Masaccio

“ Above all qualities in Masaccio’s work we are impressed with the simplicity and the ease of the work. The youthful artist possessed a reserve of power that, had he lived, would have carried him at one bound to heights that it took his actual successors in the school well nigh a century to climb. ”

“ The remaining ones, which he did not live to finish, were some years afterward added by his scholar Tomaso Gisioli, celebrated by the name of Masaccio from his careless way of living.
Historians, biographers, and poets, unite in dating a new period from Masaccio. The compass of his mind led him to uniformity of pursuit, and the introduction of style; he had [176] formed his principles on the works of Ghiberti and Donatello; perspective he had learnt of Brunelleschi, and in an excursion to Rome, it is unreasonable to suppose that he did not improve himself on the antique. ”

“ It may be remarked, that this work of Masaccio, from which he has borrowed so freely, was a public work, and at no farther distance from Rome than Florence; so that if he had considered it a disgraceful theft, he was sure to be detected; but he was well satisfied that his character for Invention would be little affected by such a discovery; nor is it, except in the opinion of those who are ignorant of the manner in which great works are built.
Those who steal from mere poverty; who having nothing of their own, cannot exist a minute without making such depredations ”

“ Masaccio, an Italian painter, born in Florence; went when very young to Rome, where he painted in the church of St. Clement a series of frescoes, his greatest work being the frescoes in the Brancacci chapel of the Carmine church; he was a great master of perspective and colour (1402-1443) .
Masai, a warlike tribe in Africa, between the coast of Zanzibar and Victoria Nyanza, of the race of the Gallas, men of powerful physique, though far from prepossessing in appearance; when their warlike spirit and prowess are spent they settle down to cattle-breeding. ”

“ Of Masaccio there is here less than might be hoped; a few single figures, and one sketch of a crowd, strong but slight, and to which only the name appended draws immediate attention. By Lorenzo di Credi there is an elaborate study of a kneeling saint with huge fan-shaped beard.
In the same room, as elsewhere, are many sketches by hands unknown. Among these are several full of various power and fine invention. A few only can here be noticed at random; as these: a man's head, three-quarters seen, with strong brows well apart, lips open and somewhat narrow, firm flattish nose and short neck ”

“ The restoration of the young man to life has been open to much discussion as to what precise subject was in view, but the most probable opinion is that the legend of King Theophilus was intended.
In 1427 Masaccio was living in Florence with his mother, then for the second time a widow, and with his younger brother Giovanni, a painter of no distinction; he possessed nothing but debts. In 1428 he was working, as we have seen, in the Brancacci chapel. Before the end of that year he disappeared from Florence, going, as it would appear, to Rome, to evade the importunities of creditors. ”

“ Masaccio wrought his Carmine frescoes between 1425 and 1427, so that his could not possibly have been the earliest influence upon the young monk's impressionable mind. Nor is there even a hint of Masaccio's monumental style in the earliest known works by Filippo: the two "Nativities" in the Florence Academy, and the "Annunciation" in the Pinakothek in Munich. That Fra Filippo, like all the masters of the Florentine [27] Renaissance, was, in his later life, powerfully influenced by the genius of Masaccio, is only natural, and cannot be doubted by anybody who has seen his frescoes at Prato. ”

“ The successors of Masaccio may be divided into two groups as they quietly adopted and popularized the immediately available part of his discoveries, or strenuously carried his work forward. To the moderate progressive group belong Fra Filippo Lippi and Benozzo Gozzoli, and still later Ghirlandaio; the experimentalists are birds of quite a different feather. ”

