Famous Renaissance Art

Raffaelo

"Raffaelo Sanzio was the youngest of the three giants of the High Renaissance. He was born in Urbino in 1483 and received his first instruction in the techniques of painting from his father, Giovanni Santi, a minor artist. Urbino, where Raphael spent his youth, was also the seat of the warfaring but art-loving condottiere Federico 11 da Montefeltro. At Federico's court, Raphael was introduced to the works of such artists as Paolo Uccello, Luca Signorelli, Melozzo da Forlí and Francesco di Giorgio, as well as the Flemish artists Hieronymus Bosch and joos van Gent. At the age of seventeen, his father sent him to Perugia to become an apprentice under the highly-regarded Perugino. In the four years he spent in Perugino's workshop, Raphael learned all that his master could teach him, and the period passed without problems or challenges. In his early works, Raphael remained faithful to the Perugino School. This is understandable, insofar as the stylistic characteristics which he had acquired from his teacher, namely a clear organization of the composition and the avoidance of excessive detail, also provided useful means through which to express the new spirit of the High Renaissance. In some works it is not easy to distinguish between the hand of Perugino and that of the young Raphael. The idealizing beauty of Peruginesque women, with their calmly contemplative expressions and strikingly small mouths, lingers on for some time In the faces of Raphael's Madonnas (such as that in the Solly Collection and the Madonna del Duca die Terranuova in Berlin). Slowly and tentatively, however, Raphael began to modify the style he had learned, gradually assimilating the new techniques of Leonardo and Michelangelo. The conception, structure and style of his early, famous Sposalizio (Marriage of the Virgin) of 1504 correspond closely to those of the work of the same name by Perugino, and it is assumed that Raphael was here executing a repeat commission passed on to him by his teacher. But while the faces of the figures, such as that of the girl on the left, could have been painted by Perugino, Raphael can elsewhere be seen to introduce elements which reveal his interest in the achievements of the new age. The domed building in the semicircular upper half of the picture may be derived from Bramante's contemporary ideal of architecture, as expressed in his round tempietto at S. Pietro in Montorio in Rome. The scene is one of tranquility. Mary graciously receives the ring from Joseph, who is depicted barefoot in accordance with the custom of oath-taking ceremonies at that time. In contrast to the calm figures of the main group, one young man in the foreground is shown in motion; angered at his failure to win Mary, he is breaking a dead stick over his knee. Joseph's stick, on the other hand, has blossomed afresh in accordance with apocryphal legend, indicating that he has chosen for Mary.
"In 1504 Raphael went to Florence, bearing a letter of recommendation from the Duchess of Montefeltro to the gonfalonier Soderini. The intensive debates surrounding the new directions being taken in art at that time must have made a forceful impression on the young 21-year-old. It was a period in which Leonardo, just returned from Milan, was astounding the public with his Mona Lisa; Fra Bartolommeo was exhibiting his Last Judgement; and Michelangelo, who had come back to Florence from his first trip to Rome three years previously, had completed his David and was now working on the cartoon of the Bathing Soldiers, part of a series of historical and battle scenes planned for the Palazzo della Signoria. Leonardo also produced a design for another fresco in the same series, The Battle of Anghiari. As Benvenuto Cellini later recalled: "One of these cartoons was in the Medici palace, and the other in the Pope's hall: and while they remained intact they served as a school for all the world." Raphael responded to the artistic challenge posed by these cartoons in drawings in which he took up the theme of battle, such as his Battle of the Lapiths and the Centaurs sketch of around 1504.
"In autumn 1508, shortly after summoning Michelangelo to Rome, Julius II also sent for Raphael. If Vasari is to be believed, the Pope acted upon the recommendation of Bramante, the architect of St.Peter's, who was also originally from the Urbino area. A suite of papal rooms was to be decorated on the basis of a theologically-determined concetto. Some of the preliminary work had already been executed (perhaps not altogether to the Pope's satisfaction) by the artists Sodoma and Peruzzi. In contrast to the multiple small components typical of Early Renaissance frescoes, such as those by Fra Angelico in the Vatican and by Gentile da Fabriano in the Lateran (now lost), a freer, more generous style, appropriate to the might and breadth of the Roman papacy, was now the order of the day. It was an ambitious commission, and Raphael found himself obliged to recruit an increasing number of pupils and assistants for the task, so much so that in the later rooms, in particular, it is not always easy to distinguish between the various hands. In the case of the first Stanza, however, the Camera della Segnatura - so called, because it was here that the Pope signed acts