Masaccio

Massaccio, born Tommaso di Sede Giovanni di Simone, was the first great Italian painter of the Quattrocento period of the Italian Renaissance. According to Vasari, Massaccio was the best painter of his generation because of his skill at recreating lifelike figures and movements as well as a convincing sense of three-dimensionality. Massaccio died at 26 and little is known about the exact circumstances of his death. The name Massaccio is a humorous version of Marceau, meaning clumsy, or messy Tom. The name may have been created to distinguish him from his principal collaborator, also called Marceau, who came to be known as Massalino. Despite his brief career, he had a profound influence on other artists. He was one of the first to use linear perspective in his painting, employing techniques such as vanishing point in art for the first time. He also moved away from the international Gothic style and elaborate ornamentation of artists like Gentile da Fabriano to a more naturalistic mode that employed perspective and chiaroscuro for greater realism. Early life, Massaccio was born to Giovanni di Simone Cassi and Jacopo di Martinozzo and Castel San Giovanni di Altura, now San Giovanni Valdano. His father was a notary and his mother the daughter of an innkeeper of Barberino di Mugello, a town a few miles north of Florence. His family name, Cassi, comes from the trade of his paternal grandfather Simone and grand-uncle Lorenzo, who were carpenters, cabinet makers. Massaccio's father died in 1406, when he was only five. Later that same year a brother was born, named Giovanni after his father. He also was to become a painter, with the nickname of Lo Sceglier meaning the Splinter. In 1412 Mona Giacoppa married an elderly apothecary, Tedesco di Maestro Fio, who already had several daughters, one of whom grew up to marry the only other documented painter from Castel San Giovanni, Maiuto di Cristofano. There is no evidence for Massaccio's artistic education. Renaissance painters traditionally began an apprenticeship with an established master at about the age of twelve. Massaccio would likely have had to move to Florence to receive his training, but he was not documented in the city until he joined the Painters' Guild as an independent master on 7 January 1422, signing as Massus S. Johannes Simonis Pictor Populi S. Niccolo de Florentia. First works The first works attributed to Massaccio are the Sangiovanelle triptych, now in the Museum of Cassia di Reghello, near Florence, and the Virgin and Child with Saint Anne at the Erbsee. The Sangiovanelle altarpiece was only discovered in 1961 in the Church of Sangiovanelle at Cassia di Reghello, which is very close to Massaccio's hometown. It represents the Virgin and Child with angels in the central panel, Sts. Bartholomew and Blaise on the left panel, and Sts. Juvenal and Anthony Abbott in the right panel. The painting has lost much of its original framing, and its surface is badly abraded. Nevertheless, Massaccio's concern to suggest three-dimensionality through volumetric figures and four shortened forms is already apparent. The second work was perhaps Massaccio's first collaboration with the older and already renowned artist, Massalino da Panicale. The circumstances of the two artists' collaboration are unclear. Since Massalino was considerably older, it seems likely that he brought Massaccio under his wing, but the division of hands in the Virgin and Child with Saint Anne is so marked – Massalino is believed to have painted the figure of Saint Anne and the angels that hold the Cloth of Honour behind her, while Massaccio painted the more important Virgin and Child on their throne – that it is hard to see the older artist as the controlling figure in this commission. Massalino's figures are delicate, graceful and somewhat flat, while Massaccio's are solid and hefty. Maturity – In Florence, Massaccio could study the works of Giotto and become friends with Brunelli and Donatello. According to Vasari, at their prompting in 1423 Massaccio travelled to Rome with Massalino, From that point he was freed of all Gothic and Byzantine influence, as may be seen in his altarpiece for the Carmelide Church in Pisa. The traces of influences from ancient Roman and Greek art that are present in some of Massaccio's works presumably originated from this trip – they should also have been present in a lost Sagra a Fresco commissioned for the consecration ceremony of the Church of Santa Maria del Carmine in Florence. It was destroyed when the church's cloister was rebuilt at the end of the 16th century. Brancaxi Chapel – In 1424 the duo praecesso e noto of Massaccio