Page:Vasari - Lives of the Most Excellent Painters, Sculptors, and Architects, volume 1.djvu/416

402 it was who taught the method of overcoming many difficulties, and led the way to the adoption of those beautiful attitudes and movements never exhibited by any painter before his day, while he also imparted a life and force to his figures with a certain roundness and relief, which render them truly characteristic and natural. Possessing extreme rectitude of judgment, Masaccio perceived that all figures not sufficiently foreshortened to appear standing firmly on the plane whereon they are placed, but reared up on the points of their feet, must needs be deprived of all grace and excellence in the most important essentials, and that those who so represent them prove themselves unacquainted with the art of foreshortening. It is true that Paolo Uccello had given his attention to this subject, and had done something in the matter, which did to a certain extent lessen the difficulty; but Masaccio, differing from him in various particulars, managed his foreshortenings with much greater ability, exhibiting his mastery of this point in every kind and variety of view, and succeeding better than any artist had done before him. He moreover imparted extreme softness and harmony to his paintings, and was careful to have the carnations of the heads and other nude parts in accordance with the colours of the draperies, which he represented with few and simple folds, as they are seen in the natural object. This has been of the utmost utility to succeeding artists, and Masaccio deserves to be considered the inventor of that manner, since it may be truly affirmed that the works produced before his time should be called paintings; but that his performance, when compared with those works, might be designated life, truth, and nature.

The birth-place of this master was Castello San Giovanni, in the Valdarno, and it is said that some figures are still to be seen there which were executed by Masaccio in his earliest childliood. He was remarkably absent and careless of