Italian Renaissance: Masaccio

The Italian Renaissance
Masaccio and the Re-discovery of Linear Perspective

Niklaus Manuel, St. Luke Painting the Madonna (detail), Museum of Fine Arts, Bern
How do you create an illusion of a three dimensional world on a flat surface?

Niklaus Manuel, St. Luke Painting the Madonna (detail), Museum of Fine Arts, Bern
Two components to making a flat picture seem 3D:
•Volume
•Space

Giotto got the ball rolling by using gradations of light and shade to
make his figures seem three dimensional

But his backgrounds are shallow and unrealistic – they are like stage
sets, rather than being convincingly three dimensional

Flemish painters made great advances with the discovery of oil, but
their rendering of space is unconvincing

The figures are too big for the room they occupy, and there are
inconsistencies in the space

Linear perspective was one of the most significant breakthroughs of the Renaissance

Seated woman playing a Kithara, fresco from the Villa of P. Fannius Synistor,
Boscoreale, 4-30 CE
Classical artists already used perspective

It was re-discovered by Brunelleschi, and later codified by the architect Alberti in his
treatise On Painting, published in 1435

Linear perspective gave artists the tools to create a fully rational, and believable three
dimensional space

In a linear perspective system parallel lines converge on vanishing point
(like the converging lines of railroad track)
Vanishing
point

These converging lines are called orthogonals, and they create the illusion
of recession into depth

Vertical elements diminish in size as they recede into into the background,
also creating an illusion of depth

And the spacing between horizontal lines also gets smaller as they move
further back in space

Linear perspective was important because it made it possible to create a
fully rational space for figures to inhabit

Masaccio, Trinity Altarpiece, 1425
Fresco, Santa Maria Novella, Florence
Image source: http://earlvstaley.blogspot.com/2013/09/sabbatical-in-
italy-florentine.html
Brunelleschi taught linear perspective to Masaccio, and he used it for the
very first time in the Trinity Altarpiece, c. 1425

The fresco was commissioned by the Lenzi family for the church of Santa
Maria Novella in Florence

I should explain what a family chapel is

Wealthy families endowed family chapels within or adjacent to churches (like
Enrico Scrovegni’s chapel), where family members would be buried, and
prayers could be said to help them into heaven

The most prestigious chapels were closest to the altar, and were visible to
the public

So the chapel decorations were an act of religious devotion, but they were
also a way of showing off your family’s wealth and status (the Renaissance
version of “keeping up with the Jones’s”)

The Trinity Altarpiece was not a chapel, but a fresco painted above an altar
on wall of the nave

The painting depicts the mystical concept of the “Trinity” – where God the
Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Spirit are considered to be one

God the Father is depicted as an older man, presenting his crucified Son

The Holy Spirit is rendered as a Dove, with rays of light emanating from its
head

Mary and John stand on either side of the Crucifix
Mary John

And the donors can be seen on either side, praying piously towards the
mystical vision of Trinity
Mr. Lenzi Mrs. Lenzi

Below, a painted image of a skeleton lies within a coffin with the inscription “I
was once what you are, and what I am you will become.”

Agnolo Daddi, The Trinity, c. 1390-96
Metropolitan Museum
The Trinity Altarpiece is very Medieval in subject matter

The skeleton functions as a momento mori (“reminder of death”), and the
necessity of prayer as a path to salvation is clearly spelled out

Jacopo di Cione, Polyptych, San Pier Maggiore (detail),
1370-71, National Gallery, London
What was revolutionary was the way it was painted

Let’s start with the figures

Masaccio has abandoned hierarchic scale, making God the father the same
size as the other figures, including the Lenzis

He uses modeling with light and
shade to make the figures appear
to have volume and weight

And the bulkiness of the drapery
suggests he has learned a thing or
to from Donatello

The treatment of anatomy suggests that Masaccio has been
studying Classical sculpture

The stylized linear patterns of Medieval art have been replaced by subtle gradations of
tone that convincingly suggest musculature and skeletal structure

But the most revolutionary aspect of the panting is the believable
representation of space

