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.

Donatello: A True Master

Donatello - Bust of Niccolò da Uzzano - 1430s - Polychrome terracotta, height 46 cm - Museo Nazionale del Bargello, Florence (click photo for larger image)Donatello (1386-1466) was a master of sculpture in both marble and bronze—as well as wood- and one of the greatest of all Italian Renaissance artists. He had a more detailed and wide-ranging knowledge of ancient sculpture than any other artist of his day. His work was inspired by ancient visual examples, which he often daringly transformed.

Following a restoration in 1985, this polychrome terracotta Bust of Niccolò da Uzzano, originally from Palazzo Capponi, has won back its place in the history of Florentine Renaissance sculpture which Carlo Carlieri had assigned to it in his Florentine Guide of 1745. This distinguished public figure, who led the party which opposed the Medici, and represented several times in fresco (in the Church of Santa Maria del Carmine, in Palazzo Medici-Riccardi, in the Church of Sant'Egidio), on medals and subsequently in the commemorative alcoves of the Uffizi Gallery, could not be ignored by the young Donatello, who reproduces the man in polychrome terracotta, in line with the classical model of antiquity. Probably executed in the 1430s (Niccolò died in 1433), it reveals the physical and moral individuality of the man, and has been described as the oldest half bust portrait of the Florentine Renaissance. There does remain some debate as to its attribution.

Filippo Brunelleschi: a Man of Many Talents

Filippo Brunelleschi - Crucifix - 1412-13 - Polychromed wood, 170 x 170 cm - Santa Maria Novella, Florence (click photo for larger image)Filippo Brunelleschi (1377-1446) was one of the pioneers of early Renaissance architecture in Italy. His major work is the dome of the Cathedral of Santa Maria del Fiore (the Duomo) in Florence (1420–36), constructed with the aid of machines that Brunelleschi invented expressly for the project. Although profoundly dependent on Gothic forms of architecture and construction, he had a vision of art and science that was based on the humanistic concept of the ideal. 

Brunelleschi made this celebrated sculpture following a bet with Donatello—so he had fine skills beyond the architectural!