Masolino da Panicale cultivated the art of chiaroscuro. I believe he derived advantage from having long dedicated his attention to modelling and sculpture, a practice which renders relief easy to the painter, beyond what is generally conceived. Ghiberti had been his master in this branch, who at this time was unrivalled in design, in composition, and in giving animation to his figures. Colouring, which he yet wanted, was taught him by Starnina, and in this also he became a very celebrated master. Thus uniting in himself the excellences of two schools, he produced a new style, not indeed exempt from dryness, nor wholly faultless; but grand, determined, and harmonious, beyond any former example. The chapel of St. Peter al Carmine, is a remaining monument of this artist. He there painted the Evangelists, and some acts of the Saint, as his vocation to the apostleship, the tempest, the denying of Christ, the miracle performed at Porta Speciosa, and the Preaching. He was prevented by death from representing other acts of St. Peter, as for instance, the tribute paid to Cæsar, baptism conferred on the multitude, the healing of the sick, which several years afterwards were painted by his scholar Maso di S. Giovanni, a youth who obtained the surname of Masaccio, from trusting to a precarious subsistence, and living, as it was said, by chance, while deeply engrossed with the studies of his profession. This artist was a genius calculated to mark an era in painting; and Mengs has assigned him the highest place among those who explored its untried recesses. Vasari informs us that "what was executed before his time might be called paintings, but that his pictures seem to live, they are so true and natural;" and in another place adds, that "no master of that age so nearly approached the moderns." He had formed the principles of his art on the works of Ghiberti and Donatello; perspective he acquired from Brunelleschi, and on going to Rome it cannot be doubted that he improved by the study of ancient sculpture. He there met with two senior artists, Gentile da Fabriano, and Vittore Pisanello, upon whom high encomiums, as the first painter of his time, may be seen in Maffei and elsewhere.[70] They who write thus had either not seen any of the paintings of Masaccio, or at most only his early productions; such as the S. Anna in the church of S. Ambrose in Florence, or the chapel of S. Catherine in S. Clement's at Rome, in which, while still young, he executed some pictures of the passion of Christ, and legends of S. Anna, to which may be added a ceiling containing the Evangelists, which are all that now remain free from retouching. This work is excellent for that time, but some doubt whether it ought to be ascribed to him; and it is inferior to his painting in the Carmine, of which we may say with Pliny, jam perfecta sunt omnia. The positions and foreshortenings of the figures are diversified and complete beyond those practised by Paolo Uccello. The air of the heads, says Mengs, is in the style of Raffaello; the expression is so managed that the mind seems no less forcibly depicted than the body. The anatomy of the figure is marked with truth and judgment. That figure, so highly extolled in the baptism of S. Peter, which appears shivering with cold, marks, as it were, an era in the art. The garments, divested of minuteness, present a few easy folds. The colouring is true, properly varied, delicate, and surprisingly harmonious; the relief is in the grandest style. This chapel was not finished by him. He died in 1443, not without suspicion of poison, and left it still deficient in several pictures, which, after many years were supplied by the younger Lippi. It became the school of all the best Florentine artists whom we shall have occasion to notice in this and the succeeding epoch, of Pietro Perugino, and even of Raffaello; and it is a curious circumstance, that in the course of many years, in a city fruitful in genius, ever bent on the promotion of the art, no one in following the footsteps of Masaccio attained that eminence which he acquired without a director. Time has defaced other works of his hand at Florence, equally commended, and especially the sanctuary of the church del Carmine, of which there is a drawing in the possession of the learned P. Lettor Fontana Barnabita in Pavia. The royal gallery has very few of his works. The portrait of a young man, that seems to breathe, and is estimated at a high price, is in the Pitti collection.
After Masaccio, two monks distinguished themselves in the Florentine school. The first was a Dominican friar named F. Giovanni da Fiesole, or B. Giovanni Angelico. His first employment was that of ornamenting books with miniatures, an art he learned from an elder brother, who executed miniatures and other paintings. It is said that he studied in the chapel of Masaccio, but it is not easy to credit this when we consider their ages. Their style too betrays a different origin. The works of the friar discover some traces of the manner of Giotto, in the posture of the figures and the compensation for deficiencies in the art, not to mention the drapery which is often folded in long tube-like forms, and the exquisite diligence in minute particulars common to miniature painters. Nor did he depart much from this method in the greatest part of his works, which chiefly consist of scripture pieces of our Saviour, or the Virgin, in cabinet pictures not unfrequently to be met with in Florence. The royal gallery possesses several; the most brilliant and highly finished of which, is the birth of John the Baptist. The Glory,[71] which is in the church of S. Mary Magdalen de' Pazzi, from its great size, is among his rarest productions; and it also ranks with the most beautiful. His chief excellence consists in the beauty that adorns the countenances of his saints and angels; and he is truly the Guido of the age, for the sweetness of his colours, which, though in water, he diluted and blended in a manner which almost reaches perfection. He was also esteemed one of the best of his age in works executed in fresco; and he was employed in the decoration of the cathedral of Orvieto, as well as the palace of the Vatican itself, where he painted a chapel—a work much commended by a number of writers. Vasari enumerates Gentile da Fabriano among his disciples, but the dates render this impossible; and says the same of Zanobi Strozzi, a man of noble origin, of whom I do not know that any certain picture exists in a public collection: I only know that, treading in the steps of his master, he surpassed the reputation of a mere amateur. Benozzo Gozzoli, another of his disciples, and an imitator of Masaccio, raised himself far above the majority of his contemporaries.
In a few points he even surpassed his model, as in the stupendous size of his edifices, in the amenity of his landscapes, and in the brilliancy of his fancy, truly lively, agreeable, and picturesque. In the Riccardi palace, once a royal residence, there is a chapel in good preservation, where he executed a Glory, a Nativity, and an Epiphany. He there painted with a profusion of gold and of drapery, unexampled, perhaps, in fresco; and with an adherence to nature that exhibits an image of that age in the portraits, the garments, the accoutrements of the horses, and in the most minute particulars. He long resided at Pisa, and died there, where he ought to be studied; for his compositions in that place are better than those at Florence, and he was there also more sparing in the use of gold. The portrait of S. Thomas Aquinas is highly spoken of by Vasari and Richardson; but they especially notice the pictures from scripture history, with which he ornamented a whole wing of the Campo Santo, "a most prodigious work, sufficient to appal a legion of painters;"[72] and he finished it within two years. Here he displayed a talent for composition, an imitation of nature, a variety in the countenances and attitudes, a colouring juicy, lively, and clear, and an expression of the passions that places him next to Masaccio. I can scarcely believe that he painted the whole. In the Ebriety of Noah, in the Tower of Babel, and in some other pictures, we discern an attempt at surprising, not to be seen in some others, where figures sometimes occur that seem dry and laboured; defects which I am disposed rather to attribute to his coadjutors. Near this great work a monument is erected to his memory by a grateful city, in the public name, with an epitaph that commends him as a painter. Time itself, as if conscious of his merit, has respected this work beyond any other in the Campo Santo.
The other monk was Filippo Lippi, a Carmelite, a genius of a different stamp from B. Giovanni. He