and Massalino was commissioned by the powerful and rich felice Brancaxi to execute a cycle of frescoes for the Brancaxi Chapel in the Church of Santa Maria del Carmine in Florence. Painting began around 1425 with the two artists probably working simultaneously. For reasons that are unclear they left the chapel unfinished, and it was completed by Filippino Lippi in the 1480s. The iconography of the fresco decoration is somewhat unusual. While the majority of the frescoes represent the life of Saint Peter, two scenes, on either side of the threshold of the chapel's space, depict the temptation and expulsion of Adam and Eve. As a whole the frescoes represent human sin and its redemption through the actions of Peter, the first pope. The style of Massaccio's scenes showed the influence of Giotto especially. Figures are large, heavy, and solid. Emotions are expressed through faces and gestures. And there is a strong impression of naturalism throughout the paintings. Unlike Giotto, however, Massaccio uses linear and atmospheric perspective, directional light, and chiaroscuro, which is the representation of form through light and color without outlines. As a result his frescoes are even more convincingly lifelike than those of his Trecento predecessor. The expulsion from the Garden of Eden, depicts a distressed Adam and Eve, chased from the garden by a threatening angel. Adam covers his entire face to express his shame, while Eve's shame requires her to cover certain areas of her body. The fresco had a huge influence on Michelangelo. Another major work is the Tribute Money in which Jesus and the Apostles are depicted as neo-classical archetypes. Scholars have often noted that the shadows of the figures all fall away from the chapel window, as if the figures are lit by it. This is an added stroke of verisimilitude and further tribute to Massaccio's innovative genius. In the resurrection of the son of Theophilus he painted a pavement in perspective, framed by large buildings to obtain a three-dimensional space in which the figures are placed proportionate to their surroundings. In this he was a pioneer in applying the newly discovered rules of perspective. On 14-1425 Massalino left the work and went to Hungary. It is not known if this was because of money quarrels with Thalys or even if there was an artistic divergence with Massaccio. It has also been supposed that Massalino planned this trip from the very beginning, and needed a close collaborator who could continue the work after his departure. But Massaccio left the frescoes unfinished in 1426 in order to respond to other commissions, probably coming from the same patron. However, it has also been suggested that the declining finances of Thalysbroncaxi were insufficient to pay for any more work, so the painter therefore sought work elsewhere. Massaccio returned in 1427 to work again in the Carmine, beginning the resurrection of the son of Theophilus, but apparently left it too, unfinished, though it has also been suggested that the painting was severely damaged later in the century because it contained portraits of the Broncaxi family, at that time excoriated as enemies of the Medici. This painting was either restored or completed more than 50 years later by Filippino Olippi. Some of the scenes completed by Massaccio and Massalino were lost in a fire in 1771. We know about them only through Vasari's biography. The surviving parts were extensively blackened by smoke. In the 20th century, the removal of marble slabs covering two areas of the paintings revealed the original appearance of the work. The Pisa Altarpiece, on 19 February 1426 Massaccio was commissioned by Giuliano di Collino d'Iglesi for the sum of 80 florins, to paint a major altarpiece, the Pisa Altarpiece, for his chapel in the Church of Santa Maria del Carmine in Pisa. The work was dismantled and dispersed in the 18th century, and only 11 of about 20 original panels have been rediscovered in various collections around the world. The central panel of the altarpiece is now in the National Gallery, London. Although it is very damaged, the work features a sculptural and human Madonna as well as a convincing perspectival depiction of her throne. Massaccio probably worked on it entirely in Pisa, shuttling back and forth to Florence, where he was still working on the Brincacci Chapel. In these years Donatello was also working in Pisa at a monument for Cardinal Rinaldo Brincacci, to be sent to Naples. It has been suggested that Massaccio's first ventures in plasticity and perspective were based on Donatello's sculpture, before he could study Brunonella's more scientific approach to