Masaccio

Chapman's, balderdash.

Many of us by this time find it difficult to believe that pre-Ruskinite art criticism used to prostrate itself before the works of Dominicino and Guido, and to patronize the modest little beginnings of those who came between Cimabue and Masaccio.

But we have only to look at our own current criticism of Elizabethan drama to satisfy ourselves that in an art which has not yet found its Ruskin or its pre-Raphaelite brotherhood, the same folly is still academically propagated.

it is possible and even usual for men professing to have ears and a sense of poetry to snub peel and green and grovel before fletcher and webster fletcher a facile blank verse penny aligner webster a turgid paper cut-throat the subject is one which i really cannot pursue without intemperance of language the man who thinks the duchess of molfey better than david and bethsheba is outside the pale not merely of literature but almost of humanity yet some of the worst of these post shakespearean duffers from johnson to heywood suddenly became poets when they turned from the big drum of pseudo shakespearean drama to the pipe and tabor of the masque exactly as shakespeare himself recovered the old charm of the rigmarole when he turned from prospero to ariel and caliban Cyril Turner and Heywood could certainly have produced very pretty rigmarole plays if they had begun where Shakespeare began, instead of trying to begin where he left off.

But the same epoch was one of the most flourishing periods of Italian art.

To the first quarter of the fifteenth century belong the early sculptures of Donatello, the doors of the Baptistery of Florence cast by Lorenzo Ghiberti, which Michelangelo declared worthy to be the gates of paradise, the first frescoes of Masaccio in the Church of Santa Maria Novella.

During it, Filippo Brunelleschi was appointed to construct the marvelous dome of Our Lady of the Flower.

On May third, fourteen ten, Pope Alexander died, and Baldassare Cossa was elected his successor under the name of John the twenty-third.

Whereupon, the prior resolved to give him every opportunity and convenience for learning to paint.

There was then in the Carmine a chapel that had been newly painted by Masaccio, which, being very beautiful, pleased Fra Filippo so greatly that he would haunt it every day for his recreation.

And continually practicing there, in company with many young men who were ever drawing in it, he surpassed the others by a great measure in dexterity and knowledge, insomuch that it was held certain that in time he would do something marvelous.

Nay, not merely in his maturity, but even in his early childhood, he executed so many works worthy of praise that it was a miracle.

It was no long time before he wrought in Terra Verde in the cloister, close to the consecration painted by Masaccio, a pope confirming the rule of the Carmelites.

And he painted pictures in fresco on various walls in many parts of the church, particularly a St. John the Baptist with some scenes from his life.

And thus making progress every day, he had learned the manner of Masaccio very well, so that he made his works so similar to those of the other that many said that the spirit of Masaccio had entered into the body of Fra Filippo.

On a pilaster in the church close to the organ he made a figure of St. Marziale which brought him infinite fame, for it could bear comparison with the works that Masaccio had painted.

Forever in their innocence, across the vaulted synapse, they face their own expulsion.

About suffering, Masaccio knew, the best is never yet to come.

This Adam hides his face, a cipher buried in both hands.

For Eve, there is no holding back.

Yet we are speaking generically and universally, and we must not deduce the excellence of the whole from the goodness and perfection of one thing alone.

This I can also say of painting and sculpture, wherein very rare works of the masters of that second age may still be seen to-day, such as those in the Carmine by Masaccio, who made a naked man shivering with cold, and lively and spirited figures in other pictures.

But in general they did not attain to the perfection of the third, whereof we will speak at the proper time, it being necessary now to discourse of the second, whose craftsmen, to speak first of the sculptors, advanced so far beyond the manner of the first and improved it so greatly that they left little to be done by the third.

They had a manner of their own, so much more graceful and more natural, and so much richer in order, in design, and in proportion, that their statues began to appear almost like living people, and no longer figures of stone like those of the first age.

But this I will say, that he can be called the pattern of the others in this second age, having united in his own self all the qualities that were divided singly among many.

For he brought his figures to actual motion, giving them such vivacity and liveliness that they can stand beside the works of to-day, and, as I have said, beside the ancient as well.

