Tommaso di Giovanni Cassai (or Tommaso di Ser Giovanni di Mone Cassai), known as Masaccio, born on December 21, 1401 in San Giovanni Altura (now San Giovanni Valdarno, near Arezzo) and died around 1428 in Rome, is a fundamental Florentine painter considered one of the pioneers and greatest painters of the Renaissance.
Masaccio's Biography
The formative years
His father, Giovanni di Mone Cassai, was a craftsman who became a notary. He died when Tommaso was five years old, in 1406, the same year that his younger brother, Giovanni (who would also become a painter) was born. His mother, Monna Jacopa di Martinozzo, remarried to Tedesco del Maestro Feo, a widowed and much older spice merchant, who guaranteed the family a comfortable standard of living.
With his mother and brother (who lived with him until his death), he moved to Florence in 1417. He entered the workshop of Bicci di Lorenzo, where he became familiar with the works of Donatello and Brunelleschi. He owes his nickname, which means "idiot", to his distraction and fantasy.
In 1419, he was already recognized as a dipintore, i.e. painter, in Florence. On January 7, 1422, he was enrolled in the Arte dei Medici e Speziali.
The Triptych of San Giovenal, in the Museum of Sacred Art in Cascia di Reggello (near Florence) is his first almost certain work, dated April 23, 1422.
The destroyed fresco
In 1422, Masaccio left Bicci di Lorenzo's workshop. He attended the consecration ceremony of the church of Santa Maria del Carmine. He was commissioned to paint a fresco representing the consecration, a fresco that was destroyed at the end of the 16th century during the restructuring of the convent of Santa Maria del Carmine.
Only preparatory drawings remain. Vasari states in his Lives that it was with the fresco of the Consecration that Masaccio's portraiture was born, as was the use of perspective for the lost Annunciation of San Niccolo oltr'Arno, which Vasari attributed to him in 1568.
The association with Masolino
In 1424 he began his artistic collaboration with Masolino da Panicale, twenty years his senior.
Their first common work is Saint Anne, the Virgin and Child and five angels, kept in the Uffizi Gallery in Florence. The Madonna, Child and two angels are attributed to Masaccio, St. Anne and the other angels to Masolino.
But it was with the frescoes in the magnificent Brancacci Chapel, in the church of Santa Maria del Carmine, in Florence, that their collaboration intensified.
They painted together, sharing the scenes of the chapel, from 1424 until 1427 or 1428. They then left the work unfinished. Filippino Lippi finished the cycle in 1481 and 1482.
Masolino and Masaccio each painted Adam and Eve: Masolino represented them in Paradise, and Masaccio chased them out of Eden by the wrath of God.
Masaccio is remarkable for his realism. No one else before him has so well represented the expressions and postures of his characters. No one has gone so far in the precision of the settings, landscapes or Florentine streets of his time.
One can read in the face of Eve and in the attitude of Adam, driven out of Paradise, their immense despair. In contrast, Masolino's fresco representing original sin in Paradise "shows an obvious lack of psychological finesse".
Daniel Arasse points out the gesture of Christ, redoubled by that of Saint Peter, in The Tribute of Saint Peter. "The world opens up to the action of men", he sees fit to affirm.
He makes another personal judgment: "Gone are the stiff attitudes painted by Masaccio's contemporaries and predecessors. Daniel Arasse also points out how, in Masaccio's paintings, the figures have their feet firmly on the ground, unlike the Gothic figures, who seem to stand on their tiptoes.
It was probably during the reign of Cosimo III de' Medici, in 1674, that the nudity of Adam and Eve was dressed with leaves. The 1980 restoration chose to return to the original state and thus clearly shows the sex of the man.
Maturity, the "vault that sinks into the wall
In 1426, during the periods of interruption of his work in the Brancacci Chapel, Masaccio created the Polyptych of Pisa. It was commissioned by a notary for a salary of 80 florins. Today, the polyptych is incomplete, and scattered in eleven pieces, in five museums on two continents (see list of works).
It shows all the characteristics of the artist's great maturity. The physiognomy of the deeply recollected figures, the throne of the Madonna in perspective, the vanishing lines of the Crucifixion, placed above the central panel, go beyond Gothic conventions and create a real space.
