Masaccio, born Tommaso di Ser Giovanni di Simone, was a Florentine artist who is regarded as the first great Italian painter of the Quattrocento period of the Italian Renaissance. According to Vasari, Masaccio was the best painter of his generation because of his skill at imitating nature, recreating lifelike figures and movements as well as a convincing sense of three-dimensionality. He employed nudes and foreshortenings in his figures. This had seldom been done before him.
Paintings by Masaccio
Expulsion from the Garden of Eden (1424)
The Expulsion from the Garden of Eden (Italian: Cacciata dei progenitori dall'Eden) is a fresco by the Italian Early Renaissance artist Masaccio. The fresco is a single scene from the cycle painted around 1425 by Masaccio, Masolino and others on the walls of the Brancacci Chapel in the church of Santa Maria del Carmine in Florence. It depicts the expulsion of Adam and Eve from the garden of Eden, from the biblical Book of Genesis chapter 3, albeit with a few differences from the canonical account.
Many possible sources of inspiration have been pointed out that Masaccio may have drawn from. For Adam, possible references include numerous sculptures of Marsyas (from Greek Mythology) and a crucifix done by Donatello.
The Tribute Money (Masaccio) (1424)
The Tribute Money is a fresco by the Italian Early Renaissance painter Masaccio, located in the Brancacci Chapel of the basilica of Santa Maria del Carmine, Florence. Painted in the 1420s, it is widely considered among Masaccio's best work, and a vital part of the development of Renaissance art.
The painting is part of a cycle on the life of Saint Peter, and describes a scene from the Gospel of Matthew, in which Jesus directs Peter to find a coin in the mouth of a fish in order to pay the temple tax. Its importance relates to its revolutionary use of perspective and chiaroscuro. The Tribute Money suffered great damage in the centuries after its creation, until the chapel went through a thorough restoration in the 1980s.
Holy Trinity (Masaccio) (1420)
The Holy Trinity, with the Virgin and Saint John and donors (Italian: Santa Trinità) is a fresco by the Italian Renaissance artist Masaccio in the Dominican church of Santa Maria Novella, in Florence. The fresco was among Masaccio's last major commissions and is often cited as one of the first monumental Renaissance paintings to utilize linear perspective.
Masaccio created The Holy Trinity between 1425–1427. He died in late 1428 at the age of 26, or having just turned 27, leaving behind a relatively small body of work.
Crucifixion (Masaccio) (1426)
The Pisa Altarpiece (Italian: Polittico di Pisa) was a large multi-paneled altarpiece produced by Masaccio for the chapel of Saint Julian in the church of Santa Maria del Carmine in Pisa. The chapel was owned by the notary Giuliano di Colino, who commissioned the work on February 19, 1426 for the sum of 80 florins. Payment for the work was recorded on December 26 of that year. The altarpiece was dismantled and dispersed to various collections and museums in the 18th century, but an attempted reconstruction was made possible due to a detailed description of the work by Vasari in 1568.
The paintings are in tempera with gold ground on wood panel. It originally had at least five compartments organised in two registers, making ten main panels, of which only four are known to have survived. Another four side panels and three predella panels (two of which had a double scene) are now in the Gemäldegalerie, Berlin. The altarpiece's central panel was Madonna and Child with Angels, produced in collaboration with Masaccio's brother Giovanni and with Andrea di Giusto, now in the National Gallery, London.
Pisa Altarpiece (1426)
The Pisa Altarpiece (Italian: Polittico di Pisa) was a large multi-paneled altarpiece produced by Masaccio for the chapel of Saint Julian in the church of Santa Maria del Carmine in Pisa. The chapel was owned by the notary Giuliano di Colino, who commissioned the work on February 19, 1426 for the sum of 80 florins. Payment for the work was recorded on December 26 of that year. The altarpiece was dismantled and dispersed to various collections and museums in the 18th century, but an attempted reconstruction was made possible due to a detailed description of the work by Vasari in 1568.
The paintings are in tempera with gold ground on wood panel. It originally had at least five compartments organised in two registers, making ten main panels, of which only four are known to have survived. Another four side panels and three predella panels (two of which had a double scene) are now in the Gemäldegalerie, Berlin. The altarpiece's central panel was Madonna and Child with Angels, produced in collaboration with Masaccio's brother Giovanni and with Andrea di Giusto, now in the National Gallery, London.
Virgin and Child with Saint Anne (Masaccio) (1424)
The Virgin and Child with Saint Anne, also known as Sant'Anna Metterza, is a painting of c. 1424–1425 by the Italian Renaissance painter Masaccio, probably in collaboration with Masolino da Panicale. The painting is in the Galleria degli Uffizi in Florence, Italy, and measures 175 centimetres high and 103 centimetres wide.
