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 :. | St Paul sgy | San Giovenale Triptych | When it was cleaned | Tribute Money | St Peter Healing the Sick with his Shadow |
Related Artists:
Pedro Blanes
1878-1926 Uruguayan painter. He first studied painting and drawing as a child with the Catalan painter Miguel Jaume i Bosch. As an adolescent he moved with his family to Spain, where he studied at the Real Academia de Bellas Artes de San Fernando in Madrid and frequented the workshop of Santiago Rusieol. After studying in Paris with Benjamin Constant, he visited Italy and Mallorca, where he first developed his talents as a landscape painter before returning briefly to Uruguay in 1899. During another prolonged visit to Europe from 1902 to 1907 he enthusiastically studied the work of Pierre Puvis de Chavannes, Lucien Simon, Henri Martin, Claude Monet and James Abbott McNeill Whistler. After his return to Montevideo in 1907 he painted shimmering Impressionist-influenced landscapes such as Palma de Mallorca and treated local rural and urban scenes in which he established himself as a remarkable colourist. He also commemorated subjects from Latin American history in works such as Artigas Dictating to his Secretary Don Jose G. Monterroso , the equestrian portrait of General Galarza and Artigas in el Hervidero.
Sergei Svetoslavsky
Russia,1869-1938
MASOLINO da Panicale
Italian Early Renaissance Painter, ca.1383-1447 Florentine painter of the early Renaissance, whose real name was Tommaso di Cristoforo Fini. His versatile painting incorporated his feeling for decorative color with strong modeling and spatial organization. He was admitted (1423) to the apothecaries' guild in Florence, in which painters were enrolled, and was soon commissioned to paint the frescoes in the Brancacci Chapel in Florence. These were continued by his pupil Masaccio upon Masolino's departure (1427) for Hungary and were completed by Filippino Lippi, thus greatly complicating the question of authorship; currently scholars attribute to Masolino St. Peter Preaching, St. Peter Healing the Cripple, The Raising of Tabitha, and The Fall of Adam and Eve. Upon his return to Florence, Masolino found painters occupied with problems of perspective, light and shade, and classical architecture and decoration, ideas that he utilized while retaining much of the old Giottesque tradition. He went to Rome where he painted frescoes in the Church of San Clemente for the Cardinal Branda Castiglione. For the same patron he decorated the church of Castiglione di Olona in the province of Como, Italy. There he represented scenes from the life of the Virgin and of St. John the Baptist. Attributed to Masolino are The Foundation of Santa Maria Maggiore and a Madonna and Christ in Glory (Naples);