The same advance was made at this time by painting, from which that most excellent Masaccio swept away completely the manner of Giotto in the heads, the draperies, the buildings, the nudes, the colouring, and the foreshortenings, all of which he made new, bringing to light that modern manner which was followed in those times, and has been followed up to our day by all our craftsmen, and enriched and embellished from time to time with better grace, invention, and ornament.

And it will be seen more particularly in the life of each master, wherein there will appear a new manner of colouring, of foreshortenings, and of natural attitudes, with much better expression for the emotions of the soul and the gestures of the body, and an attempt to approach closer to the truth of nature and draughtsmanship, and an effort to give to the expressions of the faces so complete a resemblance to the living men that it might be known for whom they were intended.

He traced the history of painting in Italy during its stagnation after the decay of ancient art, when each painter copied only his predecessor, which lasted until Giotto, born among barren mountains, drew the movements of the goats he tended, and thus advanced farther than all the earlier masters.

But his successors only copied him, and painting sank again until Masaccio once more took nature as his guide.

a quite different and combative side to leonardo's aesthetic which forced him to state the broad principles of art appears in his attacks on poetry and music as inferior to painting in that age of humanistic triumph literature had lorded it over the other arts in a manner not free from arrogance there was still another cause for his onslaught on poetry leonardo resented the fact that painters who were rarely men of education had not defended themselves against the slurs cast on their art his counter-attacks may have been intended to hide his own small scholarship it served another end as well his conception of the universal principles of beauty was made clear by his defence his first principle stated broadly that the most useful art was the one which could most easily be communicated painting was communicable to all since its appeal was made to the eye while the painter proceeded at once to the imitation of nature the poet's instruments were words which varied in every land he took the platonic view of poetry as a lying imitation removed from truth he called the poet a collector of other men's wares who decked himself in their plumage where poetry represented only a shadow to the imagination painting offered a real image to the eye and the eye as the window of the soul through which all earthly beauty was revealed the sight he exclaimed which had discovered navigation which had impelled men to seek the west was the noblest of all the senses Painting spoke only to what it accomplished.

Poetry ended in the very words with which it sang its own praises.

Ah, beware of fakes.

He offered us a Lucia bearing her eyes upon a dish, a supposed original of Masaccio, and a fantastic Moreau like some strong perfume.

He did? A

head-and-hands business.

But the same epoch was one of the most flourishing periods of Italian art.

To the first quarter of the fifteenth century belong the early sculptures of Donatello, the doors of the Baptistery of Florence cast by Lorenzo Ghiberti, which Michelangelo declared worthy to be the gates of paradise, the first frescoes of Masaccio in the church of Santa Maria Novella.

During it Filippo Brunelleschi was appointed to construct the marvellous dome of Our Lady of the Flower.

On May 3rd, 1410, Pope Alexander died, and Baldassare Cosa was elected his successor under the name of John XXIII.

Against this degraded Gothic, then, came up the Renaissance armies, and their first assault was in the requirement of universal perfection.

For the first time since the destruction of Rome, the world had seen in the work of the greatest artists of the fifteenth century, in the painting of Ghirlandaio, Masaccio, Francia, Perugino, Pinturicchio, and Bellini, in the sculpture of Mino da Fiesole, of Ghiberti and Verrocchio, a perfection of execution and fullness of knowledge which cast all previous art into the shade, and which, being in the work of those men united with all that was great in that of former days, did indeed justify the utmost enthusiasm with which their efforts were or could be regarded.

But when this perfection had once been exhibited in anything, it was required in everything.

The world could no longer be satisfied with less exquisite execution or less disciplined knowledge.

Now therefore, do not let me be misunderstood when I speak generally of the evil spirit of the Renaissance.

The reader may look through all I have written from first to last, and he will not find one word but of the most profound reverence for those mighty men who could wear the Renaissance armor of proof and yet not feel it encumber their living limbs.

Leonardo and Michelangelo, Ghirlandaio and Masaccio, Titian and Tintoret.

But I speak of the Renaissance as an evil time because when it saw those men go burning forth into the battle, it mistook their armor for their strength, and forthwith encumbered with the painful panoply every stripling who ought to have gone forth only with his own choice of three smooth stones out of the brook.