“ Lorenzo died in 1425. Masaccio had already created the new style of painting, but for a couple of decades faithful disciples of Don Lorenzo carried on his style.
A lover of Plutarchian parallels and contrasts would swiftly pass from Don Lorenzo Monaco to Masaccio. But one may better understand the new movement by taking first men who gradually and normally accepted the new knowledge. Such are Fra Angelico and Masolino, who began as Gothic painters and ended as Renaissance masters. They show us better the average drift of the times than does so revolutionary a figure as Masaccio.
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“ VALUE OF THE NUDE IN ART Values of touch and movement, we remember, are the specifically artistic qualities in figure painting (at least, as practised by the Florentines) , for it is through them chiefly that painting directly heightens life. Now while it remains true that tactile values can, as Giotto and Masaccio have forever established, be admirably rendered on the draped figure, yet drapery is a hindrance, and, at the best, only a way out of a difficulty, for we feel it masking the really significant, which is the form underneath. ”

“ I am the Lord Vitalis, a rich Venetian; do not let me die of hunger in this horrible pit.”
Massaccio was touched by these prayers. He returned to the pit—let down another branch, and a lion jumped out, making the woods echo with a roar of delight.
“Oh certainly, certainly, it was the devil I heard,” said Massaccio, and fled away again; but stopping short, after a few paces, he heard again the piercing cries of Vitalis.
“O God, O God,” cried he, “to die of hunger in a pit! Will no one then come to my help? Whoever you may be, I implore you return; let me not die, when you can save me. ”

“ When I see these half savages alone, or in companies of three or six, on horseback or on foot, all armed with their double-barrelled guns, I can hardly persuade myself that the country is not permanently in a state of war. Even the peasant, who sits on his hay-cart, has his gun slung upon his shoulder. I counted in half an hour twenty-six men armed with double-barrelled guns, who passed me on their way to Ajaccio. The people in the neighbourhood of Ajaccio are known to be the most quarrelsome in the island. ”

“ O God, O God!” and he wept and sobbed in a heart-breaking manner.
“It is certainly the voice of a man for all that,” said Massaccio.
“Oh, if you are still there,” said Vitalis, “in the name of all that is dear to you, save me, that I may die at least at home, and not in this horrible pit. I can say no more; my voice is exhausted. Shall I give you my palace at Venice, my possessions, my honors? I give them all; and may I die if I forfeit my word. Life, life only; save only my life.” ”

“ The royal farms were plundered and devastated; the herds, which had been carefully fattened for the army of the East, were confiscated to the service of the Sicilian revolution; the castles of the French were stormed, their houses sacked, and the massacre so ruthless that, according to Saba Malaspina, it seemed as if every man either had the death of a father, son, or brother to revenge, or firmly believed that the slaughter of a Frenchman was an act well pleasing to God. ”

“ And is it no evil that one man in every fifty should be bred to the trade of slaughter; should live only by destroying and by exposing himself to be destroyed; should fight without enthusiasm and conquer without glory; be sent to a hospital when wounded, and rot on a dunghill when old? Such, over more than two-thirds of Europe, is the fate of soldiers. It was something that the citizen of Milan or Florence fought, not merely in the vague and rhetorical sense in which the words are often used, but in sober truth, for his parents, his children, his lands, his house, his altars. ”

“ But full as is Italian history of desperate feuds, we cannot call to mind any one worthy to be compared with the transactions at Corcyra. The massacre, called the Sicilian Vespers, when 8000 French were [98] surprised and slain in one night, by a simultaneous insurrection of the native Sicilians, is a memorable and frightful example of popular revenge: but the act of a people rising in defence of its rights, atrocious as is such a method of asserting them, is not to be placed by the side of so cold–blooded, and unprovoked, and faithless a massacre as that of the conquered Corcyreans. ”

“ Houses were being broken into and plundered, and their inmates—resisting or unresisting; armed or unarmed; men, women and children alike were pitilessly being put to the sword. Charged was the air of Worcester with the din of that fierce massacre. The crashing of shivered timbers, as doors were beaten in, mingled with the clatter and grind of sword on sword, the crack of musket and pistol, the clank of armour, and the stamping of men and horses in that troubled hour. ”