of grace - the frescoes stem entirely from the hand of Raphael. He commenced work at the beginning of 1509, and from the very start broke away from the passionate love of detail so characteristic of Florentine painting, and thus away from the style of Ghirlandaio, Botticelli and Piero della Francesco. He developed instead an expansive style of composition which presented itself as a homogeneous and easily intelligible whole. In large, arched frescoes Raphael brought to life the subjects he had been instructed to paint: the theological Disputa (Disputation Concerning the Holy Sacrament) and its pendant, The School of Athens, portraying the secular sciences of philosophy. Aristotle and Plato are seen in conversation at the centre of the picture. just as one might imagine a scholarly discourse taking place in Ancient Greece, they are walking - in true Peripatetic manner - through a lofty lyceum. The gesture which Plato is making with his upward-pointing finger is symbolic in meaning: he is pointing to the source of higher inspiration, the realm of ideas. Aristotle, on the other hand, is gesturing downwards, towards the starting-point of all the natural sciences. Like Michelangelo in the Sistine Ceiling, Raphael also incorporates a number of his contemporaries into his fresco. This Plato is probably a portrait of Leonardo, while Archimedes, bending down to draw on a slate tablet with a pair of dividers, may be recognized as Bramante. The figure immediately behind and slightly above is that of Federico Gonzaga. In addition to these and many others whose identities are now lost to us, Raphael also included himself: together with Sodoma, he looks out towards the viewer from beside the pillar at the extreme right-hand edge of the picture.
"The Triumph of Galatea, which Raphael painted in 1512 in the palazzo owned by the banker Agostino Chigi (the later Villa Farnesina) is perhaps the supreme evocation of the glorious spirit of antiquity. Much of the beauty of Galatea's face lies in its hint of shyness and innocence, as if she were utterly unaware of her physical charms; the expression of devotion on her face is not unlike that of Leonardo's angel in Verrocchio's Baptism of Christ. The composition is clearly constructed upon the interplay of diagonals. The arrows strung in the bows of the putti establish directional lines which are taken up in the lower half of the picture. Thus the diagonal issuing from the arrow top left, for example, is continued in the dolphins' reins, while the arrow top right is restated in the body of the twisting sea nymph. Raphael positions the head of the beautiful Galatea subtly but clearly at the exact centre of the composition.
"The above-mentioned works may be seen as high points of what we understand as High Renaissance painting in its most evolved form. The transition to a new approach to art was complete. A painting was no longer to be the mere portrayal of an event, but was to translate and interpret its subject-matter in its composition. The movement of the body was now understood as an analogy for the animation of the spirit or the emotions; the external structure of a scene proclaimed its inner content. Everything in the picture was aimed at harmonious balance; each individual figure became an inseparable part of the whole. In this lies Raphael's significant contribution to the painting of the High Renaissance.
"Raphael's style was by no means uninfluenced by Michelangelo's painting. Following the preliminary unveiling of the Sistine ceiling in 1509, the figures in Raphael's pictures acquire more voluminous bodies and more powerful arms, and there is a reduction in their numbers. The bold twisting position adopted by the young woman in the Expulsion of Heliodorus - a pose which reappears in reverse in Raphael's late work, the Transfiguration - would be inconceivable without the influence of Michelangelo. Any question as to the cause of the widely-acknowledged sudden change in Raphael's style after 1509 is removed for good, however, when we compare the Sibyls and Prophets executed by Raphael in the Capella Chigi in S. Maria della Pace (1512) with those by Michelangelo in the Sistine Chapel. In addition to the thematic kinship of these frescos with Michelangelo, Raphael's new approach to body volumes and twisting poses makes patently clear the enormous impact which the Sistine ceiling had made upon him.
"The young painter from Urbino thus adopted the artistic innovations of his elder colleagues, in particular those of Leonardo and Michelangelo, and synthesized them with his own aims. This did not pass Michelangelo by; in 1541, long after Raphael's death, he was still complaining in a letter that "everything he knew about art he got from me."
"After the death of Bramante in 1514, Raphael was appointed architect of St. Peter's. He also became increasingly involved with the excavations and surveys of ruins in Rome. He was adroit enough to leave the remaining frescos in the Papal apartments more and more to his assistants, including his important pupil Giulio Romano. Although he provided the designs for the Burning of the Borgo in the third Stanza and for the decoration of the loggias in the Vatican, and although he no doubt supervised their execution, they were largely painted by his pupils.

