1000 Paintings of Genius. Victoria Charles
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was deeply influenced by Giotto’s work. This work doesn’t show superfluous decoration. Its bare aspect, and the treatment of perspective, prove how Masaccio changed drastically the traditional pictorial expression.
59. Tommaso Masaccio, 1401–1428, Renaissance, Florentine School, Italian, The Tribute Money, c. 1428, Fresco, 255 × 598 cm, Brancacci Chapel of
Santa Maria della Carmine, Florence
Before they were written down as gospels, the oral tradition of the early church passed along fascinating stories about the life of Jesus, including miracles, miraculous healings, and other spectacular events. One such miraculous moment in the life of St. Peter, the most dominant of the apostles of Jesus, recalls when The Master told Peter, formerly a fisherman, to pay a tax collector with a coin that Peter would find in the mouth of a fish. This fresco shows Peter on the left catching the fish. On the right he gives the coin to the tax collector. In the middle of the work, Jesus is discussing matters with his apostles and the same tax collector. Jesus is mid-way in the vertical and slightly to the left of the horizontal mid-point. Masaccio shows a great master of perspective in this work. The characters are put in circle (not in the disposition of a frieze) and the grounds are depicted behind each other, terracing each other. The character in the foreground is all in volumes, with a strong modelling of his legs. His back to the viewer, he closes the composition and inserts depth into the painting.
Tommaso Masaccio
(1401 San Giovanni Valdarno – 1427 Rome)
He was the first great painter of the Italian Renaissance, innovating with the use of scientific perspective. Masaccio, originally named Tommaso Cassai, was born in San Giovanni Valdarno, near Florence. He joined the painters’ guild in Florence in 1422.
His influences came from the work of his contemporaries, the architect Brunelleschi and sculptor Donatello, from whom he acquired the knowledge of mathematical proportion he used for scientific perspective, and the knowledge of classical art that led him away from the prevailing Gothic style.
He inaugurated a new naturalistic approach to painting that was concerned less with details and ornamentation than with simplicity and unity, less with flat surfaces than with the illusion of three-dimensionality.
Together with Brunelleschi and Donatello, he was a founder of the Renaissance. Masaccio’s work exerted a strong influence on the course of later Florentine art and particularly on the work of Michelangelo.
60. Robert Campin (Master of Flémalle), c. 1375–1444, Northern Renaissance, Flemish, Annunciation: The Merode Altarpiece, 1425–30, Oil on panel, 64.3 × 62.9 (central panel); 64.5 × 27.4 cm (side panels), The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York
Three names have been suggested to identify the master: Jacquest Daret, Rogier van der Weyden and Robert Campin. The work shows his taste for anecdotal details.
61. Tommaso Masaccio, 1401–1428, Renaissance, Florentine School, Italian, Holy Trinity, c. 1428, Fresco, 667 × 317 cm, Santa Maria Novella, Florence
This painting is a great example of Masaccio’s use of space and linear perspective; the first steps in the development of illusionist painting. The forms of architecture are borrowed from antiquity as well as from the Early Renaissance such as the coffered barrel vault.
62. Fra Giovanni Angelico, 1387–1455, Early Renaissance, Florentine School, Italian, The Coronation of the Virgin, 1430–1432, Oil on wood, 213 × 211 cm, Musée du Louvre, Paris
Painted for the convent church of San Domenico, Fiesole, the theme of The Coronation of the Virgin is taken from apocryphal texts largely spread during the thirteenth century by Jacobus de Voragine’s Golden Legend.
63. Jan van Eyck, c. 1390–1441, Northern Renaissance, Flemish, The Adoration of the Lamb (Ghent Altarpiece, central panel), 1432, Oil on panel, 350 × 461 cm (wings open); 350 × 223 cm (wings closed), Cathedral of St Bavo, Ghent
Jan van Eyck was the first popular oil painter. Being the most famous work of Jan van Eyck, the Ghent Altarpiece brings together twelve panels initially realised for St John’s Church in Ghent. The central panel shows a life-sized Christ and a great deal of attention is given to the depiction of precious brocade (in the tradition of international style) and in the rendering of light. The three central panels show a triple portrait: of Mary-Sophia, of God the Father/Jesus, and of John the Baptist. Mary-Sophia is depicted enthroned, wearing the gem-encrusted golden crown of the divine Queen of Heaven, her dark blue robes adorned with a golden trim. The book she reads bears the symbolism of the Madonna as Holy Wisdom (Hagia Sophia). The blending of Mary with Sophia, the feminine aspect of God, was still acceptable in art during the early Renaissance, even as the patristic Church began to strongly discourage this line of thinking.
Jan and Hubert van Eyck
f(c. 1390 near Maastrich t– 1441 Bruges)
(c. 1366?–1426 Bruges)
Little is known of these two brothers; even the dates of their births being uncertain. Their most famous work, begun by Hubert and finished by Jan, is the Altarpiece, The Adoration of the Lamb. Jan, as perhaps also Hubert, was for a time in the service of Philip the Good, Duke of Burgundy. He was entered in the household as “varlet and painter”, but acted at the same time as a confidential friend, and for his services received an annual salary of two horses for his use, and a “varlet in livery” to attend on him. The greater part of his life was spent in Bruges.
Their wonderful use of colour is another reason of the fame of the van Eycks. Artists came from Italy to study their pictures, to discover what they themselves must do in order to paint so well, with such brilliance, such full and firm effect, as these two brothers. For the latter had found out the secret of working successfully with oil colours. Before their time, attempts had been made to mix colours in the medium of oil, but the oil was slow in drying, and the varnish added to remedy this had blackened the colours. The van Eycks, however, had hit upon a transparent varnish which dried quickly and without injury to the tints. Though they guarded the secret jealously, it was discovered by the Italian Antonello da Messina, who was working in Bruges, and through him published to the world. The invention made possible the enormous development in the art of painting which ensued.
In these two brothers the grand art of Flanders was born. Like “the sudden flowering of the aloe, after sleeping through a century of suns,” this art, rooted in the native soil, nurtured by the smaller arts of craftsmanship, reached its full ripeness and expanded into blossom. Such further development as it experienced came from Italian influence; but the distinctly Flemish art, born out of local conditions in Flanders, was already fully-grown.
64. Fra Giovanni Angelico, 1387–1455, Early Renaissance, Florentine School, Italian, Annunciation, 1433–34. Tempera on panel, 176 × 185 cm, Museo Diocesano, Cortona
The pious Dominican monk, Fra Angelico, formerly the young painter Guido di Pietro, brings a wealth of oral tradition and Christian doctrine to the picture. As the Old Adam is expelled from Paradise (upper left corner) by an angel, another angel announces good news to the world: the New Adam wishes to come to the world to save it from the Original Sin. Mary is asked to assist in this divine plan and she replies to God through the messenger, “Fiat voluntas tua“ (“Thy will be done“). Dialogue between the Virgin and Archangel Gabriel, the heavenly messenger, are texts in Latin from the Gospel according to Luke. Mary’s reply is painted upside down, as if literally reflecting God’s will. As if the wings and halo weren’t enough, the artist surrounds Gabriel with golden rays of light. Mary’s halo is even more radiant. Various spring flowers, symbols of Mary’s purity, surround the structure. Three groups