Masaccio used linear perspective for the first time in this painting

The lines of the architecture converge on a vanishing point at the base of the

The classical architectural elements and coffered barrel vaults resembles
Brunelleschi’s style of architecture, and was no doubt a tribute to him

With the use of linear perspective, Masaccio created an illusion of space that is
so exact it can be measured

In the middle ages god was untouchable and a force to be feared

He existed as a symbol, not as a reality, and was believed to be beyond human
comprehension

Linear Perspective
So Masaccio didn’t just humanize
god - he placed him in a rational
space that could be measured and
understood
Image source: http://3dvisa.cch.kcl.ac.uk/project73.html

Masaccio’s other famous work is the Brancacci Chapel, in Santa Maria del
Carmine, in Florence

It was commissioned by Felice Brancacci, a wealthy silk merchant, humanist,
and civic leader

The chapel was begun by Masolino and completed by Masaccio, who had
served as an apprentice

The frescos focus on the subject of Saint Peter, and on the theme of Charity
and civic duty

The fresco we will focus on depicts the story of the Tribute Money

Masaccio, The Tribute Money, c. 1427, fresco, Brancacci Chapel
Santa Maria del Carmine, Florence
In this scene Christ and his disciples are stopped by a Roman guard who
demands they pay a tax before entering the city

Since the group had no money, Christ gestures towards Peter to fetch a coin
from the mouth of a fish

Peter points towards the Sea of Gallilee, looking skeptical and confused

Peter appears a second time in the scene, kneeling down to retrieve the coin

Peter appears a a third time on the right, placing a coin in the palm of the tax
collector

So we see three different moments of the story depicted in a single scene

This narrative device is called continuous narration, and it enabled the artist to
tell the story as if unfolding through time

Masaccio arranged the Apostles around Christ in a semi-circle

The tax-collector in the foreground serves as a
repoussoir figure, creating a sense of depth

He is standing the
in the Classical
contraposto pose,
indicating that
Masaccio has
studied classical
art

The artist uses gestures and glances to lead our eye through the narrative

Our eye follows the tax-collector’s gesture towards Christ, who points towards Peter,
who then points in the direction of the next episode in the scene; the tax collector’s other
hand points in the direction of the final episode, where Peter pays the tax

The semicircular grouping of the figures recalls Nanni di Banco’s Four Crowned
Martyrs

As does their Roman togas and dignified bearded faces

Like Giotto, Masaccio used gradations of light and dark to create the illusion of
volume and bulk

Struggling with the halos, he made them into discs, seen in perspective

For the first time, Masaccio used a single light source, so that the lighting on the
figures comes from a consistent direction

The light source is an actual window in the chapel, so that the light of our world
literally casts shadows into the fictive space of the picture

Masaccio also created a believable space for his figures to occupy

He used linear perspective to make the buildings on the right appear to recede into
depth

He used diminishing size, where foreground figures are larger, and background
figures are smaller, creating an illusion of depth

Aerial Perspective (or atmospheric perspective): the mountains are blurry and less
saturated in color, making them seem distant

When Masaccio’s picture was painted, there was a controversial tax proposal
called the catasto

Paolo Uccello, The Battle of San Romano, 1438-1440. National Gallery of Art
It was to help pay for the city’s war against its enemies

Roman coin with profile head of the Emperor Trajan
Image source: http://coins.lib.virginia.edu/display-uva?id=n1997_7_1
Supporters of the tax used stories from the bible to support their position --
such as the story when Christ said “render unto Caesar the things which are
Caesar’s”

The story of the tribute money was also used to support the tax

If Jesus supported paying taxes, then it must be OK!

Once again, we have a story that comes from the bible, but its meaning was
more secular in content

Humanist
Values
Individualism
Classical
learning
Secularism
The inherent
dignity and
beauty of
human being
Civic virtue
and
patriotism
People were still religious, and worried about what would happen when
they died

Humanist
Values
Individualism
Classical
learning
Secularism
The inherent
dignity and
beauty of
human being
Civic virtue
and
patriotism
But they were also concerned with more earthly realities, and the affairs of
everyday life

Italian Renaissance: Masaccio

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Italian Renaissance: Masaccio