Michelangelo

Michelangelo could possibly be the greatest artist and sculptor who has ever lived. His paintings and sculptures have changed the meaning of art forever.

BACKGROUND

Michelangelo was born on March 6, 1475, in a town near Florence. His mother died by the time Michelangelo was six years old, leaving him to live with his father, a nobleman. He began to show interest in art and drawing by the age of ten, and became an apprentice by age 12. When Michelangelo was 13 he was set to be an artist. He became a pupil of the great sculptor, Donatello.
As he grew older, Michelangelo became interested in the male nude. Most of his paintings included pictures of nude males, though sometimes just in the background.
Michelangelo lived to the age of 89, and died in 1564.

ACCOMPLISHMENTS

Michelangelo was a great leader in the Italian Renaissance. His greatest glory, painting the Sistine Chapel, began in 1508, and was completed in 1512. In the beginning, Michelangelo was to paint twelve pictures of the apostles around the outside of the ceiling. Instead of doing so, Michelangelo made another suggestion. He used the central area of the ceiling to paint the history of the Old Testament. It included over 300 figures. Beginning in 1491, Michelangelo carved Madonna of the Stairs. It took him one year to complete it. Next was the Pieta. It was started in 1498 and finished in 1500. He began Doni Tondo in 1503, taking him two years to complete the painting. In 1534, twenty-three years after the Sistine Chapel was completed, Michelangelo began to paint The Last Judgment, located over the altar at the same church as the Sistine Chapel.
Michelangelo was noted for use of color, light, tone design, and draftmanship. He excelled in architecture, sculture and anatomy.

IMPACT

Michelangelo set standards for sculpting, painting, poetry, and architecture. When sculpting, he always carved from front to back as shown on the unfinished piece, St. Matthew. His paintings were all equally proportioned, with very good perspective. All of his pictures had a 3-D effect to make his figures stand out from the background. Michelangelo was also a poet and architect, but painting and sculpting were his specialties.

Leonardo da Vinci

It may seem unusual to include Leonardo da Vinci in a list of paleontologists and evolutionary biologists. Leonardo was and is best known as an artist, the creator of such masterpieces as the Mona Lisa, Madonna of the Rocks, and The Last Supper. Yet Leonardo was far more than a great artist: he had one of the best scientific minds of his time. He made painstaking observations and carried out research in fields ranging from architecture and civil engineering to astronomy to anatomy and zoology to geography, geology and paleontology. In the words of his biographer Giorgio Vasari:

The most heavenly gifts seem to be showered on certain human beings. Sometimes supernaturally, marvelously, they all congregate in one individual. . . . This was seen and acknowledged by all men in the case of Leonardo da Vinci, who had. . . an indescribable grace in every effortless act and deed. His talent was so rare that he mastered any subject to which he turned his attention. . . . He might have been a scientist if he had not been so versatile.