“ If you have killed a man, go into the mâquis of Porto-Vecchio. With a good gun and plenty of powder and balls, you can live there in safety. Do not forget a brown cloak furnished with a hood, which will serve you for both cover and mattress. The shepherds will give you chestnuts, milk and cheese, and you will have nothing to fear from justice nor the relatives of the dead except when it is necessary for you to descend to the city to replenish your ammunition.
When I was in Corsica in 18—, Mateo Falcone had his house half a league from this mâquis. ”

“ They were looking for an officer, believing that they had caught a spy. The word 'spy' at once spread through the midst of the stragglers, and they gathered in a group round the prisoner. A voice exclaimed: 'He must be shot!' And all these soldiers who were falling from utter prostration, only holding themselves on their feet by leaning on their guns, felt all of a sudden that thrill of furious and bestial anger which urges on a mob to massacre. ”

“ He laughed scornfully again.
"Hear me, Giosué Montecino," said I: "you see this pistol? I might in one moment deprive you of existence——"
"Ha! ha!" laughed the assassin.
"Yet I will spare your life, if you will tell me the fate of my comrade."
"My life? Bagatella! ho—ho! I want it not. Fools—dolts that ye are! think ye that I am afraid to die? Here is my breast—a thousand bullets were welcome—straight to the heart—fire!" and he smote his bosom as he spoke. There was something almost noble in his aspect at that moment, notwithstanding its wildness and repulsiveness. ”

“ Nature will have no unlimited pain. The sufferer swoons, or dies, or endures; but the limit comes. Death itself is but the dissolution of compounds that have either been disordered or worn out, and therefore cannot continue pleasantly to co-exist. Horrible was this Sicilian massacre; horrible and mad; one of the wildest reactions against wickedness in human history. The French masters of the island had grown mad with power and debauchery, and the islanders grew mad with revenge. ”

“ A loud cheer burst from the lips of each, as, after having hurled the missives of death into the dense groups of the astonished savages, they followed up the advantage created by the confusion of the bursting shells, by a rush upon the gun, the drag-ropes of which were seized amid many distant shots, and so effectually used that, before the former could recover from their panic, the piece was withdrawn under cover of the fire from the square, and its muzzle turned to the enemy. ”

“ We hear the ceaseless noise of battle outside, the guns of the Castello, often directed upon the terror-stricken city itself, roaring continually and answered by the great bell of the Duomo sounding a martello, to summon the citizens to arms. These, maddened by exactions and cruelty, or inspired by hope of driving out oppressors, or excluding assailants, gather in thousands at the call. Suffering has made them merciless, and they attack and butcher parties of mercenaries in the streets. ”

“ The most terrible massacre took place at the 7th milestone from Rome. Vitellius was distributing to each soldier provisions ready dressed on the same abundant scale as the gladiators' rations, and the populace had poured forth, and spread themselves throughout the entire camp. Some with the frolicsome humour of slaves robbed the careless soldiers by slily cutting their belts, and then asked them whether they were armed. Unused to insult, the spirit of the soldiers resented the jest. Sword in hand they fell upon the unarmed people. ”

“ The poor wretch was lying face downwards writhing in his blood; the assassins were reloading their muskets as they walked away.
Being anxious to see if it was too late to help the man whom I had not been able to save, I went out into the street and bent over him. He was bloody, disfigured, dying, but was yet alive, uttering dismal groans. I tried to lift him up, but soon saw that the wounds which he had received from bullets fired at close range were both mortal, one being in the head, and the other in the loins. Just then a patrol, of the National Guard turned round the corner of the street. ”

“ I was rapidly sinking into insensibility, in the early part of the morning, when I became roused by hearing the uproar of cannon and musketry, and the shouts of infuriated men, so near, that I was convinced that the people had attacked the prison. I felt the concussion of the artillery most distinctly, which sounded as if the besiegers were battering down the walls; and the continued burst of volleys of musketry was evidence of the spirit with which the attack was carried on. ”