Original subtitles

Good afternoon.

We reserved for today's lecture Masaccio's most famous painted ensemble, the Brancacci

Chapel in Santa Maria del Carmine in Florence, a site that became quickly after the frescoes

were painted, the frescoes of Masaccio became and has remained a place of pilgrimage for

artists and art lovers.

This lecture will examine the principal frescoes created here between about 1424 and 1428, with

particular attention to the unity of style and narrative content that distinguishes Masaccio's

work.

I bring back that lovely bird's eye view map of Florence so that I can locate the Church

of the Carmine for you.

It's on the bank of the Arno across from the city center and it is quite near the gate,

the near gate in that wall.

It is this church right here, nearest the wall.

It's easy in a map to get it collated as it were, confused with the one just beyond it.

But two blocks away is Santo Spirito, Pitti Palace back here, just to show you the three

most famous sites on that small side of the Arno.

But this is the Carmine Church and monastery.

As I mentioned before, this was the Church of the Carmelites.

Carmine means Carmelites.

And in that church, there was a chapel under the patronage of the Brancacci family.

The Brancacci family principally made their money from silk.

As you know, Florence was a great cloth-making city.

They were, lots of wool work was done, but here in particular, the Brancacci were working

in silk, it was one of the great sources of wealth of the city.

The chapel, with the fresco cycle in the Brancacci chapel, is extraordinary in every way, historically,

art historically.

It is the first fresco cycle since those of Giotto, in more than a hundred years, to fully

deserve the adjective monumental.

Masaccio revived Giotto's powerful figure style, but with a difference, and we've seen

some contrast before.

In Masaccio, there is a more convincing flexibility of pose and movement than in Giotto, and it

reflects, I suppose, the humanism of the early Renaissance.

I will show you a view into the chapel, and we'll stay with it for a short time for a

while here, because you can see more in this view than in some of the other slides.

I'll give you a little history of the chapel.

Felice Brancacci was the recently returned Florentine ambassador to Cairo.

Does that give you an idea of the significance of Florence in terms of mercantile authority

and financial authority that they had an ambassador in Cairo?

Well, he was and he returned recently, and he is presumed, we don't have the contract to

have commissioned, a well-regarded painter, Masolino, whom I mentioned in passing in the

first lecture on Masaccio.

Masolino, who was born about in 1383 and died either in 1440 or 1447, depending on how

the documents are read, Masolino began work on a fresco cycle in the chapel in early 1424.

Masolino, by the way, means Little Tom.

It too is a nickname.

His proper name was Maso di Cristofano Fini, and he became known as Masolino about a year

later, that is, after he began work in the chapel.

He was joined by the much younger Masaccio.

We don't know whether it was Masolino or Felici Brancacci who invited Masaccio to work in

the Brancacci chapel, but it must have been early in 1425.

Masolino had probably already worked with Masaccio in 1424 on an altarpiece, collaborating

on an altarpiece of the Madonna and Child with St. Anne, which today is in the Uffizi Gallery.

And if so, as we assume, he would therefore have been keenly aware of the decided difference

in their styles already.

Masaccio's manner was bolder from the beginning, more sweeping in conception than the relative

delicacy of the international Gothic style which still persisted in Masolino's work.

Regardless, they seem to have worked together efficiently and amicably in the chapel.

I might add that some have suggested that those two nicknames, Masaccio and Masolino, might've

had not to do just with their appearance, Masolino means little Tom and Masaccio big Tom, but

it might have had to do with their style contrast, one working in a fine late Gothic style and the

other in a very broad, what might have seemed to some almost raw style. We have no way of knowing,

but that suggestion has been made. The chapel is in the right or south transept of the church. As

you face the altarpiece, if you look to your right as you reach the transept, there is the

Brancacci Chapel, a large imposing chapel. The walls of the chapel, as you see, are divided into two tiers

of frescoes, which are then subdivided into narrative scenes, narrative fields. Thus, two scenes appear on

each of the narrow projecting walls. This wall, I'm looking at the left now, that wall, narrow, projects

further into the chapel than does this area just beyond it. It's stepped forward a bit.

