As Vasari tells us, Masaccio was attracted to the things of art from a very young age. Already in Valdarno, where he spent his childhood and youth and where several minor painters were at work, he was able to refine his innate artistic and pictorial sensibility.
…..but it was Florence that influenced and shaped Masaccio's artistic personality. In fact, thanks above all to the work of Brunelleschi and Donatello, in the early years of the fifteenth century there was already an artistic and cultural revolution in progress in Florence where Masaccio moved at the age of 16. This changed much in the way that the architectural and sculptural arts were intended and realised. Masaccio chose the two most important artists present in Florence as his reference points because of the artistic affinity he shared. These two great artists were later to become his great friends and admirers.
Masaccio was impressed by the beautiful new works of architecture and sculpture being created in Florence at the time. It is, in fact, to this period that the greatest Florentine architectural buildings belong, buildings like the Duomo, the Baptistry, the churches of Orsanmichele, Santa Croce, and Santa Maria Novella.
But in painting, the art to which he felt naturally inclined, there was no trace of significant change. At the beginning of the fifteenth century painting still harked back to that late gothic style which had, by then for many years, been the style sought after and appreciated by the great noble and ecclesiastical clientele. A style which, just because of its well-established typology, could easily be reproduced by skilled copyists with no individual taste and with no necessity for artistic development.To be truthful there was the novelty represented by Giotto's fresco cycles but these too by this time were simply reproduced by minor artists. Masaccio managed to transpose the great innovations from architecture and sculpture to painting and for this he was already considered a great artist in his own century. Among his admirers we must remember Brunelleschi, Leonardo da Vinci and Michelangelo. Because he created a turning point in the history of painting with his own work and because he was later followed by numerous painters of great distinction, Masaccio is almost unanimously considered to be "the founder of renaissance art".
The oldest work by Masaccio to have reached us today is the Tryptych in the church of San Giovenale in Cascia dated 1422. The Tryptych represents a benchmark in pre-renaissance painting. It is a work with already well-established perspective, without external ornament but rich in moral content, embryonic in form but already an eloquent demonstration of independence from the late gothic style.
His collaborative relationship with Masolino, along with their diversity, is already evident in the Madonna col Bambino and Sant'Anna which dates from about 1424. Here it is possible to see the Middle Ages and the Renaissance together; it is the first work to make manifest the relationship between the two artists which continued in the Cappella Brancacci and in other commissioned works in Rome. In it Masaccio made explicit his search for a new, plastic energy through his figures which give us a strong sense of spatial depth.
Masaccio's extraordinary personality explodes in his later works, first in those with Masolino and then independently in the frescoes of the Cappella Brancacci in the Chiesa del Carmine in Florence (1424-1425). We can consider these works to be the true beginning of renaissance painting. Here Masaccio concentrated the basis of his naturalistic revolution: space seen through the laws of perspective, light and shade to bring bodies into relief, and his deep emotive intensity. Among others we should remember: Il Tributo, San Pietro che risana gli infermi, Il Battesimo dei neofiti, La Cacciata dei Progenitori dal Paradiso, this last mentioned is so drammatically realistic and so far from Masolino's late gothic style that it stands apart.
Even though a sinner Man has not lost his dignity in Masaccio's painting,
he is neither degraded nor brutish, the beauty of the human body as well
as innovatory expressions recall archetype classical beauty, but here there
is something more, Masaccio's Eve is different from any chaste Graeco-Roman
Venus, her heavy body seems to bear not only the weight of her own sin but
also all the sins of humanity and on her face we read the anguish of the
world. Of special importance is the fresco illustrating Il pagamento del
Tributo, which brings together, in the same scene, various moments in time
from the gospel story, bestowing, by means of an absolutely revolutionary
action, an importance and dignity on the single man portrayed by the side
of a Christ with human features. This revolutionary conception represents
"Man" and "God" on the same plane, making Christ himself a man among men,
and again a suffering man in the Crocifissione (1426). Also dating from
1426 is Il Polittico di Pisa in the Chiesa dei Carmelitani. Unfortunately
this structure has been dismantled and panels are to be found in various
museums around the world. Here the images are devoid of even the tiniest
decoration and are totally concentrated on the event represented. "The Banishment from Heaven
on Earth" 1425/28 - 208 x 88
Fresco - Florence, S. Maria
del Carmine, Cappella Brancacci
The fresco La Trinità in the Florentine church of Santa Maria Novella dates back to 1426-1427.
His works
"Crucifixion" 1426 - 83 x 63 Table - Naples, Galleria Nazionale di Capodimonte
"The sharing of the goods and the death of Arianna" 1425/28 circa - 230 x 162 Fresco - Florence, S. Maria del Carmine, Cappella Brancacci
"Madonna col Bambino e angeli" 1426 - Table - London, National Gallery
"Madonna con Bambino e Sant'Anna" 1424/25 - Table 175 x 103 - Florence, Uffizi
"Trittico di San Giovenale" 1422 - Table - ????
"Il Battesimo dei Neofiti" Fresco 255 x 162 - Florence, S. Maria del Carmine, Cappella Brancacci
"San Pietro in Cattedra " Fresco part. - Florence, S. Maria del Carmine, Cappella Brancacci
"Sant'Andrea" Table 51 x 31 - Malibu, Paul Getty Museum
Information provided by: http://www.masaccio.it