Leonardo's scientific and technical observations are found in his handwritten manuscripts, of which over 4000 pages survive, including the one pictured on the right, showing some rock formations (click on it to view an enlargement). It seems that Leonardo planned to publish them as a great encyclopedia of knowledge, but like many of his projects, this one was never finished. The manuscripts are difficult to read: not only did Leonardo write in mirror-image script from right to left, but he used peculiar spellings and abbreviations, and his notes are not arranged in any logical order. After his death his notes were scattered to libraries and collections all over Europe. While portions of Leonardo's technical treatises on painting were published as early as 1651, the scope and caliber of much of his scientific work remained unknown until the 19th century. Yet his geological and paleontological observations and theories foreshadow many later breakthroughs. Leonardo knew well the rocks and fossils (mostly Cenozoic mollusks) found in his native north Italy. No doubt he had ample opportunity to observe them during his service as an engineer and artist at the court of Lodovico Sforza, Duke of Milan, from 1482 to 1499: Vasari wrote that "Leonardo was frequently occupied in the preparation of plans to remove mountains or to pierce them with tunnels from plain to plain." He made many observations on mountains and rivers, and he grasped the principle that rocks can be formed by deposition of sediments by water, while at the same time the rivers erode rocks and carry their sediments to the sea, in a continuous grand cycle. He wrote: "The stratified stones of the mountains are all layers of clay, deposited one above the other by the various floods of the rivers. . . In every concavity at the summit of the mountains we shall always find the divisions of strata in the rocks." Leonardo appear to have grasped the law of superposition, which would later be articulated fully by the Danish scientist Nicolaus Steno in 1669: in any sequence of sedimentary rocks, the oldest rocks are those at the base. He also appears to have noticed that distinct layers of rocks and fossils could be traced over long distances, and that these layers were formed at different times: ". . . the shells in Lombardy are at four levels, and thus it is everywhere, having been made at various times." Nearly three hundred years later, the rediscovery and elaboration of these principles would make possible modern stratigraphy and geological mapping.
In Leonardo's day there were several hypotheses of how it was that shells and other living creatures were found in rocks on the tops of mountans. Some believed the shells to have been carried there by the Biblical Flood; others thought that these shells had grown in the rocks. Leonardo had no patience with either hypothesis, and refuted both using his careful observations. Concerning the second hypothesis, he wrote that "such an opinion cannot exist in a brain of much reason; because here are the years of their growth, numbered on their shells, and there are large and small ones to be seen which could not have grown without food, and could not have fed without motion -- and here they could not move." There was every sign that these shells had once been living organisms. What about the Great Flood mentioned in the Bible? Leonardo doubted the existence of a single worldwide flood, noting that there would have been no place for the water to go when it receded. He also noted that "if the shells had been carried by the muddy deluge they would have been mixed up, and separated from each other amidst the mud, and not in regular steps and layers -- as we see them now in our time." He noted that rain falling on mountains rushed downhill, not uphill, and suggested that any Great Flood would have carried fossils away from the land, not towards it. He described sessile fossils such as oysters and corals, and considered it impossible that one flood could have carried them 300 miles inland, or that they could have crawled 300 miles in the forty days and nights of the Biblical flood.
How did those shells come to lie at the tops of mountains? Leonardo's answer was remarkably close to the modern one: fossils were once-living organisms that had been buried at a time before the mountains were raised: "it must be presumed that in those places there were sea coasts, where all the shells were thrown up, broken, and divided. . ." Where there is now land, there was once ocean. It was possible, Leonardo thought, that some fossils were buried by floods -- this idea probably came from his observations of the floods of the Arno River and other rivers of north Italy -- but these floods had been repeated, local catastrophes, not a single Great Flood. To Leonardo da Vinci, as to modern paleontologists, fossils indicated the history of the Earth, which extends far beyond human records. As Leonardo himself wrote:

Since things are much more ancient than letters, it is no marvel if, in our day, no records exist of these seas having covered so many countries. . . But sufficient for us is the testimony of things created in the salt waters, and found again in high mountains far from the seas.

Brunelleschi

Brunelleschi was the father of Renaissance architecture and the most prominent architect in Italy, during his lifetime.