perspective. The Trinity. Around 1427 Massaccio won a prestigious commission to produce a holy trinity for the Dominican Church of Santa Maria Novella in Florence. No contemporary documents record the patron of the fresco, but recently references to ownership of a tomb at the foot of the fresco have been found in the records of the Berti family of the Santa Maria Novella quarter of Florence. This working-class family expressed a long-standing devotion to the Trinity, and may well have commissioned Massaccio's painting. Probably it is the male patron who is represented to the left of the Virgin in the painting, while his wife is right of Saint John the Evangelist. The fresco, considered by many to be Massaccio's masterwork, is the earliest surviving painting to use systematic linear perspective, possibly devised by Massaccio with the assistance of Brunonella himself. According to the reconstruction Massaccio started by producing a rough drawing of the composition and perspective lines on the wall. The drawing was covered with fresh plaster for making the fresco. To ensure the precise transfer of the perspective lines from the sketch to the plaster, Massaccio inserted an ellen at the vanishing point under the base of the cross and attached strings to it, which he pressed in the plaster. The marks of the preparatory works are still visible. The sacred figures and the donors are represented above an image of a skeleton lying on a sarcophagus. An inscription seemingly carved into the wall above the skeleton reads, IOFUIGIA CROCE VOIC IT EQUAL TRIO SONO VOI ANCOS ET. This skeleton is at once a reference to Adam, whose sin brought humans to death and a reminder to viewers that their time on Earth is transitory. It is only through faith in the Trinity, the fresco suggests, that one overcomes this death. The Holy Spirit is seen in the form of a dove, above Jesus. The combination of Trinity, death and decay can be interpreted as a transposition of the Golgotha Chapel in the Church of the Holy Sepulchre in Jerusalem. Other paintings Massaccio produced two other works, a Nativity and an Annunciation, now lost, before leaving for Rome, where his companion Massalino was frescoing a chapel with scenes from the life of Saint Catherine in the Basilica di San Clemente. It has never been confirmed that Massaccio collaborated on that work, even though it is possible that he contributed to Massalino's Palatite for the altar of Santa Maria Maggiore with his panel portraying Saint Jerome and Saint John the Baptist, now in the National Gallery of London. Massaccio died at the end of 1428. According to a legend, he was poisoned by a jealous rival painter. Only four frescoes undoubtedly from Massaccio's hands still exist today, although many other works have been at least partially attributed to him. Others are believed to have been destroyed. Legacy Massaccio profoundly influenced the art of painting in the Renaissance. According to Vasari, all most celebrated Florentine sculptors and painters studied his frescoes extensively in order to learn the precepts and rules for painting well. He transformed the direction of Italian painting, moving it away from the idealizations of Gothic art, and, for the first time, presenting it as part of a more profound, natural, and humanist world. Main works Sangiovanale Triptych Tempera on Panel, 108x153 ACM, Cassia di Reghello, Madonna with Child, Tempera on Panel, 24x18 ACM, Palazzo Vecchio, Florence, Virgin and Child with Saint Anne, Tempera on Panel, 175x103 ACM, Urvzi, Florence, The Tribute Money, fresco, 247x597 ACM, Francaxi Chapel, Florence, Holy Trinity, fresco, 667x317 ACM, Santa Maria Novella, Florence, Portrait of a Young Man, Wood, National Gallery of Art, Washington, DC, Madonna with Child and Angel, Oil on Table, National Gallery, London, Crucifixion, Tempera on Panel, 83x63 ACM, Museo di Capodimonte, Naples St. Paul, Tempera on Panel, 51x30 ACM, Museo Nazionale, Pisa St. Jerome and St. John the Baptist Panel, 114x55 ACM, National Gallery, London, Nativity, Tempera on Wood, Diameter 56 ACM, Sartlich Maschine, Berlin St. Andrew, Oil on Table, 51x31 ACM, J. Paul Getty Museum, Los Angeles, see also Massaccio's Chronological List of Main Paintings, History. Of Painting, Western Painting, References and Sources, References. Sources, Mac, Rosamondi Bazzata Piazza, Islamic Trade and Italian Art, 1300–1600, University of California Press, 2001 ISBN 0-520-22131-1, External Links Massaccio Biography and Photo, A Biography Photos of Five Frescoes Attributed to Massaccio, Massaccio at Panopticon Virtual Art Gallery, Metropolitan Museum of Art DVD about Perspective and Massaccio