Page:The painters of Florence from the thirteenth to the sixteenth century (1915).djvu/106

82 these masterpieces, had left his work unfinished, and had gone to die, unknown and unhonoured, in Rome.

The second series of Masolino's works at Castiglione show us how ready he was to receive new impressions, and how attentively he had studied these things in his old home. The Baptistery frescoes abound in reminiscences of the new Quattrocento art, which was fast superseding the old Giottesque tradition. Both the Evangelists and Angels on the ceiling, and the Gabriel and Virgin of the ruined Annunciation on the entrance wall, still recall Angelico by their slender forms and masses of fair curls; while the small folds and flowing scroll-work of the draperies are curiously like Ghiberti's reliefs. But in the scenes from the Baptist's life there is far more of the new realism. The Baptist standing before Herod is a fine and imposing figure, and the action of the soldier who strikes off his head in prison is singularly well rendered, although the structure of the forms is still vague and uncertain, and the limbs and details of the hands and feet are often badly drawn. The shivering boy wrapping his yellow cloak around him, in the Baptism of Christ, and the man with his back turned towards us in the act of pulling off his shirt, are plainly adapted from Masaccio's famous fresco in the Carmine, and are both excellently drawn; the figure of Christ, again, standing in the stream of Jordan, is not without a certain grandeur; but the arms of the Baptist are too short, and his whole form is awkward and ill-proportioned. Perhaps the most effective subject of the whole series is that of Salome before Herod. Here the story is