Frescoes of the Cappella Brancacci

Santa Maria delle Carmine, Florence

1426-82

The chapel in the right-hand arm of the transept in the church of Santa Maria del Carmine is today consecrated to the Madonna del Popolo, and a painting of the Virgin stands on the altar. The patrons of the chapel were the Brancacci family, from the second half of the 14th century until 1780. In 1423, after he returned from an ambassadorship in Cairo, Felice Brancacci commissioned the fresco decoration. It is assumed that work on the frescoes began in 1424, at a time when Masaccio and Masolino were working together, and that it continued until 1427 or 1428, when Masaccio set off for Rome, leaving the fresco cycle unfinished. The appearance of the chapel today is the result of alterations begun immediately after Felice Brancacci fell out of favor; he was exiled in 1435 and declared a rebel in 1458. Further changes were carried out in the 18th and 19th centuries.

Originally the chapel was cross-vaulted and lit by a very tall and narrow two-light window; the last of the stories from the life of St Peter, his Crucifixion, was probably painted on the wall below the window, but this fresco was destroyed soon after Brancacci was. The chapel, formerly the chapel of St Peter, was re-consecrated to the Madonna del Popolo. It appears that Felice Brancacci was subjected to an operation of "damnatio memoriae", for all the portrayals of people connected to the Brancacci family were eliminated from Masaccio's fresco of the "Raising of the Son of Theophilus". The scene was then restored in 1481-82 by Filippino Lippi, who also completed the cycle.

After the re-consecration a number of votive lamps were installed: their soot coated the surface of the frescoes, causing such damage that as early as the second half of the 16th century they had to be cleaned.

In 1670 further alterations were carried out: the two levels of frescoes were divided by four sculptures set in carved and gilded wooden frames. It was probably at this time during the reign of the bigoted Cosimo III. that the leaves were added to conceal the nudity of Adam and Eve in the two frescoes, Masolino's Temptation and Masaccio's Expulsion from the Garden.

In 1990-94 the frescoes were thoroughly cleaned, their under-paintings investigated. They have probably not been as beautiful since the 16^th century!

The cycle, with the exception of the first two, tells the story of St Peter:

Temptation (Masolino)
Expulsion from the Garden (Masaccio)
Peter's Calling (Masaccio)
Tribute Money (Masaccio)
Healing of the Cripple and Raising of Tabitha (Masolino)
St Peter Preaching (Masolino) Baptism of the Neophytes (Masaccio)
St Peter Healing the Sick with his Shadow (Masaccio)
Distribution of Alms and Death of Ananias (Masaccio)
Raising of the Son of Theophilus and St Peter Enthroned (Masaccio and Filippino Lippi)
St Paul Visiting St Peter in Prison (Filippino Lippi)
Peter Being Freed from Prison (Filippino Lippi)
Disputation with Simon Magus and Crucifixion of St Peter (Filippino Lippi)

Massacio
(b. 1401, San Giovanni Valdarno, d. 1428, Roma)

Tribute Money, 1424

Massacio, Expulsion

Massacio, Peter Healing the Cripple

Masaccio was the first great painter of the Italian Renaissance, whose innovations in the use of scientific perspective inaugurated the modern era in painting.

Masaccio, originally named Tommaso Cassai, was born in San Giovanni Valdarno, near Florence, on December 21, 1401. He joined the painters guild in Florence in 1422. His remarkably individual style owed little to other painters, except possibly the great 14th-century master Giotto. He was more strongly influenced by the architect Brunelleschi. He is known to have joined the Florentine painters guild in 1423. With his associate, the Florentine painter Masaccio, Masolino executed a series of frescoes for the Brancacci Chapel in the Church of Santa Maria del Carmine, Florence.

