Florence and Northern Tuscany with Genoa: With Sixteen Illustrations in Colour by William Parkinson and Sixteen Other Illustrations, Second EditionHutton, Edward
History
Florence and Northern Tuscany with Genoa: With Sixteen Illustrations in Colour by William Parkinson and Sixteen Other Illustrations, Second Edition
Hutton, Edward
Art -- Italy -- Florence; Genoa (Italy) -- History; Tuscany (Italy) -- Description and travel
Masolino, according to Mr. Berenson, was born in 1384, and died after
1423, while his pupil Masaccio was born in 1401, and died, one of the
youngest of Florentine painters, in 1428. Here in the Brancacci Chapel
it might seem difficult to decide what may be the work of Masolino and
what of his pupil, and indeed Crowe and Cavalcaselle have denied that
Masolino worked here at all. Later criticism, however, interested in
work that marks a revolution in Tuscan painting, has made it plain that
certain frescoes here are undoubtedly from his hand, and Mr. Berenson
gives him certainly the Fall of Adam, the Raising of Tabitha, and the
Miracle at the Golden Gate, above on the right, as well as the Preaching
of St. Peter, above to the left on the altar wall. Masaccio's work is
more numerous, consisting of the Expulsion from the Temple and the
Payment of the Tribute, above on the right, part of the fresco below the
last; St. Peter Baptizing, above to the left on the altar wall, as well
as the two frescoes, St. Peter and St. John healing the Sick, and St.
Peter and St. John giving Alms, below on either side of the altar. The
rest of the frescoes, the St. Paul visiting St. Peter in Prison, below
on the left, part of the fresco next to it, the Liberation of St. Peter
opposite, and the St. Peter and St. Paul before Nero, and the
Crucifixion of St. Peter, below on the right, are the work of Filippino
Lippi.
Masolino da Panicale of Valdelsa was, according to Vasari, a pupil of
Lorenzo Ghiberti, and had been in his younger days a very good
goldsmith. He was the best among those who helped Ghiberti in the
labours of the doors of S. Giovanni, but when about nineteen years of
age he seems to have devoted himself to painting, forsaking the art of
the goldsmith, and placing himself under Gherardo della Starnina, the
first master of his day. He is said to have gone to Rome, and some works
of his in S. Clemente would seem to prove this story; but finding his
health suffer from the air of the Eternal City, he returned to Florence,
and began to paint here in the Church of S. Maria del Carmine, the
figure of S. Piero beside the "Chapel of the Crucifixion," which was
destroyed in the fire of 1771. This S. Piero, Vasari tells us, was
greatly commended by the painters of the time, and brought Masolino the
commission for painting the Chapel of the Brancacci family in the same
church. Among the rest mentioned by Vasari, he speaks of the Four
Evangelists on the roof here, which have now been ruined by
over-painting and restoration. A man of an admirable genius, his study
and fatigues, Vasari tells us, so weakened him that he was always
ailing, till he died at the age of thirty-seven. Yet in looking on his
work to-day, beside that of Masaccio, one thinks less, I fancy, of his
"study and fatigues," of his structure and technique, than of the
admirable beauty of his work. Consider then those splendid young men in
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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