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 :. | Profile Portrait of a Young Man | Fresco in the Brancacci Chapel in Santa Maria del Carmine, Florence | Saint Paul | Petrus botar de sjuka med sin skugga | Crucifixion |
Related Artists:
James Gillray
English Illustrator, 1757-1815 English caricaturist and illustrator. He was essentially self-trained although he studied at the Royal Academy and on the Continent. His caricatures of the court of George III made him immensely popular. His masterly delineations, vigorous, clever, often subtle, sometimes vulgar and grotesque, numbered more than 12,000. Among his best-known cartoons are A New Way to Pay the National Debt (1796), Social Elements in Skating (1805),
George Fennel Robson
English Painter, 1788-1833 English watercolourist. After initial training in Durham, Robson moved to London in 1804 with the intention of becoming a landscape painter. He was introduced to the circle of artists surrounding John Varley, and it was from Varley that Robson derived the strong, uncluttered compositions and breadth of manner that characterize his own style.
Rodolfo Amoedo
(born in Salvador, Bahia on December 11, 1857; died in Rio de Janeiro on May 31, 1941) was a Brazilian history painter. He began his career as an artist in 1873 as a student of Victor Meirelles. In 1878 he won the first prize at the Brazilian Academy, which allowed him to travel to Paris, where he lived from 1879 to 1887 studying at the École des Beaux Arts. He was a pupil of Alexandre Cabanel and also worked with Paul-Jacques-Aime Baudry. He was a professor and later director of the Brazilian Academy, renamed School of Fine Arts ou Escola Nacional de Belas Artes at the fall of the Brazilian Empire. His students include Eliseu Visconti. He died forgotten and so poor his friends had to help the widow pay for his funeral. His paintings still hang at the National Museum Museu Nacional de Belas Artes in Rio de Janeiro.