Vasari on Masaccio
Vasari’s general estimate of Masaccio’s importance is still sound.
“With regard to the good manner of painting, we are indebted above all to Masaccio, seeing that he, as one desirous of acquiring fame, perceived that painting is nothing but the counterfeiting of all the things of nature, vividly and simply, with drawing and with colours, even as she produced them for us.... This truth, I say, being recognized by Masaccio, brought it about that by means of continuous study he learned so much that he can be numbered among the first who cleared away, in a great measure, the hardness, the imperfections, and the difficulties of the art, and that he gave a beginning to beautiful attitudes, movements, liveliness, and vivacity, and to a certain relief truly characteristic and natural; which no painter up to his time had done.... And he painted his works with good unity and softness, harmonizing the flesh-colours of the heads and of the nudes with the colours of the draperies, which he delighted to make with few folds and simple, as they are in life and nature....
“For this reason that chapel has been frequented continually up to our own day [1554] by innumerable draughtsmen and masters; and there still are therein some heads so life-like and so beautiful, that it may truly be said that no master of that age approached so nearly as this man did to the moderns. His labours, therefore, deserve infinite praise, and above all because he gave form in his art to the beautiful manner of the times.”
Vasari then names twenty-five artists who studied Masaccio’s frescoes. From De Vere’s translation of the Lives, Vol. II, p. 189, 90.
Leonardo da Vinci on Masaccio
Leonardo da Vinci uses Masaccio as the example of a painter who goes to nature rather than to other men’s painting.
That Painting declines and deteriorates from age to age, when painters have no standard but painting already done.
“Hence the painter will produce pictures of small merit if he takes for his standard the pictures of others. But if he will study from natural objects he will bear good fruit; as was seen in the painters after the Romans who always imitated each other, and so their art declined from age to age. After these came Giotto the Florentine who—not content with imitating the works of Cimabue; his master—being born in the mountains and in a solitude inhabited only by goats and such beasts, and being guided by nature to his art, began by drawing on the rocks the movements of the goats of which he was keeper. And thus he began to draw all the animals which were to be found in the country, and in such wise that after much study he excelled not only all the masters of his time but all those of many bygone ages.”
“Afterwards this art declined again, because everyone imitated the pictures that were already done; thus it went on from century to century until Tomaso, of Florence, nicknamed Masaccio, showed by his perfect works how those who take for their standard any one but nature—the mistress of all masters—weary themselves in vain.”