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Masaccio's works |
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| Biography: |
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Tommaso di Ser Giovanni di Simone Guidi Cassai called Masaccio is ranked the greatest master of the Early Italian Renaissance painting.
Little is known about his training. Decisive to his development were the great Florentine sculptors Donatello and Nanni di Banco, the paintings of Giotto, to whom he was a true heir, and the early works of Brunelleschi. In 1422, Masaccio was appointed master of the Florentine Guild. From 1424, he worked with his older colleague Masolino on the decoration of the Brancacci Chapel, which was dedicated to St. Peter. Masaccio, applying the laws of perspective, achieved a considerable optical illusion of depth in the painting of architectural constructions and landscapes. The illustration of his new method is The Holy Trinity with the Virgin, St. John and Two Donors (1426-28) in Santa Maria Novella in Florence. Here for the first time three-dimensional effect is achieved on a two-dimensional plane. Masaccio probably completed this fresco at the age of 27, in the year when (as far as we know) he died. Who ordered this fresco and why is unclear. In other pictures of the Trinity, God the Father is shown enthroned; save for Masaccio¡¯s this is the only known example in which He stands.
Masaccio was also able to portray figures out of doors so convincingly that they appear to blur as they move away from us. Linear perspective reproduces the effect of forms growing smaller in the distance. With his new aerial perspective Masaccio pointed out that they also grow dimmer and out of focus.
Some art historians believe that he launched the new style of Early Renaissance practically single-handedly, he was only 21 years old at the time and he died 6 years later, leaving to others to develop his discoveries. .... |
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[1] [2] |
