According to
Vasari, Masaccio was the best painter of his generation not only because of his
skill at recreating lifelike figures and movements but also his ability at
creating a sense of three-dimensionality. Vasari’s praise continues on,
“To tell the truth, the works created before Masaccio can be described merely
as paintings, while his creations compared to those executed by others are
lifelike, true, and natural.” |
| Peter and tax collector CC |
Masaccio’s frescoes painted in the Brancacci Chapel at Santa
Maria del Carmine in Florence provide excellent examples of his innovations. In
Tribute Money, Masaccio paints a scene
from the Gospel of Matthew in which a tax collector confronts Jesus and his
apostles at the entrance to Capernum. Jesus tells Peter to go to Lake Galilee
and take coins in the mouth of a fish. He then returns and pays the collector.
This story is separated into three parts within the overall fresco. In the
center, Jesus tells Peter to go to Galilee while the tax collector stands in
the foreground. At the left in the background, Peter extracts the coins from
the mouth of the fish, and at the right, he pays the waiting collector. What
truly makes the piece come alive is the artist’s use of light. Instead of
having light hit all of the figures in the same way, Masaccio identifies a
light source coming from the right and applies it to each figure accordingly. He
also understands the intensity of color as he diminishes the brightness of
colors as the distance increases, which is in fact a form of atmospheric
perspective. Between the highlights and the shadows, the light appears as a
fluctuating force in the piece. The solemn but weighty figures reveal the form
of the body, something that many of his predecessors during the medieval age
had strayed away from. It is all of these factors and more that have led to
Vasari’s lauding of Masaccio.
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