Masaccio

Tommaso Guidi, Masaccio, 1401-28, is sometimes called the father of modern art. A pupil of Masolino, he aided his master in frescoing the Church of San Clemente at Rome and the Brancacci Chapel at Florence. Masaccio's works mark the advance from medieval to Renaissance painting in Florence, and his Brancacci frescoes influenced the future course of painting in that city.

Luciano Berti, Director of the Galleries of Florence and discoverer of Masaccio's earliest known work, disposes of the myth of the artist's autogenesis. Setting Masaccio's art in sharp contrast against the tapestry of late Gothic, he traces, brilliantly and convincingly, the origins of the style to techniques drawn from Giotto, Brunelleschi, and Donatello. He also surveys the changes in the image of Masaccio as seen by critics of successive centuries. Reviewing all the known evidence, the author integrates it and brings it up to date. And with his own broad vision he brings out the many facets of the problems his subject suggests.