Original subtitles

The founder of Renaissance painting, granted a much too brief life, Tommaso di Sergiovanni,

known to all by his nickname, Masaccio, will be our focus for two lectures.

Masaccio painted for no more than 11 or 12 years,

and the works for which he is famous were created in fewer than six.

And like all such short-lived prodigies, his career fascinates us and astonishes us.

First, we're going to examine the long-dismantled and dispersed Pisa altarpiece,

in which medieval taste still survives in the gold background, which was probably desired by his patron.

Then we'll compare that work, the various parts of it, with that of his spiritual forbearer, Giotto,

whom we've looked at before, the artist whose simple, massive figures and spiritual weight, gravitas,

provided the essential model for Masaccio.

Masaccio was called by one art historian, Giotto, reborn.

Then we'll look at his monumental fresco in the Church of Santa Maria Novella, of the Trinity.

And among the aspects of that famous work to be studied is his introduction of one-point perspective,

which he certainly learned from his friend, Filippo Brunelleschi,

whose architecture we've had the opportunity to look at briefly.

In the short space of about a dozen years, the artist called Masaccio established the course of painting in the early Renaissance

and also became an exemplar for later generations.

Tommaso di Sergiovanni, it simply means Thomas, the son of Signor Giovanni.

Tommaso di Sergiovanni was born in 1401 and he died in 1428.

The nickname Masaccio, the suffix Maso is the first part, that's Tommaso,

but the suffix Accio is a derogatory suffix, roughly meaning ugly or brutish.

The nickname is sometimes rendered in English as Big Ugly Tom or similar formulations.

There are a few supposed portraits of him which support a large-featured, large-bodied person,

but it may not have just been for that.

There may have been other reasons that we're unaware of today that he got such a nickname.

Nicknames then, as now, come for various reasons.

He wasn't born in Florence.

He was born in an Arno River Valley town not far from Florence, but toward the mountains.

At 20, he entered the Painters Guild in Florence, and in 1425, he joined the painter Mazzolino,

who was at work on the decoration of a chapel for the Brancacci family in the Florentine church

of Santa Maria del Carmine.

It was to become Masaccio's most famous work, and we'll study it all by itself in the next lecture.

While Masaccio was working on the Brancacci chapel, he was commissioned to paint a polyptych,

an altarpiece made up of many panels, in 1426, in Pisa, for the Church of the Carmine there.

Carmine means Carmelites, and the two Carmelite churches obviously had some connection,

one with the other, through the order, and it's possible that the commissions were also

influenced by that fact.

The Pisa altarpiece was a remarkable ensemble, but it was later displaced from the altar.

It's happened so often in the history of art, and taken apart.

Its various components were eventually scattered to museums in four countries.

We are going to begin with a look at the Madonna enthroned with child today in London,

in the National Gallery, but it was the centerpiece of this extraordinary altarpiece.

And I want to take a moment or two to look at it closely.

The Madonna enthroned with child is not a large, a very large, large piece, moderate size,

but it's a very, very somber, solemn, monumental-in-feeling painting,

and deeply affecting, I think, despite what in fact is a fairly badly damaged state.

One doesn't sense that when you're in front of the painting,

but we all ought to realize that when we're in museums of paintings of the 15th century,

for instance, if we suddenly could snap our fingers and have all the overpaint disappear,

the shock would be overwhelming.

That they've survived it all is something of a miracle,

and so we shouldn't be surprised that surface damage has occurred,

and repainting and various kinds of renovation or restoration have taken place.

Look at the Madonna for a while with the Christ child in her lap.

She is extraordinarily serious.

She does not look at the child.

She looks, as it were, in her own world.

She's looking into her thoughts.

She's looking, in a sense, into the future,

because she is seeing the ultimate sacrifice of her child.

That is something one finds again and again in the Madonna and child image.

You're looking on to the future.

It's in the beginning is the end,

and she's aware of that.

The child surprises people because, on the one hand,

it looks very childlike compared to some earlier Christ child images in the Madonna and child,

and I'll show you one in a moment, a famous one.

Because the child has one hand reaching for something in the Madonna's hand

and seems to be eating with the right.

And, of course, that's exactly what he's doing.

