A journey through Criticism

The following are some of the comments made about Masaccio and his work by famous critics and important artists: The epitaph written by Annibal Caro to the supreme Buonarroti in 1550 is significant: "Subtle belittler of Donatello, Michelangelo tolerated that in him we should still dare recall a trace of Masaccio." "Fu Masaccio optimo imitatore di natura di gran rilievo universale buono componitore et puro senza ornato: perché solo si decte all'imitazione del vero: et al rilievo delle figure: fu certo buono et prospectivo quanto altro di quegli tempi: et di gran facilità nel fare essendo ben giovane che mor? d'anni ventisei." C. Landino (1481) "Masaccio was an excellent imitator of nature, universally acclaimed, an able composer, pure and unadorned: because he dedicated himself only to the representation of what is true: and to the perspective of his figures: he was certainly of greater skill and foresight than others of those times: and most able, being so young as to die at the age of twenty six." Leonardo da Vinci (1500) "….after Giotto art relapsed, because everyone imitated past paintings, and thus went into decline, until Tomaso Fiorentino, known as Masaccio, demonstrated by his perfect work that those who took other inspiration than from nature, master of masters, were labouring in vain." T. Patch , The Life of Masaccio (1770) "….. we could see the gigantic step forward Masaccio caused in painting, which for many years had moved forward so slowly that it appeared stationary but after him took only eighty years to reach its highest in Italy." A.R. Mengs, Opere ( 1780) "….after that first school (that of Giotto) came others which advanced a little more, like Masolino and Masaccio who, in the movement he gave to garments, resembled the style of Raphael though preceeding him almost by a century. " J. Reynolds (1784) "Although his style was dry and difficult, and his composition formal and not sufficiently varied, however his work possesses a greatness and a simplicity which accompany, and sometimes derive from, regularity and strength of style. …he was the first to introduce full drapery with easy, natural movement: he seems really to have been the first to discover the road to excellence….and moreover he can be considered one of the great fathers of modern art." Stendhal, Histore de la peinture en Italie ( 1817) "Born poor and almost unknown during most of his short life, he worked alone the most important revolution which painting has ever experienced. The splendor of the Italian school began with him. Until then it had not discovered that charm peculiar to itself, that of real expression together with a great beauty and purity. " E. Delacroix (1843-60) Giotto reborn, who moves from the point where death had halted his footsteps, doing instantly all that had been achieved during his absence and profiting from the new conditions: imagine a similar event and you will understand Masaccio. B. Berenson, The Florentine Painters of Renaissance (1896) "…a prominent, dramatic style where tradition was submerged and taken up in a conviction of existence and power that classical art itself had never dreamed, before which the fourteenth century world collapsed like a cardboard box….Masaccio was the ineffable revelation of a new naturalness, almost freed from the bonds of one stylistic principle, but able to produce, like nature itself, an infinite number. One did not ask Masaccio for a rule by which to compose or colour well, but rather almost to reveal the secret of bodily existence in a song ennobled by action. " R. Longhi, Piero della Francesca , 1927 Masaccio was the painter of human willpower. Nor were other painters, in its revelation, his equal because he always adhered to life in order to dominate and reform it with his style, never taking his ease on the clouds of abstraction. U. Ojetti (1930)

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