Masaccio

Early Renaissance painting did not appear until the early 1420's, a decade later than Donatello's St. Mark and some years after Brunelleschi's first designs for Saint Lorenzo, its inception is the most extraordinary of all; this new style was launched, single handedly, by a young genius name Masaccio, who was only twenty one at the time (born in 1401) and who died at the age of twenty seven.

The Holy Trinity was commissioned by the Lenzi family, whose tomb was recently discovered beneath the mural. The lowest section of the fresco represents a skeleton lying on a sarcophagus, with the inscription (in Italian):

" What you are, I once was; what I am, you will become"
      The Holy
        Trinity

The artistic descendant of Giotto, although for Giotto body and drapery form a single unit, Masaccio's figures like Donatello's are "clothed nudes", their drapery falling like real fabric.

The setting reveals a complete command of Brunelleschi's new architecture and scientific perspective. By establishing the vanishing point at approximately the eye level of the viewer he creates a convincing extension of the viewers space. Keep in mind your looking at a flat wall all the architecture and figures, including the skeleton, are and illusion.

The Tribute Money
c.1427 Fresco. Brancacci Chapel, Sta. Mariea del Carmine.

Here Masaccio uses a "continuous narrative" of the story in the Gospel of Matthew; in the center Christ instructs Peter to catch a fish, whose mouth will contain the tribute for the tax collector; on the left Peter takes the coin from the fish, on the right, he gives it to the tax collector. Since the lower edge of the fresco is almost 14 ft. above the floor of the chapel, Masaccio could not coordinate the perspective with our eye level. as he did in the Trinity. He over comes this by controlling the flow of light; the light in the fresco corresponds to the actual light coming into the chapel, and uses atmospheric perspective to complete the illusion of reality.


Sandro Botticelli

Sandro Botticelli's the Birth of Venus. c. 1480

The mythological paintings of Sandro Botticelli exemplify the Renaissance interest in pagan subject matter.

The Birth of Venus is from a series of mythological pictures executed for an unknown patron, probably a member of the Medici family. It was the Medici interest in Classical themes and the revival of Plato's philosophy that had led to the founding of the Platonic Academy in Florence in 1469.


The Platonic Academy

Botticelli's nude Venus is derived from the Greek Aphrodite sculptures, an original of a such sculpture being owned by the Medici family. Unlike the Masaccio, however, Botticelli's Venus is some what elongated, elegant, even languid. Her flowing hair echoing the elegant drapery curves and translucent waves, conveys a linear (sharp edges) quality characteristic of Botticelli's distinctive style.

Cosimo de' Medici was an important humanist patron. From the 1460s, humanists met informally at his Villa in Careggi, outside Florence. Their discussions were inspired by Plato's school of philosophy which had been established in Athens in 387BC, where in a public garden philosophical interchange became the basis of Plato's Dialogues, a literary form revived in the Renaissance. After Cosimo's death, his grandson Lorenzo de Medici (1449-92) continued to support the humanists and founded the Platonic Academy of Florence in 1469.

The philosophy of Neoplatonism, a combination of Plato's philosophy with Christianity, prevailed at Lorenz's Academy. It was led by Marsilio Fiction, who lived at the Medici Villa where philosophical discussion provided regular dinner table entertainment. Artists, as well as authors, participated in these humanist gatherings, along with members of the Medici family.

Ficino translated all of Plato's dialogues and other Greek works into Latin. In his Commentary on Plato's Symposium, Ficino notes the twofold nature of Venus---part divine, part earthly. The divine Venus is Mind and Intelligence, and loves spiritual beauty. The other Venus is procreative energy, fueled by the impulse to transform spiritual beauty into physical beauty. "On both sides, therefore," according to Ficino, "there is a love; there is a desire to contemplate beauty, here a desire to propagate it. Each love is virtuous and praiseworthy, for each follows a divine image...."
With Sandro Botticelli we wind up our rather quick look at the Early Renaissance... each of the artists we have viewed; Giotto's reintroduction of the three dimensional world of gravity, Donatello's return to Classical interpretations of the figure, Masaccio's command of illusionism based on Brunelleschi's' rediscovery of liner perspective and Botticelli's fusion of Christian and Pagan mythology are all outward manifestations of the changes going on in society as it moves from the Medieval world of spirituality to the Modern world of humanistic values.

"The subjection of nature to man's will and rational order was the driving force behind the Roman Imperial Spirit." and that same force will dominate the thinking of Modern man from the Renaissance through are own time.