And it's produced in a very childlike way.

That is to say, it looks as though Masaccio has looked at children

and has been able to catch that.

Yes, but at the same time, it's symbolic because those are grapes that he's eating.

And the grapes represent the sacrifice of Christ, the blood of Christ, as one finds it in the mass.

And also, despite the convincing childlike quality of the gestures, he is still a little man.

He is not an infant in the modern sense.

And that is because he is also divine.

And that is not because they couldn't draw children.

It's because he is conceived as a small man and a god-man, in a sense.

You'll see musical angels here and elsewhere in paintings in this course.

Here, there are two beautiful angels seated at the foot of the throne, both of them playing lutes.

Behind, you see two standing angels.

I think their wings are folded up above their heads.

Can you see left and on the right?

They look like hats, but I think the tips of their wings.

And their hands, I think, are clasped together.

They're overlapped by the throne.

And the overlapping does give us a sense of space on the other side of the throne.

In the foreground, the space is established first by the step on which the angels sit.

And by the way, look at the bottom of the stage or throne on which the Madonna sits.

That, and it's called stridule pattern, a stridulated pattern.

These curved lines on it recall classical decoration and classical architecture and sculpture.

So it's something borrowed from Roman art.

And then the Madonna herself is so beautifully modeled.

So convincingly three-dimensional, so there, as you look at her.

And these great pockets of shadow, for instance, between the legs, give us a wonderful sense of the body underneath the drapery.

This painting ought to be compared with Giotto's painting of the same subject.

It's a much larger painting, so the comparison is a little unfair.

Giotto's painting is quite a lot larger.

He can therefore put in more figures, more angels on either side.

It is more insistently symmetrical than the Masaccio is.

But you see how the throne seems to contain the body of the Madonna and how the body of the Madonna does suggest her great bulk, her size, her weight, her volume.

The child here is much more of a little man than in the Masaccio.

So you see there has been a change in the intervening century, a move toward a greater naturalness.

Nonetheless, both of them share the godchild idea here.

The Giotto, I can't let go without saying it's one of the great masterpieces of Giotto.

The painting of the Madonna is called the Ogni Santi Madonna, meaning All Saints, because it came from the Church of All Saints, the Ogni Santi Church in Florence.

It was done about 1310, so we have about 115 years between the two.

But it's clear that Masaccio has revived the imposing humanity that Giotto had announced at the beginning of the Trecento.

At the summit of the Pisa altarpiece, that is to say, above the Madonna we just saw,

part of the same large polyptych at the top was this extraordinary crucifixion.

The crucifixion is now in Naples, in the museum of the Capodimonte.

It is remarkable for several reasons.

Remarkable for the figure of Christ, foreshortened, because seen from below,

when you see it straight on in a photograph or in the museum, you don't understand.

It was at the top. You had to look up at it.

That explains the foreshortened necklace head of Christ, which looks very awkward when seen straight on.

You see, the body is pulled, straining against the hanging position on the cross,

and the head, the ribcage, the clavicle, pushes forward as a result.

And you have to imagine yourself looking up at it.

The physical pull of the suspended body is painfully obvious.

It is also remarkable for the figure of Mary on the left,

this remarkable blue-clad figure, a concentrated block of a figure very much in the tradition of Giotto,

whose grief is concentrated into the sustained volume of her form like a resonant organ cord.

Against her mass on the left, and look at her hands, by the way,

coming out of the blue, just clasped tightly together,

and her face barely seen, but her lips are open as though praying

or emitting some sound as she looks up at the body.

It's a wonderful contrast to the figure on the opposite side,

who is John the Evangelist, who is, instead of being large and monumental,

is slight, almost waif-like, and whose weeping face is heartbreaking, extraordinary.

There are tears, literally, on that face.

And his hands pulled up and pulled to one side,

not straight up and down, but bent as he bends his wrists,

all the way down to the feet.

That whole figure is one of a weeping and very vulnerable kind of grief,

quite different from that of the stoic, strong figure of the Madonna.

Above all else, I suppose, is the astonishing, thrilling red cloak of the Magdalene,

Mary Magdalene, at the foot of the cross,

a place where she's often seen at the crucifixion.