Those, there are two scenes on each of that, of those narrow walls, as you enter. There are two

wide scenes on each of the long lateral chapel walls. You see it more clearly here on the left,

very long walls, which run all the way to the, to the altar. And then there are two scenes on each

side of the altar on the end or window wall. I should add that the window itself has been altered since

the time of Masaccio, but it was very important in his, in his considerations as he painted, as he painted

here. There are a dozen extant scenes in the church. Masaccio was responsible for three,

Masaccio for five and a half, and much later, around 1484, Filipino Lippi did three and a half. And we'll

turn to those when we discuss Filipino Lippi's art later in a later lecture. Masalino first also

frescoed the vault. You always start above, and I'll say more about that, but you always start above.

Those paintings were destroyed long ago, and as you can perhaps make out here, these are much later

frescoes, late 18th century frescoes in the vault today. And on the altar below, you have a very old

altarpiece, the Madonna del Carmine, an altarpiece from the middle of the 13th century, the Dugento,

a Tuscan painting in an Italo-Byzantine style. And the chapel was initially dedicated to the Madonna del

Carmine, and the image remains in that place. Let me show you now the view of the left wall from the

nave. We're now just looking at that left-hand wall. The altar is just out of sight to the right.

The subject of the cycle is the life of Saint Peter. Peter, as the first pope, was associated,

symbolically you might say, with the Guelph party in Renaissance and medieval Florence. The Guelph

party was the papal party. So Saint Peter, by default, becomes associated with the Guelph party.

And they were then dominant in Florence at this particular time. But in addition, and more importantly,

I think the chapel had been founded in the late 14th century by Piero Brancacci,

Peter Brancacci. And so it's dedicated to his patron saint, Peter. After painting the vault,

Massolino began at the opening into the chapel. On the right-hand side, as one entered, he painted,

he, Massolino, painted The Temptation of Adam and Eve. We'll return to it. Next, he painted a double

scene, two subjects in a continuous space, on the long right wall. He then painted scenes adjacent to

the right side of the altar, of which only one survives today. By this time, Massaccio must have

joined him, perhaps first as an assistant, then as full collaborator on the project. After painting

half of another large scene, Massolino left Florence in September 1425 to spend nearly two years in

Hungary, of all places, or so it seems, traveling in the service of a Florentine condottieri. And he

never returned to work in the Brancacci chapel. So the work was then taken over by Massaccio.

Now, I get to introduce, at this point, the subject of fresco. We've bandied the word a few times

already. It's time to define it a little bit. You may be familiar with the fresco technique, but

I will give you the short version of the fresco technique. There's no evidence that Massaccio had

ever painted in fresco before the Brancacci chapel. He may have, but there's no evidence of it. If not,

it's a sobering thought that this masterpiece might have been his first essay in a very demanding medium.

Fresco simply means fresh in Italian. The technique involves, again I'm giving you the short version,

the technique involves painting on a shallow layer of freshly troweled wet plaster,

which is called the intonaco, I-N-T-O-N-A-C-O, with water-based pigments which penetrate into the plaster.

The difficulty derives from the necessity of rapid execution before the plaster sets overnight,

so it allows one working day. Therefore, the area which can be covered in a day is called a giornata,

G-I-O-R-N-A-T-A, the Italian for day. In this case, a day or a day's work is a giornata. And it demands

of the artist that discrete, rational areas be painted at one time, for instance, a head or an entire body,

or a landscape feature. Since it's difficult to match the pigments in the next batch of

plaster, as you can imagine, matching them in wet plaster, it's important that the differences in tone

aren't visually disruptive. So this is a very demanding medium indeed. The great advantage of the

medium is its permanence. Since the color is in the wall, part of it is in the wall. However,

however, it should be added that certain pigments, usually azurites, blues, were too expensive to be

used in large diluted quantities, and were painted secco, dry, onto the surface of the dried plaster,

as were some details and subtle effects. Secco painting, and I'll call it secco from now on,

is subject, for obvious reasons, to abrasion or flaking, because it's on the surface,

not in the plaster, and sometimes disappears entirely. Fresco painting is almost always done

from the top of the wall downward, in order to avoid having paint drip on finished work below.

We'll look at four of Masaccio's fresco scenes in the Brancacci Chapel. We will look at the expulsion,

the tribute money, Saint Peter baptizing the neophytes, those ready for baptism,

and Saint Peter healing with his shadow. Entering the chapel, we are flanked by the temptation of Adam and

Eve on the right by Masalino, and opposite it, the expulsion, which you can see still in this image.

