[Born at Vicchio, in Tuscany, 1387. Died at Rome, 1455. Aged 67.]
This charming painter of the early Florentine school became, when a youth, a friar of the Dominican order. Began by illuminating missals; afterwards enlarged his style, and executed frescos. The finest of these are in the church of San. Marco, and in the chapel of Nicholas V. at Rome. His works are distinguished by simple grace, tenderness of colour, and the most profound religious feeling. He excelled particularly in painting angels.
[This Bust is by Leandro Biglioschi; but there is a life-size bust of him upon his tomb, in Minerva di Roma.]
135. Tommaso Guidi, also called Massaccio. Painter.
[Born at San-Giovanni, in the Val d’ Arno, 1402. Died at Florence, 1443. Aged 41.]
Massaccio-Tomasaccio (big or heavy Tom) was a nickname given to him when a boy. A devoted student of the works of Brunelleschi and Donatello. He lived for the most part in Rome and Florence, and died in the last-named city. Time has destroyed the greater number of his works. His frescos, which still remain in the Brancacci chapel of the Carmelite church in Florence, representing the history of St. Peter, are remarkable for their freedom, and for the absence of the conventionalities of the early mediæval painters. Some of his noble figures became models for the later Florentines, and were imitated by Raffaelle himself. He excelled his contemporaries in the nude form, and gave to his draperies a style unknown before, adapting them naturally and gracefully to the human shape.
[By Carlo Finelli.]
136. Andrea Mantegna. Painter and Engraver.
[Born at Padua, in Italy, 1430. Died at Mantua, in Italy, 1506. Aged 76.]
This painter is celebrated among the early artists of Italy, and belongs to the Paduan school of art. His chef-d’œuvre, the Madonna della Vittoria, in the Louvre, is grandly treated, and remarkable for its admirable finish. His cartoons of the triumphs of Cæsar are at Hampton Court; the composition is grand and spirited, and knowledge of the antique is blended with a feeling for nature. To Mantegna is attributed the art of engraving with the burin, and also the invention of the art of foreshortening figures, especially on ceilings. Distinguished for his good and amiable qualities.