Masaccio

Ranked by many scholars as the greatest master of early Italian Renaissance painting, Masaccio (1401-1428) was the first artist to use effects of light to create three-dimensional images on a two-dimensional plane. This achievement, revolutionary in Masaccio's day, is one of the painter's significant contributions to art history. This book explores Masaccio's accomplishment as epitomized by the multipaneled painting of which theSaint Andrewpanel is thought to have once formed a part: the Pisa Altarpiece, one of the truly great polyptychs in the history of Italian Renaissance art, produced in 1426 for a chapel in the church of Santa Maria del Carmine, Pisa. The text discusses Masaccio's short life and illustrious career; the commission for the altarpiece; its patron and program; the painting's original location; and the role that the church friars played in the actual commission. Finally, after examining the polyptych's individual panels, the book traces their subsequent history and recounts how art historians came to identify them.

The first great artist of the Quattrocento period of the Italian Renaissance, Masaccio would have an incredible impact on the course of Western art, in spite of his untimely death at the age of twenty-six. He is noted for his skill in imitating nature, recreating lifelike figures and his unprecedented use of chiaroscuro and three-dimensionality. Preparing the way for Leonardo and Michelangelo, Masaccio transformed the direction of Italian painting, moving it away from the idealisations of Gothic art and favouring the depiction of a more profound, natural and humanist world. Delphi’s Masters of Art Series presents the world’s first digital e-Art books, allowing readers to explore the works of great artists in comprehensive detail. This volume presents Masaccio’s complete works in beautiful detail, with concise introductions, hundreds of high quality images and the usual Delphi bonus material. (Version 1) * The complete paintings of Masaccio, fully indexed and arranged in chronological and alphabetical order * Includes reproductions of rare works * Masolino’s and Filippino Lippi’s contributions to the celebrated Brancacci Chapel * Features a special ‘Highlights’ section, with concise introductions to the masterpieces, giving valuable contextual information * Enlarged ‘Detail’ images, allowing you to explore Masaccio’s celebrated works in detail, as featured in traditional art books * Numerous images in colour – highly recommended for viewing on tablets and smart phones or as a valuable reference tool on more conventional eReaders * Special chronological and alphabetical contents tables for the paintings * Easily locate the paintings you wish to view * Features two bonus biographies, including Vasari’s Life of the artist – discover Masaccio's world Please visit www.delphiclassics.com to browse through our range of exciting e-Art books CONTENTS: The Highlights The San Giovenale Triptych Portrait of a Young Man The Madonna and Child with Saint Anne Madonna with Child and Four Angels Expulsion of Adam and Eve The Tribute Money The Baptism of the Neophytes Raising of the Son of Theophilus and Saint Peter Enthroned Saint Peter Healing the Sick with His Shadow The Distribution of Alms and Death of Ananias The Holy Trinity The Agony in the Garden The Madonna and Child The Berlin Tondo Saint Jerome and Saint John the Baptist The Paintings The Complete Paintings Alphabetical List of Paintings The Biographies Life of Masaccio by Giorgio Vasari Masaccio by Gaston Sortais Please visit www.delphiclassics.com to browse through our range of exciting titles or to buy the whole Art series as a Super Set

"Masaccio was the first great painter of the Quattrocento Period of the Italian Renaissance. Despite his brief career, he had a profound influence on other artists, being one of the first to use scientific perspective in his works."--Global Books in Print.

Like music, art is a universal language. Although looking at works of art is a pleasurable enough experience, to appreciate them fully requires certain skills and knowledge." --Carol Strickland, from the introduction to The Annotated Mona Lisa: A Crash Course in Art History from Prehistoric to Post-Modern * This heavily illustrated crash course in art history is revised and updated. This second edition of Carol Strickland's The Annotated Mona Lisa: A Crash Course in Art History from Prehistoric to Post-Modern offers an illustrated tutorial of prehistoric to post-modern art from cave paintings to video art installations to digital and Internet media. * Featuring succinct page-length essays, instructive sidebars, and more than 300 photographs, The Annotated Mona Lisa: A Crash Course in Art History from Prehistoric to Post-Modern takes art history out of the realm of dreary textbooks, demystifies jargon and theory, and makes art accessible-even at a cursory reading. * From Stonehenge to the Guggenheim and from Holbein to Warhol, more than 25,000 years of art is distilled into five sections covering a little more than 200 pages.

Elkins argues that writing is what art historians produce, and, whether such writing is a transparent vehicle for the transmission of facts or an embattled forum for the rehearsal of institutional relations and constructions of history, it is an expressive medium, with the capacity for emotion and reflection. Therefore, it needs to be taken seriously for its own sake: it is the testament of art history and of individual historians, and it is only weakened and slighted by versions of history that imagine it either as uncontrolled dissemination or as objective discovery and reporting.

Masaccio's first work for which evidence exists is the Pisa Polyptych, painted for the Carmelite church in Pisa in 1426, but now dismembered and largely lost. His major surviving works are the frescoes in the Brancacci Chapel in Florence. This book reproduces much of Masaccio's work in colour.