Masolino

Masolino, also called Masolino da Panicale, original name Tommaso di Cristoforo Fini, (born 1383, Panicale, near Perugia, Romagna—died probably 1440–47, Florence), painter who achieved a compromise between the International Gothic manner and the advanced early Renaissance style of his own day and who owes his prominence in the history of Florentine art not to his innovations but to his lyrical style and his unfailing artistry.

Masolino came from the same district of Tuscany as his younger contemporary Masaccio, with whom his career was closely linked. Trained in a Florentine studio, possibly that of Gherardo Starnina, he appears before 1407 to have been a member of the workshop of Lorenzo Ghiberti. His earliest works include the “Madonna of Humility” (Alte Pinakothek, Munich), probably painted c. 1424, and a “Virgin and Child” (Kunsthalle, Bremen), dated 1423. In 1424 he received payment for frescoes in S. Stefano at Empoli (in large part destroyed).

The first known work to display the fundamental antithesis between the decorative late Gothic style of Masolino and the more progressive early Renaissance style of Masaccio is a “Virgin and Child with St. Anne” (c. 1420; Uffizi, Florence). It is thought that this work may be the result of a collaboration of the two artists.

The influence on Masolino of the stronger and more decisive personality of Masaccio reached its climax in the frescoes of scenes from the life of St. Peter in the Brancacci Chapel in the Church of the Carmine in Florence. There have been many opinions about the respective shares of the two artists in this important cycle. It is likely that the frescoes were commissioned from Masolino about 1425 and that at this time he painted some lost scenes in the upper register of the chapel walls. Thereafter he worked in Hungary, from which he returned in 1427 to undertake, jointly with Masaccio, the remaining frescoes in the chapel. By this time the balance of emphasis within the studio had shifted toward Masaccio, and Masolino was responsible for only one fresco, that of “St. Peter Preaching,” on the altar wall, and three scenes on the right wall, the “Fall of Adam and Eve,” the “Healing of the Lame Man,” and the “Raising of Tabitha,” where the perspective scheme seems to have been worked out and in part realized by Masaccio.

Work on the Brancacci frescoes was abandoned in 1428, and probably at this time Masolino received the commission for a fresco cycle in the Chapel of St. Catherine in S. Clemente in Rome and possibly executed his double-sided triptych for Sta. Maria Maggiore in Rome. The two central panels of this altarpiece, representing the foundation of Sta. Maria Maggiore and the Assumption of the Virgin (Museo e Gallerie Nazionali di Capodimonte, Naples), are among Masolino’s most distinguished panel paintings. The death of Masaccio in Rome in the autumn of 1428 marks a turning point in Masolino’s career, and the story of his later development is that of a progressive return to the International Gothic idiom of his youth. This is evident initially in the S. Clemente frescoes (where the space construction is once more decorative and systematized) and subsequently in a frescoed “Virgin and Child” in S. Fortunato at Todi (1432) and in fresco cycles in the Baptistery (completed 1435) and Collegiata at Castiglione Olona. The extensive panoramas in the backgrounds of the “Crucifixion” on the altar wall in S. Clemente and the “Baptism of Christ” at Castiglione Olona are milestones in the history of landscape painting. With their light tonality and elegant, rhythmical figures, the scenes by Masolino in the Baptistery and Collegiata form two of the most fascinating fresco cycles of the 15th century.