Brunelleschi and the sculptor Donatello were his contemporaries in Florence. From Brunelleschi he acquired a knowledge of mathematical proportion that was crucial to his introduction of perspective into painting. From Donatello he imbibed a knowledge of classical art that led him away from the prevailing Gothic style. He inaugurated a new naturalistic approach to painting that was concerned less with details and ornamentation than with simplicity and unity, less with flat surfaces than with the illusion of three dimensionality. Together with Brunelleschi and Donatello, he was the founder of the Renaissance.

Only four unquestionably attributable works of Masaccio survive, although various other paintings have been attributed in whole or in part to him. All of his works are religious in nature—altarpieces or church frescoes. One of his earliest panel, a Madonna with St. Anne (circa 1423, Uffizi, Florence), shows the influence of Donatello in its realistic flesh textures and solidly rounded forms. The Trinity (c. 1425, fresco Santa Maria Novella, Florence) used full perspective for the first time art. His altarpiece for Santa Maria della Carmine, Pisa (1426), with its central panel of the Adoration of the Magi (now in the Staatliche Museen, Berlin), was a simple, unadorned version of a theme that was treated by other painters in a more decorative, ornamental manner. The fresco series for the Brancacci Chapel in Santa Maria del Carmine, Florence (about 1427) illustrates another of his great innovations, the use of light to define the human body and its draperies. In these frescoes, rather than bathing his scenes in flat uniform light, he painted them as if they were illuminated from a single source of light (the actual chapel window), thus creating a play of light and shadow that gave them a natural, realistic quality unknown in the art of his day. Of these six fresco scenes, Tribute Money and the Expulsion from Paradise are considered his masterpieces.

Masaccio's work exerted a strong influence on the course of later Florentine art and particularly on the work of Michelangelo. He died in Rome in 1427 or 1428.

Right Wall of the Chapel

Masolino da Panicale
(b. 1400, Panicale, d. 1447, Firenze)

Masolino was born in Panicale, near Florence as Tommaso di Cristoforo Fini. He is known to have joined the Florentine painters guild in 1423. With his associate, the Florentine painter Masaccio, Masolino executed a series of frescoes for the Brancacci Chapel in the Church of Santa Maria del Carmine, Florence. Masolino's contributions, completed between 1424 and 1427, include The Preaching of St. Peter, The Raising of Tabitha, and The Fall of Adam and Eve.

Other important frescoes Masolino done for the Collegiata church in Castiglione d'Olona; for the Church of San Clemente, Rome; and for the Church of Sant'Agostino, Empoli. An existing fragment from Empoli (1424?), with its exceedingly graceful yet forceful lines and its delicate, harmonious pastel colors, reveals Masolino's links with the older International Gothic style. His earliest known work is a Madonna and Child, painted on wood (1423, Kunsthalle, Bremen); another panel, which is devoted to the Annunciation (1423?-26), is in the National Gallery of Art in Washington, D.C.

Filippino Lippi
(b. ~ 1457, Prato, d. 1504, Firenze)

Disputation with Simon Magus and Crucifixion of St Peter

Filippino is the son of the peripatetic monk and painter Fra Filippo Lippi. His agitated style set the stage for 16th-century Mannerism. His early work is close to Sandro Botticelli, in whose Florentine workshop he studied, sharing the grace and fluency of both his master's and his father's style. Filippino's mature works, however, starting with The Vision of Saint Bernard (1486 ?, Badia, Florence), are increasingly strained and tense, with darker colors, harsher lighting effects, and more jagged lines.

His early frescoes are found beside those of Masaccio and Masolino in the Brancacci Chapel, Maria della Carmine, Florence. Filippino's later work culminated in his frescoes for the Cappella Strozzi (1497?-1502, Santa Maria Novella, Florence). Illustrating the lives of Saint John and Saint Phillip, these frescoes depict an ancient world heavy with archaeological detail and overlaid with tension, while the chosen subject matter dwells upon the dramatic, bizarre, and horrifying episodes in the saints' lives.

In his last years he worked in Rome, where he painted many panel pictures and the frescoes of the Caraffa chapel in S. Maria sopra Minerva, in Rome.