The Magdalene is known as an emotional figure,

the Magdalene the great sinner and repentant sinner,

and here she is at the foot of the cross,

her arms thrown out, not again in an absolutely symmetrical V.

One arm, her left, parallels the leg, the right foreleg of Christ.

The right arm seems to point up toward St. John,

who, in fact, seems to look down at the Magdalene.

Her golden hair falls back over her orange-red cloak.

The cry there, we don't see her face,

but the cry of grief is in the color and in the shape,

and it couldn't be more magnificently expressed if she turned and faced us.

This panel is only about 30 inches high,

which is a real surprise,

because it has the breadth and the heft of a much larger painting.

One of the predella panels, remember those are the footer panels,

below, at the bottom of the altarpiece, in the bottom of the frame.

One of them, the Adoration of the Magi, now in Berlin,

was a predella panel for the Pisa altarpiece,

and it shows the Magi coming from the right to the Holy Family on the left.

The eldest, as always, the eldest Magus,

kneels in front and kisses here the foot of the Christ child.

There are two portraits, obviously, here.

The two figures in gray, just right of center,

are clearly portraits, must be of the donors of this piece,

or of the friends of the donors, the family,

and they are shown here.

Wonderful if you look at the right,

the horses at the extraordinary amount of foreshortening.

Small panel, but all of the different ways

in which the horses are turned, their heads are turned,

horses, this horse in the back,

the white head reaches out and above the horses in front of it.

It's very, very skillful foreshortening,

and foreshortening is showing an object,

three-dimensional object,

according to the rules of perspective.

In the Getty Museum, another piece,

which used to be on the altarpiece,

and since the altarpiece was deconstructed,

everybody tries to reconstruct it imaginatively.

We don't know, actually.

This panel had to be, of course, on the right-hand side,

because he looks probably at the cross,

possibly at the Madonna,

depending where he was mounted,

on the right-hand side of the altarpiece.

It is Saint Andrew,

and it, too, has an extraordinary monumentality.

It's only a half figure,

but look at the bulk of it,

the wonderful bulk,

and how he, with just a few strokes,

gives you the sense of sorrow in that face.

It is not overt,

and yet the long lines of the beard,

the curving of the eyebrows, and so forth,

gives you a great inward sense

of the figure of Saint Andrew.

I'm more interested in the monumentality of that saint

than in any other aspect of him,

because it recalls, again,

the massive, moving figures of Giotto.

And let me show you Giotto again.

This gives me great pleasure to bring Giotto back

whenever we can.

And this is the Arena Chapel, again,

which we've looked at in previous lectures,

and this is one of the frescoes

in the Arena Chapel in Padua.

The Arena Chapel,

which is also known as the Scrovegni Chapel,

after the man who commissioned it,

Enrico Scrovegni,

but Arena is its nickname

because of the site on which it was built.

135, approximately.

This meeting at the Golden Gate,

as it's called,

is the event when Joachim and Anna,

the parents of the Virgin Mary,

have separately received the divine news

that the age at Anna would conceive.

Now, we've already encountered this twice,

I think, in Old Testament scenes.

The idea of a barren woman,

long past childbearing age,

and her equally elderly husband,

either childless altogether

or childless for a long time,

who want children,

and that is divinely granted.

This, in the Old Testament,

is in large part a kind of allegory

of the survival of the Hebrew race,

of the tribe,

of the necessity of having children.

And that's why it takes on such importance.

And here in the New Testament,

it is continued with this wonderful scene.

And Anna and Joachim receive the news separately.

Anna at home, Joachim in the fields,

both receive an enunciation

that Anna will conceive.

And they leave their places

and rush to meet each other.

And they meet each other

at the gate of the city,

the Golden Gate.

And it is an embrace

which is hard to forget.

It is almost the epitome of embraces.

The two bodies become one.

They pull together.

Even the halos merge.

They are extraordinary.

The kiss, the two heads are one.

It is one magnificent pyramidal unit

of these two figures

backed by one of the piers of the gate here.

There are other people about,

some who have perhaps followed Anna out to the fields.

One woman who's very strange,

the woman in black,

whose face is partially covered.

A much discussed figure.

Nobody has an answer.

