Masolino: A Lyrical and Unfailing Artistry

Masolino - Miracle of the Wheel - 1425-31 - Fresco - Castiglione Chapel, San Clemente, Rome (click photo for larger image)Masolino da Panicale (c. 1383 - c. 1435) was a painter who achieved a compromise between the International Gothic Style and the Early Renaissance style of his own day. He owes his prominence in the history of Florentine art not to his innovations but to his lyrical style and his unfailing artistry. Masolino came from the same district of Tuscany as his younger contemporary Masaccio (1401-1428), with whom his career was closely linked. Trained in a Florentine studio, he appears before 1407 to have been a member of the workshop of famed sculptor Lorenzo Ghiberti (1381-1455). He worked with Masaccio on the frescoes in the Brancacci Chapel, which artists from all over traveled to see and study.

The International Gothic Style was prevalent in Europe during the last half of the 14th century and the early years of the 15^th century. It grew out of the need for artists to travel from court to court seeking work, following the Black Death. There were features common to European art, in general. In particular, figures were elegant and graceful – and had a certain artificiality. A taste did grow for realism in detail, general setting, and composition. The internationalism of the style owes to the fact that much of the most important work was executed under court patronage, and most European royal families were closely linked by marriage ties. Local idiosyncracies, however, did persist.

In the scene of the Miracle of the Wheel an angel intervenes to stop the torture of Saint Catherine of Alexandria commanded by emperor Maxentius. A secondary scene (upper left) shows the emperor looking down at the interrupted martyrdom from a high loggia. A woman beside him, doubtless Empress Faustina, is leaning over the railing. She, too, had been converted by Catherine.