On the upper left, the expulsion of Adam and Eve from the garden on the left. Let me show you now the

Masalino, but before I do, take a one last look at this long image here, and let me introduce the names

of three of the five subjects, which you will, three of the four subjects, which you'll see by Masaccio.

The upper left is the Adam and Eve being expelled from paradise, and then the long fresco,

the famous one known as the tribute money, and then on the altar wall, just to the left of the altar

below, not above, is Saint Peter healing with his shadow. On the right-hand side, on the upper level,

is Masaccio's Saint Peter baptizing the neophytes, so that will help you as we see individual works.

Now Masalino. It's a bit of a shock, actually, to suddenly turn to Masalino. I think you've seen

really nothing by him, and his temptation of Adam and Eve is so far from the style of Masaccio in

anything that we've seen in the previous lecture or now, that one hardly knows what to say.

I might point out that the background of this is black, essentially. That's very unusual,

but I think symbolic. Wouldn't you agree that it is symbolic of the sin, the fall of man here behind

Adam and Eve and the serpent, a wonderful serpent, sometimes shown this way, a serpent with a very

human head and perhaps needs a better hairdo, but a nice blonde hair on the serpent's head above them.

Well, if you look at this, you see great elegance, especially in the figure of Eve.

She looks to me like a figure who, well, like a mannequin in a window, waiting to be dressed

by the window decorator because she's all ready to go out, but she hasn't been properly clad yet,

but she's so elegant, utterly elegant, and that is the late Gothic style. Adam, less so,

and a little deferential here, and perhaps a little questioning about the transaction that

is going on in this case. It's an image which hardly prepares us for what Masaccio would do.

You've already been looking at it in the larger image, but to go from Masolino to Masaccio,

from the fall to the expulsion, is to enter an entirely different world of emotion.

Before I talk about that, let me just mention the relative speed with which he painted this,

because I've spoken of giornate, a day's work. This scene, it's narrow, but it's large enough,

was painted in four days. The angel was painted in one day, Adam painted in the second, Eve painted in

the third, and the area to the left. The detail of the doorway and so forth belongs to the fourth day,

but the whole body of Adam was painted in a single day. The contrast is remarkable between

Masolino and Masaccio, stylistically and emotionally, and the expulsion became famous for the intensity,

for the intensity and humanity of the grief that Masaccio achieved. This image has so many things

to say about it. The way grief is expressed is remarkable. Adam, as they are driven out by the

angel, out through the door of paradise, Adam covers his face completely, as it were, unable to face

the world that he is now, must now work in. And Eve expresses her grief very differently,

extroverted, her head up, her mouth open, wailing. She's been called the aria-singing Eve,

but she is extraordinary in that extroverted sense of grief. The two of them are in complete contrast.

What they share is that they have stepped into the light. Look at the lighting on them.

The lighting is bright. It is coming in point of fact, the painted light corresponds to the light

from the window in the chapel, which is to the right, above the altar. And that light floods them,

in a sense. It's painted as well. They have come, you see, they have taken of the tree of knowledge,

and now they have to face the consequences of that knowledge, of that truth. And they are unable for

the brilliant light of the truth of the world, which faces them. There are, in a sense, two truths

being suggested here, the truth of faith and the truth of the real world. But in any event, they seem

to us to be literally blinded by knowledge, blinded by the light of knowledge. If you look at a detail

of Eve's face, the eyes are just slashes of gray. There are no pupils, just slashes of gray, as though

they'd cut into the face. And Adam doesn't just cover his face. He presses his thumbs into his eye

sockets. It's incredibly, incredibly intense. This is one of the very few images of the expulsion

from the Garden of Eden, which fully expresses the emotional impact of paradise lost.

These two scenes of Adam and Eve must also be understood as integral to the meaning of the

other painted stories in the chapel, of which all the others are from the life of St. Peter.

But the overriding theme of the chapel is salvation. And the scenes from Peter's life are the response

to and redemption from the original sin of Adam and Eve. So they're not secondary. They key it.

The tribute money. There are few more famous pictures in Italian Renaissance art. This is the

largest of the scenes completed by Massaccio. It is striking in its choice of subject, in its

composition, and in its richness of expression. The biblical subject is not a common one. It is told

only in the Gospel of Matthew, Matthew 17. And shortly, Jesus and his apostles were approached by a

local tax collector in Capernaum and asked to pay the tax for the temple. Peter reacted angrily to this.

