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Knights of Art -
Masaccio
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Gallery of Art: It
must have been about the same time when Fra Angelico was covering the
walls of San Marco with his angel pictures, that a very different kind
of painter was working in the Carmine church in Florence. This
was no gentle, refined monk, but just an ordinary man of the world--an
awkward, good- natured person, who, as long as he had pictures to paint,
cared for little else. Why, he would even forget to ask for payment when
his work was done; and as to taking care of his clothes, or trying to
keep himself tidy, that was a thing he never thought of! A Youth by Masaccio What
trouble his mother must have had with him when he was a boy! It was no
use sending him on an errand, he would forget it before he had gone a
hundred yards, and he was so careless and untidy that it was enough to
make any one lose patience with him. But only let him have a pencil and
a smooth surface on which to draw, and he was a different boy. It
is said that even now, in the little town of Castello San Giovanni, some
eighteen miles from Florence, where Tommaso was born, there are still
some wonderfully good figures to be seen, drawn by him when he was quite
a little boy. Certainly there was no carelessness and nothing untidy
about his work. The Virgin and Child with St.
Anne by Masaccio As
the boy grew older all his longings would turn towards Florence, the
beautiful city where there was everything to learn and to see, and so he
was sent to become a pupil in the studio of Masolino, a great Florentine
painter. But though his drawings improved, his careless habits continued
the same. `There
goes Tommaso the painter,' the people would say, watching the big
awkward figure passing through the streets on his way to work. `Truly he
pays but little heed to his appearance. Look but at his untidy hair and
the holes in his boots.' `Ay,
indeed!' another would answer; `and yet it is said if only people paid
him all they owed he would have gold enough and to spare. But what cares
he so long as he has his paints and brushes? ``Masaccio'' would be a
fitter name for him than Tommaso.' So
the name Masaccio, or Ugly Tom, came to be that by which the big awkward
painter was known. But no one thinks of the unkind meaning of the
nickname now, for Masaccio is honoured as one of the great names in the
history of Art. St. John by Masaccio This
painter, careless of many things, cared with all his heart and soul for
the work he had chosen to do. It seemed to him that painters had always
failed to make their pictures like living things. The pictures they
painted were flat, not round as a figure should be, and very often the
feet did not look as if they were standing on the ground at all, but
pointed downwards as if they were hanging in the air. So
he worked with light and shadow and careful drawing until the figures he
drew looked rounded instead of flat, and their feet were planted firmly
on the ground. His models were taken from the ordinary Florentine youths
whom he saw daily in the studio, but he drew them as no one had drawn
figures before. The buildings, too, he made to look like real houses
leading away into the distance, and not just like a flat picture. St.
Peter Pays Tribute by Masaccio He
painted many frescoes both in Florence and Rome, this Ugly Tom, but at
the time the people did not pay him much honour, for they thought him
just a great awkward fellow with his head always in the clouds. Perhaps
if he had lived longer fame and wealth would have come to him, but he
died when he was still a young man, and only a few realised how great he
was. But
in after years, one by one, all the great artists would come to that
little chapel of the Carmine there to learn their first lessons from
those life-like figures. Especially they would stand before the fresco
which shows St. Peter baptizing a crowd of people. And in that fresco
they would study more than all the figure of a boy who has just come out
of the water, shivering with cold, the most natural figure that had ever
been painted up to that time. St. Peter Baptizing Converts
by Masaccio All
things must be learnt little by little, and each new thing we know is a
step onwards. So this figure of the shivering boy marks a higher step of
the golden ladder of Art than any that had been touched before. And this
alone would have made the name of Masaccio worthy to be placed upon the
list of world's great painters. The Adoration of the Magi by Masaccio
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Stories of the Italian Painters by Amy Steedman