A few years later Masolino was swept to Rome by the great wave of rebuilding and redecorating which accompanied Pope Martin V’s return from Avignon. There in the Chapel of the Sacrament, in the venerable Basilica of S. Clemente, which had formerly been Cardinal Branda’s titular Church, Masolino achieved his maturest work. Completely repainted, we may still see the legends of St. Catherine, and a finely theatrical Calvary by Masolino, and as well legends of St. Ambrose by a follower of Masaccio. Here Masolino’s gift as a story-teller is at its best. He has learned to subordinate his accessories, and the childlike character of his themes enlists his talent in its most engaging aspect. Such a fresco as St. Catherine urging the mysteries of the faith before the Roman doctors, Figure [83], is well-felt and skilfully composed, and withal most flimsily drawn. It is incredible that a man who could do the Tabitha in the Brancacci Chapel at forty should have relapsed to this level at fifty-five. The evidence of the armor[[32]] worn by the horsemen in the Calvary proves that that fresco, and presumably the entire decoration of the chapel, cannot be earlier than 1440, while of course it cannot be later than Masolino’s own death in 1447.
To this later period belongs, I believe, the diptych at Naples which represents two themes rare in early Florentine painting, the Assumption of the Virgin, and the Miracle of the Snow, Figure [84]. The latter scene shows Pope Liberius tracing the foundations of the Basilica of Santa Maria Maggiore which were indicated by a miraculous snow-fall in midsummer. It is delightful as story-telling, and some of the minor figures are entrancing, as is the landscape. Since Michelangelo and Giorgio Vasari once admired this picture together at Rome, we should not grudge it our admiration. Nor should we fail to note the curious defects in construction. The heads of the attendant figures are set on the shoulders like a ball on a post. You could blow any of these heads off without overtaxing your lungs. The picture shows the utmost of which Masolino was capable. It reveals him as lightly touched by the new learning and faithful to the old panoramic ideals of narrative which had come down from Taddeo Gaddi and the Lorenzetti.
Fig. 84. Masolino. Pope Liberius tracing the snow-marked plan of Santa Maria Maggiore.—Naples.
Logically we should next consider Masaccio, but first we may well give an eye to a minor sort of narrative painting which worked in the direction of contemporary realism. This was domestic painting as distinguished from ecclesiastical or civic.[[33]] In a prosperous Florentine home the chest was the most important article of furniture. In the fifteenth century its front was pictured with races, pageants, feasts, battles, or the new themes from classical mythology. Every patrician bride normally received two such painted cassoni to contain her trousseau. For example,[[34]] Giovanna di Filippo Aldobrandini when she married Tommaso di Berto Fini, in 1418, received two bride chests depicting the races on St. John’s day. A complete chest in the Bargello, Florence, shows the riders carrying to the Baptistery the palii, or lengths of brocade which were the prizes. The front panel of the companion chest is in the Holden Collection, at Cleveland, and commemorates with extraordinary vivacity and fidelity the race itself, Figure [85]. The winner is just preparing to touch the palio which hangs from the ceremonial car at the finish. Jesters, policemen, eager women, and impatient urchins who pelt the losers make up a remarkable picture of contemporary customs. Besides the pictured chests, a well appointed room had at the height of a sitter’s shoulder similar but larger panels which were called Spalliere. And still higher there was, on a still larger scale, what were called cornice panels. These too were contemporary or mythological in subject matter. Where many a room thus had three courses of pictures from the floor to the ceiling there was abundant opportunity for the narrative painter and remarkable stimulus to invention. The richness and complexity of this household decoration doubtless influenced all narrative painting, making for the sprightliness which dominates the end of the century.
Fig. 85. School of Uccello. A Horse Race. Detail from a Cassone Front.—Cleveland, O.
Fig. 86. Masaccio. Birth of St. John Baptist.—Desco da Parto. Berlin.
Besides these chest and wall panels, pictured salvers were prepared to celebrate the birth of a patrician child. Such wooden salvers were used to convey the congratulatory gifts which were offered with appalling promptness to every young mother. These Deschi da parto, or birth plates, as the Italians called them, bore pictures alluding either to love and beauty or to childbirth. One of the earlier mythological salvers is in the Bargello and represents the Judgment of Paris. As yet the artist is not sufficiently audacious to display the goddesses in classical nudity. The most famous of all birth-plates may serve as our introduction to the greatest artist of the first half of the century, Masaccio. It is in the Berlin Museum, the subject is the Birth of St. John the Baptist, Figure [86], and the date should be about 1422. In the excellent proportions of the Renaissance portico, in the gravity and mass of the figures, it shows the beginnings of a new and more truthful style, based not on previous artistic formulas but on direct and masterful observation of nature. Mr. Berenson justly calls it “a little giant of a picture.”