A history of Italian painting

by Frank Jewett Mather

Fig. 88. Masaccio. St. Peter raising Tabitha and healing the Cripple.—Brancacci Chapel.

However that be, Masaccio probably succeeded to the work in 1425, his twenty-fourth year, and the next fresco after the Adam and Eve may well have been the adjoining subjects of Peter raising Tabitha from the Dead and healing a Cripple, Figure [88]. As a whole the composition is somewhat marred by inadvertences and afterthoughts. It shows the influence of Masolino in the trite and conventional gestures of the mourners about the bier, and in certain strained facial expressions, notably that of the turbaned bystander. Such survivals are precisely what one would expect in a young painter just emancipated from his master. The entirely Masolino-like pair of strollers in the centre seem to be due to an afterthought. The first intention is registered in the unnaturally straight back of St. Peter’s companion, in the centre. The fresco was apparently to have been cut into two compartments by a pilaster at that point.[^[36]] When the plan was abandoned in favor of putting two episodes in one space, the two unrelated figures had to be added to fill space and provide a transition. One is a little ashamed of pointing out small defects in what in all essentials is a noble and impassioned work. Technically there is nothing better in the Chapel than the establishing of the city background. It has scale, admirable atmospheric placing, dignity and pictorial significance. How anybody who knows Masolino’s niggling and haphazard treatment of such architectural features at Castiglione d’Olona can imagine that he had earlier created this grandiose setting remains a mystery to me. Even more remarkable are the gravity and grandeur of the Peter and the Tabitha. Here we are reminded of Giotto. Masaccio must often have pored over the Stories of St. John in Santa Croce, and while he by no means adopted Giotto’s shorthand indications for mass, he did adopt Giotto’s sense for classic dignity, beautifully calculated order, and moderation. As we continue through these remarkable frescoes we shall see continually that the quite ruthless innovator that was Masaccio was also a reverent traditionalist. The particular form of his art was settled between nature and himself, as Leonardo da Vinci later justly observed; the spirit of his art derived mostly from Giotto. It was highly important for the whole ongoing of art in Italy that so revolutionary a spirit was tempered by the finest respect for the great classic tradition. And in this great fresco of St. Peter’s miracles one may see how a quite homely and drastic realism can be invested with abstract power and dignity. How different it all is from the small and often charming vivacity which Masolino displays at Castiglione d’Olona and at Rome.

Like the Temptation, the Tabitha is more linear and colorful than the other frescoes of the Chapel. The painter has not quite mastered the radically new method of construction in light and shade. Thus there is a technical break between the Tabitha and the frescoes on the back wall, which are in a more developed manner. We may assume an interruption in the work. Indeed we need not assume it, for records prove that for most of the year 1426 Masaccio was occupied with the great altar-piece for the Carmelites at Pisa. On October 15, 1426, Masaccio solemnly engaged not to do any other work until the altar-piece should be finished. We may believe then that the work in the Brancacci Chapel was taken up anew towards 1427.

The four frescoes on the back wall, which are divided into two groups by the window, are the first of the new work. Of these the most remarkable is St. Peter Baptizing, Figure [89]. The drawing is magnificent. Light and dark, without aid of the line, create so many bosses and pits which not merely establish form but suggest the gravest emotions. A few well chosen and well placed figures give the sense of a multitude. Mountains tower in gigantic scale, one feels the run of the little river from its distant source amid high ravines. The simplest modulations of light and dark, so many sweeps of a broad brush, establish the constructional planes of the figures and the mountains. All the early Italian writers mark with wondering admiration the expressiveness of the shivering man waiting his turn at the left. It is the smallest merit of the picture. Masaccio in this great composition commands a homely and impressive majesty, and therein shows himself true successor of Giotto, but he also reveals a power of synthesis entirely modern and hardly excelled since his day. One has only to turn to Masolino’s Baptism at Castiglione d’Olona, Figure [82], with its niggling insistence on details, to appreciate the gulf between the master and the pupil.

Across the window from Masaccio’s Baptism is St. Peter Preaching. The same towering, mountain background is used. The somewhat linear treatment of the faces has led Mr. Berenson, with other critics, to ascribe this fresco to Masolino. It seems to me merely less strenuously seen, because the subject offers little inspiration. Masaccio has lent the theme real dignity, and, in the eager face of the nun at the front of the audience achieves an unusual sweetness. Technically there are good but not compelling reasons for supposing this fresco may have been done among the first, about 1425.

The lower scenes at the back of the Chapel are, at your right, St. Peter healing the Sick, by the mere fall of his shadow and, at the left, St. Peter giving Alms. In both cases we have Florentine street scenes with a classic air lent by the solemn figures of the apostles. We feel the figures as far or near, and the air that veils them. There is great intentness in the poor folk, and a rugged impersonality in St. Peter and St. James. They are not indulging personal compassion so much as fulfilling a divine mission. Again the combination of a drastic realism with a stylistic majesty is what makes these frescoes unique. They contain vivid portraits, among these the traditional portrait of Masolino, a gentle, heavy, middle-aged face, bearded, and crowned with a sort of tuque—just the man to have conceived the charming but loosely organized compositions at Castiglione d’Olona.

What Masaccio looked like we may see in the upper fresco on the right wall. He is the alert and determined figure impersonating St. Thomas, at the left of the group. The story of the Tribute Money, Figure [90], is one of the grandest creations of European art. If, as Leonardo da Vinci asserts, the highest task of painting is to show by the pose and gestures of the body the emotions of the soul, this is one of the greatest paintings. It is remarkable for the dignity lent to an apparently unpromising theme. The story is simply that Christ is required to pay the denarius when there is no money in the company. By a miracle Peter finds the coin in the mouth of a fish and pays it to the tax-gatherer. How the creative imagination has magnified this slender theme! Masaccio has formed a group of potent and formidable individuals, these simple men are fit to shake a world. He has shown them in a moment in which discouragement and determination blend. A technicality threatens to check the salvation of the world. He has discriminated between the assured authority of the Christ and the wrathful energy of St. Peter. He has invested the majestic forms with massive draperies grandly disposed in simple folds. He has given even the tax-gatherer the grace of a Roman athlete. Finally he has set the austere company before a noble river plain upon which press the slopes of lofty mountains, while the undulating crest of a remoter range almost bars off the sky. All objects, human and inanimate, bear firmly on the ground and are wrapped in an enveloping atmosphere. In the quality and arrangement of the figures, it all derives from Giotto; in the vastness of the scale, the introduction of mystery and distance, it is wholly Masaccio’s own. Vasari rightly praised the harmony and discretion with which these powerful assertions of form are made, and sees here the beginnings of the modern style of painting.

Fig. 90. Masaccio. The Tribute Money.—Brancacci Chapel.