But she has a slightly ominous feeling about her.

And she stands at that place

just as the arch comes down.

She's on one side.

And the arch then comes down

to the figure of Anna.

A remarkable painting.

And it's nice to have the opportunity

to show it in this context.

Back at work in Florence,

having finished his work in Pisa,

Masaccio also took on a commission

for an extraordinary fresco

in the left-side aisle of Santa Maria Novella.

It is the Trinity.

It is nearly 22 feet high.

That's the first thing to know.

We presume he painted it shortly

before he left to go to Rome.

But in any event,

it consists of a very elaborate,

fictive, architectural setting,

similar to an elevated chapel.

For many years,

the bottom part of this was covered over.

They didn't know it was there.

You see it's a tomb at the bottom,

the very bottom.

A tomb, two columns on each side,

a skeleton in the tomb.

And this is almost like an altar table

supported by those paired columns.

Then a ledge.

And I will continue with the description

in just a moment.

But that was eventually uncovered.

It had been, in a sense, forgotten.

That it was there.

It had been painted over.

And the tomb was then uncovered.

It's all part of the same fresco,

every bit of it.

Everything in this painting

is governed by Brunelleschi's

perspective system

and the various levels of reality

that can be achieved through it.

Now I'm going to give you,

and keep my fingers crossed,

a brief explanation

of one-point perspective.

We've touched on it already

with Donatello.

We've touched on it with Ghiberti.

And now I'll try to give a bit more

about one-point perspective,

which is perhaps best understood

by artists and architects.

than by you and I.

However, perspective

is a way of constructing

a pictorial space

in which three-dimensional objects

are placed in recession

to create a microcosm

of the real world.

The pictorial space

is a separate picture world.

And it can also be thought of

as an extension

of the real world of the viewer.

The figures and objects

depicted in spatial recession

are also subject

to the rules of perspective.

That's called foreshortening.

I touched on it a moment ago.

Because the pictorial space

is constructed with lines,

the system is also called

linear perspective.

These are all the same.

The horizontal lines,

for instance, of floor tiles,

as we saw them in Donatello's relief

of the beheading of the Baptist.

The horizontal lines

and the diagonal lines

are what constructs the space.

The horizontal lines

are parallel to the picture plane.

They are called transversals.

And the diagonal lines

receding into the picture space

are called orthogonals,

a word which I introduced before.

O-R-T-H-O-G-O-N-A-L-S.

And the two together

recreate the way,

well, the orthogonals

is what I'm interested in here.

The orthogonals recreate the way

parallel lines in the real world,

for instance, railroad tracks,

are perceived by the eye.

That is, as if they were converging

in the distance.

The point at which

the orthogonals meet

is called the vanishing point.

And it's on the horizon line usually,

but not always,

near the center of the picture.

The vanishing point

corresponds to the spectator's viewpoint.

And that's why the pictorial space

can be felt as an extension

of the viewer's real space.

I'd already introduced to you

the name Leon Battista Alberti,

the architect and theorist

who first published

a formulation of these principles

in 1435.

And he further likened

the picture surface

to a window,

which has become

a very popular way

of thinking about it

in modern times.

Renaissance perspective

did indeed enable

the illusion of a window

onto the world.

In his Trinity,

Masaccio applied

perspective principles

consistently and imaginatively.

Now, in the following description,

please understand

that everything,

everything we are looking at

is in fact a painted illusion

on a single flat surface.

At the bottom level,

facing the visitor to the church,

is the tomb,

with a skeleton and a motto

about the mortality of mankind.

This stops you, I might add,

when you're coming down the nave.

It tends to,

tends to get your attention.

Above that appears

an elaborate architectural construction

with six figures.

The architecture consists

of a barrel vaulted chapel

seen through an arch

supported by two columns.

The receding ribs

of the coffered barrel vault

are the principal orthogonals

that control the perspective space

in this painting

because you see

we are too low

in the point of view

to see any floor tiles

should there be any.

So there's no receding floor

that is visible

in the viewpoint

which he has painted.

So we depend on that barrel vault

to supply that recession.

The chapel is then flanked

by giant pilasters,

the flattened columns,

these huge flattened columns,

which is topped

by a very elaborate cornice

and again,

all painted, all flat.