Now, we see Christ in the center of this group, the taxpayer to his right with his back to us,

St. Peter here to the left of Christ. And you can see the anger in Peter's expression in his face

and in his somewhat clenched left hand. He's very, very unhappy at the interruption and at the request.

Jesus instructs him, though, to go to the lake where he would catch a fish. And he said,

the fish will have a coin in its mouth, take the coin from the mouth, and bring it to the tax collector.

This, by the way, you shouldn't confuse this with the passage in Matthew 22,

render unto Caesar, render unto Caesar the things that are Caesar's. It's not the same story.

This is not a common subject matter in narrative painting, and it's been persuasively suggested

that it directly related to the imposition of a tax at that time, the Catasto. The Catasto was an equitable tax

which had been levied in Florence for defense against the invading armies of the Duke of Milan.

And it may have some connection with that. Certainly, it's an interesting suggestion.

And by the way, it's interesting also that this story comes only from the Gospel of Matthew,

and that Matthew had been a tax collector before Jesus called him to follow him.

The three-part composition, which repeats the figure of the tax collector twice and that of Peter

three times, has been compared to an open-air triptych, a triptych with a center piece,

an altar piece, and then two wings. This is constructed in a similar way.

Now, the unifying landscape and architecture is remarkable. The architecture starting at the

right, it's brief, but it sets up perspective, and that perspective is followed, and that perspective

continues into the landscape, into the mountains, and it merges, in a sense, with the wonderful

atmospheric or aerial perspective of the mountains and sky. And this, by the way, is not a sky as that

in Giotto in the Arena Chapel, just blue. This is a sky with clouds and motion in the clouds as well.

Go back to the central group of Christ, the apostles, the tax collector, and notice Peter, first of all,

in his anger here. By the way, observe the halos. We've talked about them before. Look what's happened

to the halos. They're worn like hats. They attach to the top of the head. They move with the head.

They're not parallel to the picture plane behind the head, but they are actually

an organic part of the figures. This is an interesting group of gestures. There are three

hands here. The left hand of the tax collector, pay, the right hand of Peter, which I think is

telling the tax collector to leave, to go away, and the right hand of Christ in the middle, which is doing

two things. In a way, it is stopping Peter from his anger, and it is also instructing him to go to the

lake, which is to the right, and to cast in a line and catch that fish. Peter is already cast in the

line. By the way, first he laid aside his cloak, and then he kneels down, and he's got this blue tunic

on, and his bare legs show, and they're quite awkward, as they would be, and it's a very beautifully observed

moment as he kneels down, because he already has the fish, and he is removing the coin from its mouth,

and then brings it back, and on the right side of the picture, back to his robed self again,

he presents the money to the tax collector in no uncertain terms. It's one of the great,

great, great gestures in the Renaissance, boom, and the tax is passed from one to the next,

and Peter looks a little angry again. Peter delivers. I'm going to say very quickly something

about one aspect of the painting, and that is this post, which rises right here and which is often not

noticed. It's so close to the front that it's cropped at the bottom. We can't see where it comes

out of the ground, but that post goes right up toward the hand. It points right toward this central,

central moment. Posta in Italian means post, a post. It also means an account book entry. Imposta still

means tax in Italian, and posta ferma, a fixed spot, means a settled account. There may be a connection

here, a nice pun. Look again to the central group. The powerful figures and the faces in this scene

have sources in ancient Roman art and in Giotto. For Roman-inspired heads, look, for instance,

at the Apostle to the right, this one, who's often called St. Thomas, and this wonderful profile head,

or look at this figure of St. John, who has rather coiffed hair, braided hair, but a very,

very classical face. Most of the figures have their heredity from Giotto, but of equal significance is

the compositional lesson that Masaccio found in Giotto's inventions. There is a sense here of

something which I think to which attention ought to be paid. It has to do with the sense not only of

space and the sense that figures occupy that space, but the sense that they feel they're occupying it.

I encountered a word very recently in an article about paralysis and people who recover from

paralysis. And the word is proprioception, that they may reach the point in which they know where

their body is in space. Now, I don't mean to improperly borrow this term, but when we look at

these groups of Masaccio, we know where their bodies are in space. It's not just that they're large,

not just that they have weight. It's that we know where they are. And I would even go further and say

that there is a sense that those figures know where they are in space. They inhabit that space.