Background

Filippo Brunelleschi, the son of a lawyer, was born in Florence, Italy in 1377. He began his career as an apprentice for a goldsmith. Only six years after his apprenticeship, during 1398, Filippo passed his examination and became a guild master goldsmith.
Brunelleschi later discovered a hidden passion for mathematics and architecture. He began renovating town houses and buildings. This esteemed architect became friends with the distinguished sculptor, Donatello.
Filippo continued with his studies in Rome, not in his original trade, goldsmithing, but in architecture. Working with clocks, wheels, gears and weights, Brunelleschi developed his exceptional skills that would help him construct some of the greatest pieces of architecture in Renaissance history. Antonio Manetti wrote Filippo Brunelleschi's biography in his lifetime, 1423-1497.
Filippo Brunelleschi died on April 16, 1446, at the age of sixty-nine, after many years of contributing to Italian culture. He was laid to rest by the citizens of Florence, under the floor of the Cathedral of Florence.

Accomplishments

Filippo formulated techniques for lifting construction materials into position and creating a self-supporting upper shell of domes. Brunelleschi built many works of art in Italy. Here are a few of his most notable works:

• the church of San Lorenzo
• the church of San Spirito
• the Pazzi Chapel
• Santa Maria degli Angeli (in 1436)
• the Pitti Palace
• the Palazzo Quaratesi
• Loggia at San Pero a Grada (near Piza)
• the Cathedral of Florence
• the Foundling Hospital (also known as Ospedale degli Innocenti)

The Cathedral of Florence was Brunelleschi's most prestigious work because of its dome or cupola. It was completed without supporting scaffolding, columns, arches or pilasters. The actual cathedral was started by Arnolfio di Cambio and built over 150 years. The dome was finished in 1436 and was 91 m high. Its point was sixteen meters high and thirty meters in diameter.
Brunelleschi brought new scaffolding, arches and hoists, and lighter masonry into Renaissance architecture.

Impact

Brunelleschi made a huge impact on architecture in the Italian Renaissance; his work was a model for much that followed. This outstanding Renaissance character developed the concept of linear perspective, showing depth on a flat surface. He also influenced some of the great minds, such as Michelangelo and Donato Bramante. Filippo Brunelleschi created the Foundling Hospital, which still stands today, but not as a hospital; the Foundling Hospital is used as an orphanage for children. Filippo wrote a book called, Rules of Perspective, which was used as a text for many architects in the future.

Donatello

Donato, who was always called Donatello by his friends and relatives, was born in Florence in the year 1383, and produced many works in his youth; but the first thing that caused him to be known was an Annunciation carved in stone for the church of S. Croce in Florence. For the same church he made a crucifix of wood, which he carved with extraordinary patience; and when it was done, thinking it a very fine piece of work, he showed it to Filippo that he might have his opinion upon it. Filippo, who expected from what Donatello had said to see something better, when he looked at it could not help smiling a little. Donatello, seeing it, prayed him by their friendship to speak his mind truly, upon which Filippo, who was frank enough, replied that he seemed to him to have put on the cross a peasant and not Jesus Christ, who was the man most perfect in everything that ever was born. Donatello, feeling the reproach more bitterly because he had expected praise, replied, "If it were as easy to do a thing as to judge it, my Christ would not look like a peasant; but take some wood yourself and make one." Filippo without another word returned home, and, saying nothing to anyone, set to work upon a crucifix, and aiming to surpass Donatello that he might not condemn himself, he brought it to great perfection after many months. Then one morning he invited Donatello to dine with him. Donatello accepted his invitation, and they went together to Filippo's house. Coming to the old market, Filippo bought some things and gave them to Donatello, saying, "Go on to the house and wait for me, I am just coming." So Donatello, going into the house, found Filippo's crucifix arranged in a good light; and stopping to consider it, he found it so perfect that, overcome with surprise and admiration, he let his apron drop, and the eggs and cheese and all the other things that he was carrying in it fell to the ground and were broken. Filippo, coming in and finding him standing thus lost in astonishment, said, laughingly, "What are you about, Donatello? How are we to dine when you have dropped all the things?" "I," said Donatello, "have had enough. If you want anything, take it. To you it is given to do Christ’s, and to me peasants."

