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 :. | Holy Trinity | The Holy Trinity (nn03) | Resurrection of the Son of Theophilus | Madonna and child | The Tribute Money, fresco in the Brancacci Chapel in Santa Maria del Carmine, Florence |
Related Artists:
Karl Bodmer
Swiss Painter, 1809-1893,Swiss painter and graphic artist, active in the USA and France. His earliest exposure to art probably came from his uncle, the landscape painter and engraver Johann Jakob Meyer (1787-1858). When he was 22, Bodmer moved to Paris, where he studied art under Sebastien Cornu. In Paris he met his future patron, Prince Maximilian of Wied-Neuwied, who was planning an ambitious scientific expedition to North America. Bodmer was engaged to accompany the expedition and to provide sketches of the American wilderness. After touring the East Coast, the party made their way westward via the Ohio and Mississippi rivers to St Louis, MO, and in 1833 travelled up the Missouri River into country scarcely inhabited by white men. On the journey north to Ft MacKenzie, WY, Bodmer recorded the landscape and the groups of Indians they encountered. Having wintered in Ft Clark, ND, they returned to New York and then Europe in 1834.
Antoine Wiertz
Belgian Painter, 1806-1865 Belgian painter and sculptor. He was from very humble origins, but his talent for drawing was detected at an early age. He was sent to the Antwerp Academie, where he attended classes given by W. J. Herreyns (1743-1827) and Mathieu Ignace Van Br?e. During a stay in Paris from 1829 to 1832 he came into contact with the Romantic painters, in particular Th?odore G?ricault, who fostered his admiration for Rubens. In 1832 he won the Belgian Prix de Rome and in 1834 left for Italy where the works of Raphael and, above all, Michelangelo made an overwhelming impression on him. In Rome he abandoned the landscapes and scenes from Roman life, for which he showed a certain talent, and embarked on a much more ambitious work, the Greeks and the Trojans Contesting the Body of Patroclus (1835; Brussels, Mus. Wiertz.). The painting proved the turning-point in Wiertz's career. Its frenzied composition and violently contorted figures excited considerable interest in Rome.
Maksymilian Gierymski
Gierymski (Warsaw 1846 - Reichenhall, Bavaria 1874) was a Polish painter, specializing mainly in watercolours. He was the older brother of painter Aleksander Gierymski. As a seventeen-years-old boy, he participated in the January Uprising. He was educated at the Warsaw Drawing School initially, but then received a government scholarship in 1867 and went to study at the Academy of Fine Arts in Munich. He became one of the leading painters of the Munich realistic school. Initially best known for this battle paintings, he also created many landscape paintings, especially of southern Poland, which he visited several times. Successful western Europe completely, he did not gain approval nor popularity in Poland of the 19th century, although he sent paintings to exhibitions in Warsaw regularly from 1968 on. He did however win awards at exhibitions in Munich (1869) and in Berlin (1872).