The Virgin and Child, with its powerful volume and solid possession of space by means of an assured perspectival structure, is one of the earliest works credited to Masaccio. Except for one, the angels, very delicate in their tender forms and pale, gentle colouring, are from the more Gothic brush of Masolino; the angel in the upper right hand curve reveals the hand of Masaccio. The figure of Saint Anne is much worn and hence to be judged with difficulty, but her hand, which seems to explore the depth of the picture-space, may well be an invention of Masaccio. Masaccio's work shows the influence of Donatello in its soft, rounded forms and realistic texture.
San Giovenale Triptych (1422)
San Giovenale Triptych is a 1422 painting by Italian Renaissance artist Masaccio, housed in the Masaccio Museum of Sacred Art at Cascia di Reggello, in the Metropolitan City of Florence. The triptych is the first work attributed to Masaccio and the earliest known painting essay using the geometric Renaissance perspective.
The Triptych is a tempera on wooden panels . The central panel is 108 cm × 65 cm (43 in × 26 in) and the two side panels are 88 cm × 44 cm (35 in × 17 in).
Desco da parto (Masaccio) (1500)
This painting, also commonly known as The Berlin Tondo, is a desco da parto, or birth tray, painted by the Italian Renaissance artist Masaccio. Stylistic analysis shows similarities with his San Giovenale Triptych, an early work of the painter from 1422, and the birth tray is dated a short time after it at around 1423. With the frame around it, the tondo has a diameter of 66 cm.
The upper side of the tray shows a scene soon (probably a few days) after the actual birth of a child. It takes place on the ground floor of a well-to-do contemporary house, a palace with white and black stone facings in a very modern style for Tuscan architecture. There is an arcade of round arches on Corinthian columns leading to a garden, with a courtyard at left, where the banners attached to the trumpets giving a fanfare inform us that the event takes place in Florence: a red lily on white ground. A cutaway view, removing the bedroom wall nearest the viewer, is used; Giotto and others had used this compositional device.
Madonna and Child (Masaccio) (1426)
The Pisa Altarpiece (Italian: Polittico di Pisa) was a large multi-paneled altarpiece produced by Masaccio for the chapel of Saint Julian in the church of Santa Maria del Carmine in Pisa. The chapel was owned by the notary Giuliano di Colino, who commissioned the work on February 19, 1426 for the sum of 80 florins. Payment for the work was recorded on December 26 of that year. The altarpiece was dismantled and dispersed to various collections and museums in the 18th century, but an attempted reconstruction was made possible due to a detailed description of the work by Vasari in 1568.
The paintings are in tempera with gold ground on wood panel. It originally had at least five compartments organised in two registers, making ten main panels, of which only four are known to have survived. Another four side panels and three predella panels (two of which had a double scene) are now in the Gemäldegalerie, Berlin. The altarpiece's central panel was Madonna and Child with Angels, produced in collaboration with Masaccio's brother Giovanni and with Andrea di Giusto, now in the National Gallery, London.
Saint Paul (Masaccio) (1426)
The Pisa Altarpiece (Italian: Polittico di Pisa) was a large multi-paneled altarpiece produced by Masaccio for the chapel of Saint Julian in the church of Santa Maria del Carmine in Pisa. The chapel was owned by the notary Giuliano di Colino, who commissioned the work on February 19, 1426 for the sum of 80 florins. Payment for the work was recorded on December 26 of that year. The altarpiece was dismantled and dispersed to various collections and museums in the 18th century, but an attempted reconstruction was made possible due to a detailed description of the work by Vasari in 1568.
The paintings are in tempera with gold ground on wood panel. It originally had at least five compartments organised in two registers, making ten main panels, of which only four are known to have survived. Another four side panels and three predella panels (two of which had a double scene) are now in the Gemäldegalerie, Berlin. The altarpiece's central panel was Madonna and Child with Angels, produced in collaboration with Masaccio's brother Giovanni and with Andrea di Giusto, now in the National Gallery, London.
Carnesecchi Triptych (1423)
The Carnesecchi Triptych was an altarpiece of c. 1423–1425 by Masolino, Masaccio and others, depicting the Madonna and Child with Saints Catherine of Alexandria and Julian the Hospitaller. It seems to mark the beginning of Masolino and Masaccio's collaboration.
Dismembered in the 17th century, it is now totally lost except for panel showing Saint Julian (in the diocesan museum of Santo Stefano al Ponte in Florence) and one of the three panels of the predella. That predella panel was long thought to be the painting by Masolino now in the Ingres Museum in Montauban, but recent expert studies by the Opificio delle Pietre Dure have instead identified it as a painting by Masaccio in the Museo Horne in Florence.
Santa Maria Maggiore Altarpiece
Masolino. Santos Pedro y Pablo, de la Pala Colonna. Philadelphia Museum of Art.