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The "Last Supper," by Taddeo Gaddi, on the wall, is notable for depicting Judas, who had no shrift at the hands of the painters, without a halo. Castagno and Ghirlandaio, as we shall see, under similar circumstances, placed him on the wrong side of the table.
Andrea del Castagno was a painter in Florence in the fifteenth century; and he had a friend, likewise a painter, Domenico of Venice. The latter had the secret of painting in oils, and yielded to Castagno's entreaties to impart it to him.
"Do not forget your new name." "Marco Castagno? It is easily remembered." "Yes; Marco Castagno, and you are travelling on business. I had nearly forgotten the letter of recommendation. Wait here an instant; do not come down-stairs. I will write it at once."
The great Sienese names, Ugolino, Ambrogio Lorenzetti, and Simone Martini, belong to the old world as much as to the new; but the movement that produced Masaccio, Masolino, Castagno, Donatello, Piero della Francesca, and Fra Angelico is a reaction from the Giottesque tradition of the fourteenth century, and an extremely vital movement.
"Here is the letter of recommendation," said Simon Turchi, entering the room. "It is in the name of Marco Castagno. Forget your other names, and be prudent, remembering that the least indiscretion might cost our lives. Go to the pavilion, Julio. I bid you adieu, with the hope of soon seeing you again at Antwerp." "Shall I not take my clothes, signor, or a traveling cloak?"
Leonardo makes Judas leave his seat to ask if it is he that is meant that being the dramatic moment chosen by this prince of painters: Castagno calls attention to Judas as an undesirable member of the little band of disciples by placing him apart, the only one on his side of the table; which was avoiding the real task, since naturally when one of the company was forced into so sinister a position the question would be already answered.
This monastery has suffered many violations, and is scarcely worth a visit, perhaps, unless it be to see the fresco of Andrea del Castagno in the cloister, and to remind ourselves that here, in the fifteenth century, Don Ambrogio Traversari used to lecture in the humanities, a cynical remembrance enough to-day.
Verrocchio, a generation later than Masaccio, was one of the first of the Florentines to understand landscape and the part played in it by air and light. The realistic spirit, which suffices itself with subjects drawn from every-day actual experience, finds expression in the first half of the fifteenth century in the work of Andrea del Castagno.
The frescoes of Castagno, the little panels of the Pollaiolos, nay, even the works of Donatello, were no longer what they had seemed before his Roman journey, and even what he had remembered them in Rome; for it is with more noble things, even as with the rooms which we inhabit, which strike us as small and dingy only on returning from larger and better lighted ones.
It is about 300 English miles long by 120 in breath. It contains the rivers Salado, Juncal, Chineral, Copaipo, Castagno, Totoral, Quebradaponda, Guasco, and Chollai. This province abounds in gold, lapis lazuli, sulphur, and fossile salt, which last is found in almost all the mountains of the Andes on its eastern frontiers.
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