In the plain nearest the viewer,

two figures kneel

in front of the pilasters

on a step

which is lower

than the floor of the chapel.

These figures

are the Florentine couple

who were the donors

of the fresco

and they are, in a sense,

in our space.

That is to say,

the space we inhabit

in the church.

They're in the space

of the church

in terms of the illusion.

Inside the chapel

is a cross

with the crucified Christ

flanked by the Madonna

on the left

and St. John.

The two standing figures

being on a higher level

are seen more sharply foreshortened

than are the kneeling figures.

The figure of Christ

seems to be

in approximately

the same plane

as the Madonna

and St. John.

That is to say,

the same plane

left and right.

They seem to be

occupying the same

cross area.

The sixth figure,

of course,

is God the Father

whose feet

you perhaps may see

seem to be

on a ledge

that appears to be

at the back

of the chapel.

The back of the chapel

but whose hands

support the arms

of the cross

which is forward

in the same plane

where the Madonna

and St. John are

and whose head

is also nearly aligned

with that of Jesus.

The deity may thus seem

to irrationally inhabit

two spaces simultaneously.

This is arguable

because it is ambiguous

but that God

appears to loom

within the chapel

and not be constrained

by it

is unarguable.

The dove

of the Holy Spirit,

this is called

the Trinity,

you recall,

the dove

of the Holy Spirit

is easy to miss

in reproductions

between the head

of God the Father

and Christ.

It looks

with its upswept wings

and its down-pointed head

like an elaborate collar

of a white tunic

in front of the fresco

when you're not looking

at an illustration

it's clear.

A long look

at this composition,

if you take a long look

at it

and study the way

it's put together,

you will begin

to perceive

that Masaccio

has designed

two interlocking pyramids.

one with its base

where the donors,

you and I

in a sense,

are that secular space

where they kneel,

that's the base

and its apex

is the head

of God the Father,

a great pyramidal sweep

encompassing

all of the figures.

The other

is inverted.

It's created

by the perspective

convergence

of the vault's

orthogonals

down to a point

if you follow

each of these lines

they converge

at a point

just above

that little hill

which symbolizes

Calvary,

the place of the skull,

the hill in which

the cross is embedded

and that point

by the way

is exactly

at eye level

when you are

standing

in the chapel.

That's exactly

at eye level.

Those two,

those two pyramids

intersect,

the inverted one

and the one

moving upward

and the intersection

of course

is in the body

of the crucified Christ.

This is as close,

this is probably

as good

an explanation

of the mystery

which it certainly is

of the Trinity

as anything

you will find written.

There have been

splits in the church

and sects developed

over the doctrine

of the Trinity

ever since it was

first devised

in a sense

and this is as good

an explanation

in visual terms

of how three

three in one

can be understood.

In the Trinity

the mastery

of perspective

is complete

and so is

Masaccio's

understanding

of its emotional,

religious,

and intellectual

potential.

There is

a constant

shifting

of our

attention

as we look

at this wonderful

fresco

from the

skeleton below,

the temporal

quality of life,

mortality,

through the

realistic

kneeling figures,

ourselves if you will,

to the holy figures

and look how the

Madonna

looks toward us

and gestures

toward the body

on the cross.

She invites,

this is not narrative,

this is theological

explanation

and she invites us

to contemplate this

and John looks up

with absolute,

absolute focus

on the body

of Christ

and then

this looming

upper part,

this all by itself,

take the head

of God the Father,

the head of Christ,

follow the arch,

the circle in a sense,

which is set up

by the barrel vault.

You can imagine

that continuing

on around

as a kind

of circling motion

which includes

the upper part

and arms

of the crucified Christ

and the outstretched arms

and head

of God the Father

and that

is seen

straight

on.

It is not seen

from below.

It is not seen

from a foreshortened position.

It is seen

as though we were

suddenly on the same level.

It does not obey

the laws of perspective.

It leaves reality

behind

at that point.

Well,

we have much

to look forward to

in the next lecture

because then

we have the opportunity

to explore

one of the central

monuments

of the Renaissance,

Masaccio's frescoes

in the Brancacci Chapel.

Thank you.