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 Peter Healing the Sick with his Shadow | The Tribute Money | Madonna with Child and Angels | The Trinity | The Distribution of Alms and the Death of Ananias |
Related Artists:
Francesco Vanni
Italian Baroque Era Painter, 1563-1610 was an Italian painter of the Mannerist style, active in Rome and his native city of Siena. He was half-brother of the painter Ventura Salimbeni, and the stepson of Arcangelo Salimbeni, another Sienese painter. His stepfather died when Francesco was young, and as a 16 year old went first to Bologna, then to Rome. There he apprenticed with Giovanni de' Vecchi during 1579-80, though like other Tuscan painters of his day, he was influenced in part by Federico Barocci from Urbino, and he was among the last painters who also reflected the influence of the Sienese School of painting. He was named a Cavalieri. In Rome, he worked later with Salimbeni, Bartolomeo Passerotti, and Andrea Lilio. He was commissioned by Pope Clement VIII to painted an altarpiece for the St. Peter's, later transferred to mosaic, Simon Magus rebuked by St. Peter. He painted several other pictures for Roman churches; including St. Michael defeats rebel angels for the sacristy of S. Gregorio; a Piet?? for Santa Maria in Vallicella; and the Assumption for S. Lorenzo in Miranda. Returning to Siena, where he ultimately died, he afterwards worked at Parma, Bologna, and again at Rome. At Siena, he painted a S. Raimondo walking on the Sea for the church of the Dominicans. Vanni painted a Baptism of Constantine (1586-7) for the church of San Agostino in Siena. He painted a Christ appearing to St. Catherine for the chapel of il Refugio at the Santuario Cateriniano of Siena, and a Baptism (1587) for the former church of San Giovannino e Gennaro.
TASSI, Agostino
Italian painter, Roman school (b. 1578, Roma, d. 1644, Roma).
Michiel Coxie
Coxie also spelled Coxcie or Coxien, Latinised name Coxius (1499 - 3 March 1592) was a Flemish painter who studied under Bernard van Orley, who probably induced him to visit the Italian peninsula. Coxie was born in 1499 in Mechelen in what was then the Duchy of Brabant. At Rome in 1532 he painted the chapel of Cardinal Enckenvoirt in the church of Santa Maria dell'Anima; and Giorgio Vasari, who knew him, says with truth that he fairly acquired the manner of an Italian. But Coxie's principal occupation was designing for engravers; and the fable of Psyche in thirty-two sheets by Agostino Veneziano and the Master of the Die are favorable specimens of his skill. Returning to the Netherlands, Coxie greatly extended his practice in this branch of art. But his productions were till lately concealed under an interlaced monogram M.C.O.K.X.I.N. In 1539, Coxie returned to Mechelen, where he matriculated and painted the wings of an altarpiece for the chapel of the guild of St Luke. The centre of this altar-piece, by Jan Mabuse, represents Saint Luke the Evangelist, patron of painters, portraying the Virgin; the side pieces contain the Martyrdom of Saint Vitus and the Vision of St John the Evangelist in Patmos. At van Orley's death in 1541 Coxie succeeded to the office of court painter to the Regent Maria of Austria, for whom he decorated the castle of Binche. He was subsequently patronized by Charles V, Holy Roman Emperor, who often coupled his works with those of Titian; by Philip II of Spain, who paid him royally for a copy of Jan van Eyck's Agnus Dei, and also commissioned two copies of Van der Weyden's Descent from the Cross from Coxie; and by Fernando Álvarez de Toledo, Duke of Alva, who once protected him from the insults of Spanish soldiery at Mechelen. At that time, Coxie also designed tapestries for the Brussels manufacturers.