After this he made for the facade of S. Maria del Fiore a Daniel and a S. John the Evangelist, and within the same church, for the organ gallery, those figures which, though they are only roughly sketched, seem when you look at them to be alive and move. For Donatello made his figures in such a way that in the room where he worked they did not look half as well as when they were put in their places. It was so with the S. Mark, which in company with Filippo he undertook for the joiners (though with Filippo's goodwill he completed it all himself). When the masters of the company saw it while it was on the ground they did not recognise its value, and stopped the work; but Donatello begged them to let him put it up and work upon it, and he would turn it into quite another figure. Then, having set it up and screened it from view for a fortnight, when he uncovered it, although he had not touched it, every one was astonished at it. For the armourers he made a S. George in armour, very full of life, with all the beauty of youth and the courage of the soldier.
For the facade of S. Maria del Fiore he made also four figures, two of which were portraits from life, one young Francesco Soderini, and the other Giovanni de Barduccio Cherichini, which is now called the Zuccone, the bald man. This being considered more beautiful than anything he had ever done, Donatello used to swear by it, saying, "By the faith I bear to my bald man." While he was working upon it he would look at it and say, "Speak, speak!"
Duke Cosimo de' Medici admired his talents so much that he made him work for him constantly; and he on his part bore such love to Cosimo that he undertook what he wished at the least sign, and obeyed him. There is a story told of a Genoese merchant who, by the mediation of Cosimo, prevailed upon Donatello to make a bronze head for him. When it was finished, the merchant coming to pay him, thought that Donatello asked too much, so the matter was referred to Cosimo. He had it brought to the upper court of the palace and placed on the wall overlooking the street, that it might be seen better. But when he tried to settle the difference, he found the merchant's offer very much below Donatello's demand, and turning to him he said it was too little. The merchant, who thought it too much, answered that Donatello had worked upon it for a month, or a little more, and that would give him more than half a florin a day. Donatello upon that turned upon him in anger, thinking these words too great an insult, and telling the merchant that he had found means in a hundredth part of an hour to destroy the work of a year, he gave the head a sudden blow and knocked it down into the street, where it was broken into many pieces, adding that it was evident he was in the habit of bargaining about beans and not statues. The merchant repenting, offered to give him double as much if he would make it again, but neither his promises nor Cosimo's entreaties could make him consent.
In the houses of the Martelli are many works done by Donatello, and among them a David three braccia high, with many other things given to that family out of his love and devotion, particularly a S. John in high relief worked in marble, a most rare thing, belonging now to the heirs of Ruberto Martelli, who left command that it should never be pledged or sold or given away, under heavy penalties, in testimony of the kindness shown them by Donatello.
At this time the Signory of Venice, hearing the fame of him, sent for him to make the monument to Gattamelata in the city of Padua. He undertook it very gladly, and made the statue that stands in the Piazza of S. Antonio, with the horse chafing and neighing, and its proud, spirited rider. Donatello showed himself in this so admirable, both for proportion and execution, that truly it may be compared to any ancient work. The Paduans sought by every means to prevail upon him to become a citizen and to stay there, giving him much work to do; but finding himself considered a marvel, and praised on all sides, he determined to return to Florence, saying if he stayed there longer he should forget all he knew, being praised so much, and that he must return to his own city to be continually found fault with, for this faultfinding would be the cause of his studying more, and thereby winning greater glory.
To sum up, Donatello was so admirable in knowledge, in judgment, and in the practice of his art that he may be said to have been the first to illustrate the art of sculpture among the moderns; and he deserves the more commendation because in his time few antiquities had been uncovered. He was one of those who aroused in Cosimo de' Medici the desire to bring antiquities into Florence. He was most liberal and courteous, and kinder to his friends than himself; nor did he care for money, keeping it in a basket hanging from the ceiling, where his workmen and friends could help themselves without saying anything to him. When he got old, therefore, and could not work, he was supported by Cosimo and his friends. Cosimo dying, recommended him to Piero his son, who, to carry out his father's wishes, gave him a farm in Cafaggiuolo on which he could live comfortably. Donatello was greatly pleased, thinking he was now more than secure from dying of hunger. But he had not held it a year before he came to Piero and gave it him back, saying that he could not give up all his quiet to attend to domestic matters and to listen to the troubles of the farmer who was at him every third day, now to complain that the wind had taken the roof off the pigeon house, now that all the cattle had been taken to pay the taxes, and again that the storm had destroyed his vines and fruit trees; that he was weary of the trouble, and would rather die of hunger than have to think of such things. Piero laughed at his simplicity, and taking back the land, made him a provision of the same value in money paid him every week, with which he was quite content, and passed all the rest of his life as friend and servant of the Medici without trouble or care.

