Page:Catholic Encyclopedia, volume 9.djvu/824

 MASAOOIO 768 MASOOUTENS

England, V; Tnnkb. England under thr Twlorn fT/ondon. ino5>; dcriiig St. Pet-cr to pay the Tribute '*, "St. IVtor and

Si'IS:;.'aii^'"i;/l!»^'^<l"Jrc";i?S™^ St; Jo^n healhig.the afck" "St Peter giving Alms';,

MuLLiNOBR in Cambridge Modern Hiatory, II (Cambridge, St. Peter Baptizing', "St. Peter restoring a Kings

1905); Sidney Lee in Did. Nat. Biog.; Strickland, Livea of Son to Life". This last fresco was finishedf by Filip-

ihe Queena of England, II. Hprbert THtm^rov R^"^' ^ *"^« Masaccio worked at the paintings in the

HERBERT iHURSTON. ferancacci chapel, the church of which it was a part

Masacdo (Tommaso), Itab'an painter, b. about was consecrated: he "renresents this ceremony in

1402, at San Giovanni di Valdamo, a stronghold situ- chiaroscuro over the door leading from the church to

ated between Arezzo and Florence; d., probably at the cloister" (Vasari) and introduces a great many

Rome, in 1429. His correct name was Tommaso di portraits of important persons in the group of citizens

ser Giovanni di Simone dei Guidi, which may be trans- who follow the procession. Here, too, he nas painted

lated '^Thomas, son of Sir John, grandson ot Simon, of the convent porter, with his bunch of keys. This

the Guidi clan." His family had ^ven manv magis- famous "Procession" perished when the church was

trates to the Republic of Florence m earlier days. But reconstructed in 1612, but the old porter has survived,

when Thomas was bom prosperity had forsaken them: a marvellously executed portrait still to be seen in the

his father was a poor notary in a small country com- Uffizi. It seems that the fashion of painting liknceses

munity. His familiar name of Masaccio \a an aug- of contemporaries was set by Masaccio. He has not

mented form of Maso (short for Tommaso) and means forgotten to give his own portrait a good place, in the

" Big Tom", with a shade of depreciation. By this fresco where St. Peter is paying the tribute,

name, if we are to believe Vasari, his Florentine con- Moderately esteemed in his own time, Masaccio was

temporaries indicated after their fashion the oddities accorded enthusiastic admiration only after his death;

of his character — "He was absent-minded, whimsical, but— as is only rarely the case — the enthusiasm has

as one who, having fastened his whole mind and will not cooled in the duration of five centuries : it has even

upon the things of art, paid little attention to himself degenerated into excessive adulation. Masaccio is

and still less to other people." preached as a " Messias without a Precursor ", an " au-

Masaccio's master was Tommaso di Cristofano di todidact", a self-teacher, without an ancestor in the Fino, known as Masolino da Panicale, Masolino mean- past. His insight into nature, his scientific perspec- ing" Little Tom" (see Masolino). Masaccio was very tive and foreshortening have been loudly acclaimed, precocious: we find him at the age of nineteen already and with reason. But Giotto and his faithful disci- enrolled among the^'pezioZt (Grocers, or Spicers),one pies, before Masaccio, had given Florentine painting of the "arts", or guilds. The iSpezia/i included painters the impulse towards an intelligent representation m among its members. After a few essays which earned nature which necessarily produced great results. His him some degree of reputation, he was conmiissioned to admirers justly vaimt the noble gravity of his figures, continue the decoration of the Brancacci chapel at the suppleness and simplicity of his draperies, the har- Florence, which his master, Masolino, had begun. This mony of his compositions, and his grasp of light and was, according to some authorities, in 1424; according shadow; but the germs of these precious qualities had to others in 1426 ; so that he cannot have been more than already existed in the frescoes of Masolino, his master twenty-four years old. The work did not make him and initiator, and Florentine artists before him had rich. Absoroed in the things that pertain to art, he wrought with the double ambition of expressing the knew nothing about sublunary business matters. The real and the ideal — the visible element and the invisi- state register of property for 1427 shows that Masaccio ble. Between these two opposite aims they were "possesses nothing of his own, owes one hundred and more or less distracted; the difficult thing — and the two lire to one painter, and six florins to another; that vital — is to so associate the two that in subordinating nearly all his clothing is in pawn at the Lion and the the accessory to the principal — the expressive form to Cow loan-offices". Suddenly he left Florence, and the substance it expresses — the union may result in a there is evidence of his presence at Rome in 1428 The puissant and well-ordered work of art. It is Masac- cause of this precipitate departure is unknown; in any cio's glory to have succeeded in doin^ this almost su- case, the unhappy man did not succeed in bettering perlatively well; this explains his lasting fame and his his material condition, for he died of grief and want in unfailing influence. All through the fifteenth century 1429 or later. and after it, the Brancacci chapel was the chosen ren-

