Category: Piece of the Week (Art)

The artist I’ll be focusing on this week is Masaccio. Born in the year 1401 and only living until the age of 26, this extraordinary painter rounds out our look at the proto-Renaissance and brings us into the Quattrocento.

He is known for his movement away from the elaborate ornamentation of the international Gothic style to a more naturalistic style featuring perspective (representing three dimensions on paper) and chiaroscuro (the treatment of light and shade). Masaccio brings us fully out of the Medieval Period and into the Renaissance.

The works I’m going to focus on are his paintings in the Brancacci Chapel of Florence in the 1420’s and his Holy Trinity altar piece for the Dominican church Santa Maria Novella, also in Florence, in 1427.

Brancacci Chapel:

The Expulsion from the Garden of Eden

and The Tribute Money

Holy Trinity altar piece

This week I’ll be taking a look at Giotto and his painting of the Scrovegni Chapel, in Padua, around 1305.

Giotto, taught by Cimabue, was the first painter to move away from the more traditional Byzantine style of painting in which figures are highly formalized and resemble the ancient practice of icon painting, into a more realistic, natural and emotional style that really served to kick off the Renaissance.

His masterpiece is the Scrovegni Chapel. Pictured here:

Some famous panels:

The Kiss of Judas

The Lamentation of Christ

The Expulsion of the Money Changers

and of course, the Last Judgment

This week I look at Cimabue’s Santa Trinita Maestá c.1290-1300.

Painted for the church of Santa Trinita in Florence.

Cimabue is considered by many to be the start of, or a precursor to, the Renaissance or what’s known as the Proto-Renaissance.

Although his art is heavily influenced by the Byzantine style, his more lifelike proportions and shading mark an advance over his predecessors and bring us out of the medieval period and into the Renaissance.

Some of his other works:

The Madonna Enthroned with St. Francis in the Basilica of St. Francis

and his Crucifix at Santa Croce