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 :. | Tribute Money | Holy Trinity | The Tribute Money, fresco in the Brancacci Chapel in Santa Maria del Carmine, Florence | Verdrijving from the paradise | St Paul |
Related Artists:
Master of the View of Sainte Gudule
Netherlandish Northern Renaissance Painter, active ca.1485
Konstantin Somov
Russian Symbolist Painter, 1869-1939 Russian painter and graphic artist. He was the son of a curator at the Hermitage, and he attended the St Petersburg Academy of Art from 1888 to 1897, studying under the Realist painter Il'ya Repin from 1894. In 1897 and again in 1898-9 he went to Paris and attended the studios of Filippo Colarossi and of Whistler. Neither the Realism of his Russian teachers nor the evanescent quality of Whistler's art was reflected for long in Somov's work. He turned instead for inspiration to the Old Masters in the Hermitage and to works of contemporary English and German artists
school of paris or Burgundy
early fifteenth century