Many of Masaccio's works are lost. In the Spada dezvous of artists: as Ingres said, "It should be re-

chapel, in the Church of Santa Maria Novella at Flor- garded and venerated as uie paternal mansion of the

ence, he painted a "Trinity" between the Virgin and great schools."

St. John, 'With kneeling portraits of the two donors at Vasari, Le viUdelpiu ecceUmHmtUni,jctdtoH earehHetton,

the sides. This erandi<^ work is unfortunately^ ^^fn&,]\^l^ri. A<.''*^S5l. ^^i^Tx^v^:

much damaged. In the Academy of Florence is to be caselle, A New Hiatory of Painting in Italy, 1 (London. 1864),

seen a " St. Anne with Madonna and Infant Jesus". 3«v. 519-50; Bumc, HiaUnre dea peintrea de toxdea lea Eeoln;

A. F. Rio discovered in the Napl^. Museum a small gSSL^'^^STJ^^^i^S^'L';. ^^i^'^^l-J^^'^;

MasacCK) which Vasan had heard Michelangelo praise XII. 175 sqq. : Latard, The Brancacdo Chapel (Arundel Society,

very highly, but of which all trace had been lost. 1868); Delabow)E. Dea aevvres el deja manUre deMancno

" iTere we (.ave Pop Liberius, repre^nted under the Sr?S^«f^:,.''^o^^.1^itX■^\^'l^fe). 21!*,$^:'^!^:^

lineaments of Martin V, OUthnmg on the snow-covered Hiatoire de taH pendant la RenaUaance, I. Bk. V. li. 603-19.

ground the foundations of the Basilica of Sta. Maria Schmarzow. Maaacdo-Studien (Caasd. 1895-1900): Maaacdo.

Wgiore, in the midst of an imposing corpse of cardi- ^±,'^ ^tS^aZ^^ ^ nSSa"(«i,Ii?7Sb«;

nals and other personages, all painted from life (Rio, Jodoco della Badia, Maaacdo e Giovanni auo fraUUo in


 * 'L'Art Chretien", II, Paris, 1861, p. 13). This pic- i?a>»wvnaAraH(male(Nov 1904). 143-46: SoRTAM.^Jwd^g^

ture is known as " The Founding of St. Mary of the ^trn%m'wZr^^&' dfi^ ^^T^ii^^L ^

Snows at Rome'. Some portraits m the Uffizi — dei Quattrocmto. VII (MUan, 1910).

notably one of a frail, melancholy youth — which were G. Sortais. for a long time attributed to Masaccio, have now, and

correctly, been assigned to Filippino Lippi and other MaacoutenB Indiana. — A Wisconsin tribe of Algon- later masters. But Masaccio's chief work is the pic- auian stock, of considerable missionary importance in torial decoration of the Brancacci chapel, in the south the seventeenth century, but long since entirely ex- transept of the Church of Sta. Maria del Carmine. In tinct. Their language was a dialect of that common this work, })egun by Masolino and finished by Filip- to the Sauk. Fox. and Kickapoo, with whom, as also pino Lippi, the intermediate portion is Masaccio's — with the Miami, they were usually in close alliance, .; Adam and Eve driven out of Paradise", "Christ or- while maintaining hereditary warfare ^ith the Iro-