Just a thought. And here is Giotto, again, the Arena Chapel, The Kiss of Judas. In a similar way,

he circles his group, in this case, the group of soldiers capturing Christ, around the central figures,

which in this case, of course, is the kiss of Judas and the capture of Christ. And Judas,

with his robe, raises his robe, and it covers all of Christ except for the head.

Two scenes of the smaller scenes that I want you to look at.

This one is the baptism of the neophytes, those who are prepared for Christian baptism.

It is placed on the upper tier to the right of the altar, and it represents the story told in Acts,

the Acts of the Apostles, when Peter preaches in Jerusalem on Pentecost and 3,000 people are

converted and baptized. Now, Masaccio makes no attempt to indicate 3,000 or 300 or even 30 people here.

He is not trying to suggest vast numbers, but rather the importance of the act of baptism.

He places the scene in a landscape of barren hills, stretching into the distance,

that is very suggestive of the Apennines near the place where he was born. It has a very

site-specific feeling. The two nude neophytes, one kneeling in front of Peter, the other standing,

shivering behind him, are among the finest early Renaissance renderings of the nude, or later,

for that matter. They're extraordinary. They have such a sense of reality. The, as I say,

the feeling of cold as he crosses his arms across his chest. And this kneeling figure is as classical,

on the one hand, as anything you can imagine. And I mean in the ancient Roman sense or Greek sense,

it is classical. At the same time, it is infused with humanity. It is infused with a sense of the

inner fervor of conversion, and that he can do this in a few figures is really, I think,

remarkable. There's even water here. Do you see that the kneeling figure kneels in water? Do you see

the water that rises above his knees right here? Very hard to paint. Very hard to paint in fresco,

surely, but he has created it here. And on the left-hand side of the altar, I want to show you

what I think is one of the most remarkable images in the chapel. The lower register to the left of the

altar, and it shows another subject that's very rare in the history of art. It is Saint Peter

healing with his shadow. It's drawn from a few brief lines in Acts chapter 5, in which it's stated

that believers brought forth the sick into the streets and laid them on beds and couches,

that at the least the shadow of Peter passing by might overshadow some of them. It implies the hope

of healing, but it does not claim that it occurred. That passage does not claim that healing occurred,

but from this suggestion, Masaccio imagined and designed one of the most powerful frescoes in the chapel.

Because as Peter, walking almost in a trance, look at his face, look at the whole body language,

as it were. He seems to be just processing trance-like, followed by another apostle,

and he passes those who have been crippled and ill. And the feeling is, do you see his shadow?

Shadow? Do you see the shadow that literally falls from him? Well, my reading of it is this. He has

passed one figure who has now risen and is not crippled. Another is rising, and this one will

rise when he reaches him. There is a kind of pre-cinematic progression here as the shadow falls

over them one after the other, and they rise in different positions. It is, I think, a profoundly

moving painting. It may be stated here that we have no idea how the program, the choice of subjects

originated. It's not possible that Masaccio or Masolino had decided upon the scenes to be shown,

or that they chose Peter as the subject. This is not their province, but the sources and documents

are silent on who did so, whether Felice Brancacci or a learned advisor. In 1428, having completed the

Trinity Fresco in Santa Maria Novella, but not the frescoes in the Brancacci Chapel, Masaccio left

Florence for Rome. Perhaps the money ran out. Perhaps he was summoned to Rome by the Pope. All we know

is that the fresco he was then engaged on was less than half finished when he left. Surely he intended

to return, but he died in Rome in 1428. Four years later, Felice Brancacci was exiled, and the chapel

frescoes remained unfinished for more than half a century. It suffered greatly in the ensuing centuries,

the worst in a disastrous church fire in the 1770s, which damaged them and nearly led to their

destruction until Florentine artists protested. They were going to be torn up. A thorough restoration

has given us a better idea of their original appearance, but they have suffered greatly.

When Masaccio died in Rome, age 26, he had permanently altered the course of Renaissance painting

and indeed of Western European art. It was reported by Vasari that Brunelleschi,

Brunelleschi, on hearing of the unexpected death of Masaccio, said over and over and over,

we have suffered a great loss.