Masaccio was a notable Florentine artist. He is known as a great Italian painter of the Quattrocento period of the Italian Renaissance. Masaccio gained prominence for his skill at imitating nature, recreating lifelike figures and movements, as well as a convincing sense of three-dimensionality. He was one of the first masters to use the laws of scientific perspective in his works.
Background
Masaccio was born on December 21, 1401 in Castel San Giovanni di Altura, Republic of Florence (present-day San Giovanni Valdarno, Tuscany, Italy). He was the son of Giovanni di Simone Cassai, a notary, and Jacopa di Martinozzo, the daughter of an innkeeper of Barberino di Mugello, a town a few miles north of Florence. His family name, Cassai, comes from the trade of his paternal grandfather, Simone, and granduncle, Lorenzo, who were cabinet makers.
Giovanni, Masaccio's father passed away, when the artist was just five years old, namely in 1406. Later the same year, Masaccio's brother, Giovanni (1406-1486), named after their father, was born. Giovanni was an artist too. Called Lo Scheggia ("the Splinter"), he is known only for several inept paintings.
In 1412, Masaccio's mother remarried - Tedesco di maestro Feo, an elderly apothecary, became her husband.
Education
A standout amongst the most tempting inquiries, concerning Masaccio, spins around his artistic apprenticeship. Young men, who are still in their teens or younger, than that (for instance at the age of 12), would be apprenticed to an expert. They would put in quite a long, while in his workshop, adapting all the important abilities, required in making numerous sorts of craftsmanship. Unquestionably, Masaccio experienced such preparing, however there remains no hint of where, when or with whom he trained. This is a pivotal, if unanswerable, issue for a comprehension of the painter in light of the fact, that in the Renaissance, workmanship was found out through impersonation - uniqueness in the workshop was debilitated. The student would duplicate the expert's style until it turned into his own. Knowing, who taught Masaccio, would uncover much about his masterful development and his work.
It's also worth mentioning, that Masaccio would likely have needed to move to Florence to get his training, yet he wasn't documented in the city till January 7, 1422, after which he joined the "L'Arte dei Medici e Speziali", the most renowned painters' organization, as one of their independent painter.
Career
Masaccio went to Florence, when he was about twenty years old, and very soon joined the most modern and prominent artist group there, headed by the sculptor-architect Filippo Brunelleschi and the sculptor Donatello. Claiming as their own the heritage of Roman antiquity and of Giotto, the great Florentine master of the 14th century, they developed a new art of space and form.
It utilized exact perspective, invented by Brunelleschi, and anatomical realism, applying these skills to narratives, depicting critical moments in human relationships. Brunelleschi and Donatello found in the young Masaccio someone, who could transfer these concerns into the medium of painting, using as well realistic contrasts of light and shade and the startling novelty of continuous luminous color areas, that built forms and almost eliminated drawn edges. All of these innovations were recorded in the handbook on painting, written, in 1435, by Leon Battista Alberti, which was dedicated to Brunelleschi and alluded to Masaccio.
The first works, attributed to Masaccio, are the "San Giovenale Triptych" (1422) and the "Virgin and Child with Saint Anne" (c. 1424). The second work was perhaps Masaccio's first collaboration with the older and already-renowned artist, Masolino da Panicale. The circumstances of the two artists' collaboration are unclear; since Masolino was considerably older, it seems likely, that he brought Masaccio under his wing, but the division of hands in the "Virgin and Child with Saint Anne" is so marked, that it is hard to see the older artist as the controlling figure in this commission.
The "Sagra del Carmine", a fresco, that was in the cloister of S. Maria del Carmine in Florence, Masaccio's only major lost work, was apparently also his first large project. The "Sagra" represents the consecration of the church, which took place in 1422, and the painting was executed by 1425. Such a monumental representation of a local current event was apparently an innovation.
Probably also of 1425 is Masaccio's first fresco, usually called the "Trinity", in S. Maria Novella, Florence. A new approach to its remarkable use of perspective, often cited as typical of the time, but actually more complex by far, than any other cases, has been stimulated by recent study of the circumstances of its commission, involving the learned prior of the Dominican convent of S. Maria Novella. Probably much helped by Brunelleschi in rendering the perspective, Masaccio used it to support the theological theme, the relation of the Trinity and Crucifixion, where one figure, Christ, participates in both themes and thus illustrates the dual nature of Christ as immortal God and suffering man, a doctrine, "Corpus Domini," of special concern to Dominicans. The realistic perspective spaces are cut into compartments, that underline this presentation.
In 1426, as an unusually full set of documents reveals, Masaccio painted a polyptych for S. Maria del Carmine in Pisa, Donatello apparently being his sponsor. It was later disassembled, and only some parts survive: the "Madonna and Child Enthroned", the central panel; two small saints, "St. Paul" and "St. Andrew"; the pinnacle with the "Crucifixion"; and the predella and framing columns. While the central panel recalls the thickset bodies and glowing vigor of the earlier "Madonna and Child with St. Anne", the tiny scenes of the predella introduce Masaccio's narrative art, with strong, sometimes ugly people, bathed in warm color and situated in tightly orchestrated spaces.
That is the style of Masaccio's last and greatest work, the frescoes of the Brancacci Chapel in S. Maria del Carmine, Florence. The work, begun by Masolino for the merchant Felice Brancacci, was probably resumed by him in 1427, but now in collaboration with Masaccio, who did half of it, six scenes. Five are stories from the life of St. Peter, and the sixth is the "Expulsion from the Garden of Eden", a "preface", painted in the narrow thickness of the entrance archway.
In the first scene, "St. Peter Baptizing", a jostling crowd is arranged in a semicircle, much as in the predella of the Pisa polyptych. In the famous "Tribute Money" (the rare subject was probably chosen to propagandize for an income tax reform in Florence of the same year), Masaccio simplified the grouping, making a more skeletal geometry, but also giving each figure a massive grandeur. The Expulsion takes this geometry of spatial siting of each figure to an extreme, and the figures of Adam and Eve have powerful emotional expressiveness.
The three remaining scenes, on a lower tier, are spatially more complex and sketchier in brushwork-advanced work, not reached by other artists for some generations. In the "Miracle of the Shadow", St. Peter and St. John walk forward, and three cripples are shown in recession in stages of being cured; where the two groups pass each other, the miracle happens, and theme and geometry coincide. In "St. Peter and St. John Distributing Alms", another reference to Florentine fiscal policy, Masaccio employs a complex W-shaped space. The "Raising of the Pagan King's Son" was partly repainted 50 years later.
In his last year, for unknown reasons Masaccio went to Rome, where he died at the age of 26. According to a legend, he was poisoned by a jealous rival painter. It's worth noting, that before leaving for Rome, Masaccio produced such works, as a "Holy Trinity", "Nativity" and "Annunciation".
Views
Quotations:
"I was once that which you are, and what I am you will also be."
Personality
According to the biographer Giorgio Vasari (who is not always reliable), Tommaso received the nickname Masaccio (loosely translated as "Big Tom" or "Clumsy Tom") because of his absentmindedness about worldly affairs, carelessness about his personal appearance and other heedless, but good-natured, behaviour.
Physical Characteristics:
Masaccio's self-portraits shows him as a clean-shaven man with long hair, which was common in his days.
