuristic, that these people are sitting within a very real space with the front wall removed for our convenience. Here it is. Another fascinating piece by Castagno is a vision of Saint Jerome. Scholar is still not quite sure what is happening here. The Trinity, it's a very different way of representing Trinity, but it still is shown with our Gnadenstuhl, the throne of mercy, God the Father, and then the dove and Christ, all three tremendously foreshortened. He is obviously very interested in the problem of foreshortening and thus represents it as such. Here we see the haggard and very emotionally intense Saint Jerome. It continues an established tradition showing him as a penitent in a Syrian wilderness where he lived. He is a hermit and became an artistic subject as a hermit in the wilderness after the plague in the very beginning of the 15th century, around 1400. An apparent reflection of the influence of the new communities of flagellants, and there were a number of them in Florence, in fact, followers of Saint Jerome who devoted themselves to poverty, self-denial, and scourging. So what we see here underneath this incredibly foreshortened group is Saint Jerome with a huge rock and he is obviously beating himself on the chest. Here is his Episcopal hat right there. Two women stand next to him and he did have the patronage of the wealthy women of Rome. Here they are. Everybody is looking up. It's almost as if in the wilderness, beating himself, flagellating himself, scourging himself, he experienced the crucifixion of Christ. It's as if he's experienced the passion of Christ and thus he is sort of looking up, not so much in wonderment as the two women are looking up in complete wonderment and you can see it by their hands, but as an initiate. He knows what it's like. He knows about these passions. He knows about this torture because he experienced it himself, but it's possible that it's stretching the interpretation, but since we do not have an interpretation from Castagne himself, this is all we have left with, but the foreshortening is indeed spectacular. And last but not least, also by Castagne, we have this extraordinary shield, a ceremonial shield, and on it is painted David slaying Goliath. It is very unusual. It's explained by its original use as a parade shield, which in itself is very unusual because parade shields often, well, mostly used a simple coat of arms painted on their surface. This is actually the only one. This is in fact the only shield painted by a recognized master that has survived to the present day. It may have been carried in civil or religious processions or have been made as a sign of authority for a citizen governor. We don't know, but as we had seen before with the cello, two separate episodes are represented at the same time. On the one hand, there is David who is slinging his sling with the stone still in it. On the other hand, here is the head of Goliath already there, already killed, already beheaded, waiting to be mourned, or not. Clear interest in motion. We begin to see definite interest in motion. As in other altarpieces, everyone was quite stable. Here is one of the first representations that shows motion. What also helps to show a very realistic figure is the shape of the shield. That, of course, helps the three-dimensionality. Thus, next time we will go further to the second group of followers of Masaccio, the ones who will be interested in oils, in landscape, in emotions and anatomy as well. With this, I leave you, and I will see you next week. Thank you very much.