Masaccio's St. Andrew

Masaccio was born Tommaso di Ser Giovanni di Mone and received his nickname which translates as "Sloppy Tom" from the sixteenth century biographer, Giorgio Vasari (Masaccio, 2000). Vasari wrote that Masaccio was so devoted to his work that he gave almost no attention to worldly matters, including his own dress (Gardner, 1952). The Florentines frequently gave expression to their fun-loving disposition by applying appropriate nicknames to public figures, which became so popular that they take precedence over a person's real name. Gardner (1952) states that with Masaccio, we enter the world of the early Renaissance with its eager enthusiasm for inquiry.

Masaccio had a very brief career, dying in 1428 at the age of 27. At age 27, he abandoned his most important Florentine commission, the Brancacci Chapel, and went to Rome, where he mysteriously died shortly thereafter (Masaccio, 2000). In a short lifetime, however, he developed a new way of working with perspective that would be refined by later Italian artists of the High Renaissance (Gar

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of Masaccio's maturing style, in which the artist merges the weight and volume of Giotto's figures with the new functional view of body and drapery (Janson, 1986). In the figure of St. Andrew, the viewer sees an older, heavy, solid man who appears to be focused intently on adoration of the crucified Christ which was presented on the cross in the background of the panel. The crucified Christ and the cross serve two purposes. First, they orient St. Andrew himself toward the Son of God. Secondly, the cross that St. Andrew holds reflects as noted above, his own crucifixion and martyrdom. This symbolically links the saint to Christ (St. Andrew, 2000). What is unique about the figure of the saint is that he is fully three dimensional. Masaccio achieves this by his use of light and shadow, creating subtle half-shadows that produce a rich scale of what Janson (1986) calls transitional hues. As used in this panel and other works, the light retains its full descriptive function while acting as an independent force capable of imposing a common tonality and mood upon the forms that it touches (Janson, 1986). Though the figure of the saint is still and fixed in space, it possesses an interior dynamism that is suggested in the flo
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Some common words found in the essay are:
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Approximate Word count = 1616
Approximate Pages = 6 (250 words per page)