(Panel, 110 cm × 65 cm – central) — The San Giovenale altarpiece was only discovered in 1961 in the church of San Giovenale at Cascia di Reggello, which is very close to Masaccio's hometown. Now it's on display at the nearby Masaccio Museum of Sacred Art. It represents the Virgin and Child with angels in the central panel, Saints Bartholomew and Blaise on the left panel, and Saints Juvenal (i.e. San Giovenale) and Anthony Abbot in the right panel. The painting has lost much of its original framing, and its surface is badly abraded.[3] Nevertheless, Masaccio's concern to suggest three-dimensionality through volumetric figures and foreshortened forms (a revival of Giotto's approach, rather than a continuation of contemporary trends) is already apparent.
1423–1425 — Portrait of a young man
(Wood, 42 cm × 32 cm) — An unknown wealthy young man with fashionable clothes and headgear, wearing a chaperon: the portrait shows an accurate sense •
Masaccio’s Four Paintings Analysis Essay
The Holy Trinity is lauded for its avant-garde implementation of the linear perspective projection, marking the repudiation of the medieval two-dimensionality towards the possibilities of three-dimensional realism through atmospheric and linear perspective. This facilitated the formation of the Renaissance style characterized by a greater sense of depth and naturalism. Inspired by Brunelleschi’s new architectural principles of linear perspective, Masaccio portrays the Holy Trinity within a compositional framework of the extruded barrel-vaulted ceiling, “expertly creating an illusion of depth” (Auffenberg 5). Masaccio’s technique was sophisticated and innovative, as, from the right angle, the fresco worked as a trompe l’oeil, creating an illusion that the depicted objects/subjects existed in three dimensions.
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Below the Trinity, Masaccio depicts the figures of Mary and John, as well as the full-size portraits of the two donors, likely of th
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Italian Renaissance: Masaccio
1. The Italian Renaissance Masaccio and the Re-discovery of Linear Perspective
2. Niklaus Manuel, St. Luke Painting the Madonna (detail), Museum of Fine Arts, Bern How do you create an illusion of a three dimensional world on a flat surface?
3. Niklaus Manuel, St. Luke Painting the Madonna (detail), Museum of Fine Arts, Bern Two components to making a flat picture seem 3D: •Volume •Space
4. Giotto got the ball rolling by using gradations of light and shade to make his figures seem three dimensional
5. But his backgrounds are shallow and unrealistic – they are like stage sets, rather than being convincingly three dimensional
6. Flemish painters made great advances with the discovery of oil, but their rendering of space is unconvincing
7. The figures are too big for the room they occupy, and there are inconsistencies in the space
8. Linear perspective was one of the most significant breakthroughs of the Renaissance
9. Seated woman playing a Kithara, fresco from the Villa of P. Fannius Synistor, Boscoreale, 4-30 CE Class