Masaccio

 Early Life

Masaccio was born to Giovanni di Simone Cassai and Jacopa di Martinozzo in Castel San Giovanni di Altura, now San Giovanni Valdarno (today part of the province of Arezzo, Tuscany)^. His father was a notary and his mother the daughter of an innkeeper of Barberino di Mugello, a town a few miles south of Florence. His family name, Cassai, comes from the trade of his paternal grandfather Simone and granduncle Lorenzo, who were carpenters - cabinet makers ("casse", hence "cassai"). His father died in 1406, when Tommaso was only five; in that year a brother was born, called Giovanni (1406–1486) after the dead father. He also was to become a painter, with the nickname of lo Scheggia meaning "the splinter." In 1412 Monna Jacopa married an elderly apothecary, Tedesco di maestro Feo, who already had several daughters, one of whom grew up to marry the only other documented painter from Castel San Giovanni, Mariotto di Cristofano (1393–1457).
There is no evidence for Masaccio's artistic education. Renaissance painters traditionally began an apprenticeship with an established master at about the age of 12; Masaccio would likely have had to move to Florence to receive his training, but he was not documented in the city until he joined the painters guild (the Arte de' Medici e Speziali) as an independent master on January 7, 1422, signing as "Masus S. Johannis Simonis pictor populi S. Nicholae de Florentia."

 First Work

The first works attributed to Masaccio are the San Giovenale Triptych (1422) and the Virgin and Child with Saint Anne (Sant'Anna Metterza)(c. 1424) at the Uffizi. 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. It represents the Virgin and Child with angels in the central panel, Sts. Bartholomew and Blaise on the left panel, and Sts. 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. 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.
The second work was perhaps Masaccio's first collaboration with the older and already-renowned artist, Masolino da Panicale (1383/4-c. 1436). The circumstances of the 2 artists' collaboration are unclear; since Masolino was considerably older, it seems likely that he brought Masaccio under his wing, but the division of hands in the Virgin and Child with Saint Anne is so marked - Masolino is believed to have painted the figure of St. Anne and the angels that hold the cloth of honor behind her, while Masaccio painted the more important Virgin and Child on their throne - that it is hard to see the older artist as the controlling figure in this commission. Masolino's figures are delicate, graceful and somewhat flat, while Masaccio's are solid and hefty.

Famous Artists of Italy

Italian Renaissance Artists
• Masaccio
• Donatello
• Brunelleschi
• Leonardo da Vinci
• Michelangelo Buonarroti
• Titian
• Tintoretto
• Bellini
• Botticelli
• Caravaggio
• Ghiberti
• Giotto
• Raphael

Background

For all practical purposes, the Renaissance / Early Modern Period is distinguished from other periods in European history almost entirely in intellectual or cultural terms. As far as larger historical patterns are concerned, the period is more or less considered as playing out what had been set up in the later middle ages. European historians overwhelmingly tend to place Europe's major break with its medieval and classical past with the discovery of America and the Reformation.

   The historical background against which the intellectual and cultural ferment of the Renaissance / Early Modern period played itself out in its initial stages left its indelible mark on the character of the intellectual and cultural ferment. Set in the city-states of Italy in the fourteenth, fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, the constant uncertainty, both economic and political, and extreme volatility of the historical situation provided the material for new intellectual, cultural, and social experiments that would at their conclusion provide the means of constructing a new European monocultural identity, one focussed on humanistic studies, science, and the arts. This historical background is surprisingly volatile; while one might assume that political stability and economic security are prerequisites for intellectual and cultural experimentation, some of the most radical and far-reaching cultural work in the Renaissance was done in the periods of greatest insecurity.