Another major work is the fresco of the Trinity in the church of Santa Maria Novella. Behind the Christ on the cross, a spectacular coffered vaulted ceiling. Vasari, in the second edition of the Lives, in 1568, details this extraordinary trompe-l'oeil.
"It is a barrel vault, traced in perspective, and divided into caissons decorated with rosettes that diminish, so that it looks as if the vault is sinking into the wall." This Trinity, considered a milestone in the history of art, represents the translation into painting of the laws of perspective discovered by Brunelleschi.
Some critics believe that Brunelleschi himself drew the perspective lines. Others maintain that Masaccio interpreted Brunelleschi's innovations.
Posterity
Masaccio died at the age of 27 under mysterious circumstances during a trip to Rome with Masolino da Panicale.
He is considered the greatest painter of the First Renaissance and is traditionally presented as the first modern painter. He introduced into Western art the notion of optical truth, perspective and volume. Masaccio's influence on modern Western art is also linked to the fact that Michelangelo was inspired by his frescoes by copying them.
Works of Masaccio
- Triptych of San Giovenale (1422), tempera on panel, Masaccio Museum, Pieve di Cascia, Reggello
- Brancacci Chapel, Church of Santa Maria del Carmine (Florence), (1424-1428), fresco:
- Adam and Eve Driven from Eden, 208 × 88 cm
- The Payment of Tribute, 255 × 598 cm,
- The Baptism of the Neophytes, 255 × 162 cm
- The Resurrection of the Son of Theophilus and The Enthronement of Saint Peter (completed by Filippino Lippi)
- Saint Peter healing with his shadow
- St. Peter distributing alms and The Death of Ananias, fresco, 230 × 162 cm
- Polyptych of Pisa (1426)
- Madonna col Bambino, National Gallery, London
- Crucifixion (Christ on the Cross surrounded by Mary, John and Mary Magdalene), Capodimonte Museum, Naples
- San Paolo, Museo Nazionale di San Matteo (Pisa)
- Sant'Andrea, Jean Paul Getty Museum, Los-Angeles
- Storie di San Giuliano e Nicola, polyptych panels, Staatliche Museen, Berlin
- Adoration of the Magi, predella panel 21 × 61 cm, Gemäldegalerie, Berlin
- Martyrdom of St. Peter and St. John the Baptist, predella, Staatliche Museen, Berlin
- Santo Carmelitano, piece of pilaster, Staatliche Museen
- Santo Carmelitano, piece of pilaster, Staatliche Museen
- Santo Vescovo, piece of pilaster, Staatliche Museen
- San Girolamo, piece of pilaster, Staatliche Museen
- Other works
- Desco da parto, on the front: Birth scene, on the front: Putto con animaletto, 1424-1425, (painted tray of childbirth), Gemaldegalerie, Berlin
- Story of St. Julian, panel of the Carnesecchi triptych, Horne Museum, Florence
- Sant'Anna Metterza di sua mano la Madonna col Bambino e l'angelo reggicortina in alto a destra, 1424, (with Masolino da Panicale) tempera on panel, Uffizi Gallery, Florence
- Madonna del "solletico", 1426, Uffizi Gallery, Florence
- The Trinity or The Throne of Grace (1426-1428), fresco, 667 × 317 cm, Santa Maria Novella, Florence
- Madonna dell'Umiltà (1423 - 1434), National Gallery of Art, Washington (completely repainted and presented as such)
- Orazione nell'orto e San Girolamo penitente, Lindenau Museum, Altenburg
- Santi Girolamo e Giovanni Battista, polyptych of Santa Maria Maggiore, National Gallery, London
Treatises on his paintings
- Roberto Longhi, Masolino and Masaccio, Pandora, 1983
- Maurice Guillaud, Masaccio's frescoes at the Brancacci Chapel, Guillaud, December 1992, 206 p. (ISBN 2-907895-33-8)
- Les Fleurons de l'art, complete catalog of paintings by painter, Bordas (collection directed by Pietro Marani), 1990