Masaccio
© Boston, Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum
Italian painter. Tommaso di Ser Giovanni di Mone Broke, says Masaccio. In spite of its short life, Masaccio had a determining influence on the artists of the Rebirth, which one can consider that it is one of the first with Brunelleschi and Donatello.
A young innovative artist
Masaccio goes to Florence, where, in 1422, it is registered with the corporation of the doctors and the pharmacists. It enters the circle of Masolino da Panicale and the painters florentins. It is not known exactly if Masolino (much more old than him) were its Master, or if the position of Masaccio were more independent. Masaccio is in fact the continuator of Giotto by the force of its feelings, the calm one of its composition, the development of volumes.
Leonardo da Vinci, in its Treaty of painting, defined, with accuracy, the innovation of Masaccio: “After Giotto, art fell down in decline during more than one century, because the painters started to imitate works of Giotto. Then the Florentin Tommaso (Masaccio) came; he proved, by the perfection of his pictorial works, that all those which do not take as model nature, this teacher of all the Masters, vainly endeavor to make Article”
Masaccio engages in work on the prospect and the naturalism of art of the Rebirth. It is one of the inventors of the prospect, and, for this reason, the first painter of the Rebirth: its genius opened the way with new research. It contributed to introduce in Florence the positions of Brunelleschi and Donatello.
Masterpieces of a short activity
Its principal works were carried out in common with Masolino da Panicale. Of his Florentin stay one notices the Holy Anne, towards 1424-1425 (museum of the Offices, Florence), but especially frescos of the Brancacci vault in Santa Maria del Carmine with Florence, saved little of the destruction to the XVII E century. They reveal all the force of this incipient humanism: the psychological truth of the faces and the attitudes, the integration of the characters in decorations which are not “platings”. These frescos comprise in particular the Scenes of the life of Pierre saint (the Tribute, Saint Pierre baptizing the neophytes, Distribution of the goods of the community) and the Episodes of the Original sin, of which driven out Adam and Eve of the Paradise, of a tragic realism.
One can also allot to Masaccio the Trinity (Santa Maria Novella, Florence), as well as the polyptyque one of Dyes with carmine of Pisa, carried out around 1426, and currently disseminated in various places of conservation: London, Berlin, Naples, Pisa and Vienna. It applies to it the principles of the prospect and the incidence for the light carving the relief of the bodies.
Masaccio joined Masolino in Rome in order to carry out polyptyque for Santa Maria Maggiore, the Madonna of snow, and the frescos of the vault of the cardinal Branda Castiglione. He dies in Rome at the 27 years age.