Italian Early Renaissance Painter, 1401-1428 was the first great painter of the Quattrocento period of the Italian Renaissance. His frescoes are the earliest monuments of Humanism, and introduce a plasticity previously unseen in figure painting. The name Masaccio is a humorous version of Tommaso, meaning "big", "fat", "clumsy" or "messy" Tom. The name was created to distinguish him from his principal collaborator, also called Tommaso, who came to be known as Masolino ("little/delicate Tom"). Despite his brief career, he had a profound influence on other artists. He was one of the first to use scientific perspective in his painting, employing techniques such as vanishing point in art for the first time. He also moved away from the Gothic style and elaborate ornamentation of artists like Gentile da Fabriano to a more natural mode that employed perspective for greater realism. Masaccio was born to Giovanni di Mone Cassa??i and Jacopa di Martinozzo in Castel San Giovanni di Altura, now San Giovanni Valdarno (now part of the province of Arezzo, Tuscany). His father was a notary and his mother the daughter of an innkeeper of Barberino di Mugello, a town a few miles south of Florence. His family name, Cassai, comes from the trade of his grandfather Simone and granduncle Lorenzo, who were carpenters - cabinet makers ("casse", hence "cassai"). His father died in 1406, when Tommaso was only five; in that year another brother was born, called Giovanni after the dead father. He also was to become a painter, with the nickname of "Scheggia" meaning "splinter". The mother was remarried to an elderly apothecary, Tedesco, who guaranteed Masaccio and his family a comfortable childhood.  Related Paintings of MASACCIO :. | Resurrection of the Son of Theophilus | Profile Portrait of a Young Man wg | The Expulsion of Adam and Eve From the Garden | The Baptism of the Neophytes | The Trinity (mk08) |
Related Artists:
KEYSER, Thomas de
Dutch Baroque Era Painter, ca.1596-1667 son of Hendrick de Keyser I. Following an apprenticeship with an unidentified master in painting, he trained from 1616 to 1618 with his father in architecture. Although he ultimately followed his father and two brothers, Pieter and Willem, into service for the city of Amsterdam as city mason (1662-7), no designs for buildings by Thomas are known, with the exception of an unbuilt triumphal arch published in Salomon de Bray's Architectura moderna
Adolf-Ulrik Wertmuller
Swedish Painter, 1751-1811,was a Swedish painter whose notable works include Danaë receiving Jupiter in a Shower of Gold. Wertmuller was born in Stockholm and studied art at home before moving to Paris in 1772 to study under his cousin Alexander Roslin and French painter Joseph-Marie Vien. On July 30, 1784, Wertmuller was elected to the Royal Academy of Painting and Sculpture. Wertmuller was commissioned by Gustav III of Sweden for a portrait of Marie Antoinette, which is now in the Nationalmuseum at Stockholm. In 1787, he produced his masterpiece Danae, a work which proved controversial as one of the earliest female nude paintings exhibited in America. Wertmuller first emigrated to the United States in May 1794 and continued his portrait work, most notably of General Washington, but in 1796 was called back to Sweden, eventually returning to Philadelphia in 1800. Wertmuller was married to Elizabeth Henderson, granddaughter of noted early American painter Gustavus Hesselius, on January 8, 1801, and two years later retired to a plantation in Claymont, Delaware, where he lived the final years of his life.
William Henry Shelton
A nineteenth century painter, etcher and illustrator. American , 1840-1932