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 :. | The Virgin and Child | Portrait of a Young Man w5 | Frescoes in the Cappella Brancacci | Holy Trinity | Madonna and Child with St Anne Metterza |
Related Artists:
Viggo Johansen
Danish Realist Painter, 1851-1935 Danish painter. He trained at the Kongelige Akademi for de Skenne Kunster from 1868 to 1875 under Jergen Roed. In 1871 he began to visit the fishing hamlet of Hornbek on the north coast of Zealand, not far from Copenhagen, often with painters such as Peter Severin Kreyer and Kristian Zahrtmann. Here Johansen painted pure landscapes, or alternatively figures from the village traditional population, seen in their homes. A Meal (1877; Copenhagen, Hirschsprungske Saml.) shows an elderly fisherman seated at table eating potatoes, attended by his wife; dull daylight from a window in which a net is drying illumines the frugal interior and worn figures.
Louis Nicolas van Blarenberghe
painted The Battle of Fontenoy in
Franz Horny
German, 1798-1824,German painter. He received his first instruction in art from his father, Conrad Horny (1764-1807), a painter and copperplate engraver, who taught at the Zeichenschule in Weimar. He attended this school from 1806 to 1816, training primarily as a painter of landscapes. In 1816, his patron Baron Carl Friedrich von Rumohr, a friend of his father, enabled him to travel to Italy. In Rome Horny became a student of Joseph Anton Koch, who introduced him to landscape composition in the classically heroic style. Through eager study, both from nature and from live models, Horny's skills developed swiftly, especially in his work in pen and watercolour (e.g. View of Olevano with Shepherds and a Hermit, 1817; Dresden, Kupferstichkab.). Horny was soon, however, drawn into the circle of the Lukasbr?der: Peter Joseph Cornelius persuaded him to participate in the major fresco project for the Casino Massimo in Rome. Horny completed a large number of pen and watercolour drawings (e.g. Weimar, Schlossmus.) depicting flowers, fruit and birds, and intended as wreaths and festoons to frame Cornelius's historical scenes from Dante's Paradiso. When Cornelius was recalled to Munich in 1818, however, this fresco was not carried out and Horny's designs were therefore not used. In the same year, Horny developed tuberculosis and moved to Olevano for his health. The rugged beauty of the Sabine Hills and their picturesque towns drew him back to the depiction of landscape. His drawings, combining Koch's classically heroic outlook with the poetic sensibility of the Lukasbr?der, often convey the impression of an earthly paradise, as in Italian Country Life (c. 1820; L?beck, St Annen-Mus.).