Masaccio: the First Great Painter of the Italian Renaissance

Masaccio - The Baptism of the Neophytes - 1426-27 - Fresco, 255x162 cm - Cappella Brancacci, Santa Maria del Carmine, Florence (click photo for larger image)Masaccio (1401-1428) was a Florentine painter of the early Renaissance, whose frescoes in the Brancacci Chapel of the Church of Santa Maria del Carmine in Florence (c. 1427) remained influential throughout the Renaissance. In the span of only six years, Masaccio radically transformed Florentine painting. His art eventually helped create many of the major conceptual and stylistic foundations of Western painting. Seldom has such a brief life been so important to the history of art.

Compared to the situation before the recent cleaning, this is the fresco that appears to have benefitted the most from the operation: the splendid colour tones have been rediscovered, as well as the lighting and the draughtsmanship, justifying the fact that this fresco has always been considered a work of unparalleled beauty. Vasari wrote: " ... a nude trembling because of the cold, amongst the other neophytes, executed with such fine relief and gentle manner, that it is highly praised and admired by all artists, ancient and modern.”

Behind this nude, there is another neophyte still fully clothed, in a red and green iridescent cloak. The execution of this figure displays such skill and a sure hand, as well as such a novel pictorial technique, that it almost seems to herald the art of Michelangelo in the Sistine Chapel.