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At this time, more than a hundred years after Giotto, artists were beginning to master the science of perspective drawing, and in Masaccio's pictures we see men standing firmly on their feet, and put upon different planes in the same picture; their figures well poised, and true to anatomy.
He worked at this problem day and night, till at last the naturally poised foot came into existence for the artist. Never after Masaccio's time did an artist paint the foot stretched upon the toes. Moreover, until his time flesh had never been painted of a remotely natural colour, so Masaccio set about combining colours till he made one that had the tint of real flesh.
In Masaccio's management of drapery we discern the influence of plastic art; without concealing the limbs, which are always modelled with a freedom that suggests the power of movement even in stationary attitudes, the voluminous folds and broad masses of powerfully coloured raiment invest his forms with a nobility unknown before in painting.
In Masaccio's work you will find a more splendid style, the real majesty of the creator, a strangely sure generalisation and expression; but in Masolino's work there still lingers something of the mere beauty of Gentile da Fabriano, the particular personal loveliness of things which you may know he has touched with a caress or seen always with joy.
He was born in 1475 and was apprenticed to the painter Cosimo Rosselli; but he learned more from studying Masaccio's frescoes at the Carmine and the work of Leonardo da Vinci. It was in 1495 that he came under the influence of Savonarola, and he was the first artist to run home and burn his studies from the nude in response to the preacher's denunciations.
He also made many panels in distemper, which have been all lost or destroyed in the troublous times of Rome; one being in the Church of S. Maria Maggiore, in a little chapel near the sacristy, wherein are four saints, so well wrought that they appear to be in relief, and in the midst of them is S. Maria della Neve, with the portrait from nature of Pope Martin, who is tracing out the foundations of that church with a hoe, and beside him the Emperor Sigismund II. Michelagnolo and I were one day examining this work, when he praised it much, and then added that these men were alive in Masaccio's time.
It is difficult to indicate Masaccio's pictures because some of them have been repainted and destroyed. In the fresco of Peter baptizing the converts, generally attributed to Masaccio, there is a lad who has thrown off his garments, and stands shivering with cold, whose figure, according to authority, formed an epoch in art.
Lionardo da Vinci, Michael Angelo, Andrea del Sarto, Fra Bartolommeo, all studied their art in this chapel. Raphael borrowed the grand figure of St Paul preaching at Athens in one of the cartoons, from one of Masaccio's or Filippo Lippi's frescoes. Masaccio's excellence as an artist, reached at an immature age, is very remarkable.
The human form divine and waxen Galileo Bianca Capella A faithful Grand Duke S. Spirito The Carmine Masaccio's place in art Leonardo's summary The S. Peter frescoes The Pitti side Romola A little country walk The ancient wall The Piazzale Michelangelo An evening prospect S. Miniato Antonio Rossellino's masterpiece The story of S. Gualberto A city of the dead The reluctant departure.
They had learned that there was an artist called Masolino, who, perhaps, had begun these frescoes, and had been Masaccio's teacher; and that a young man called Filippino Lippi had finished them some years after they had been left incomplete by Masaccio's early death.
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