Lecture 13: Masaccio and Early Renaissance Painting
Our next image shows Masaccio’s The Trinity (c. 1428, Santa Maria Novella),
an extraordinary fresco in the left-side aisle of the church. It was probably
painted shortly before the artist’s departure for Rome. The fresco, nearly 22
feet high, consists of an elaborate ¿ ctive architectural setting, similar to an
elevated chapel. Everything is governed by a perspective system presumed
to have been invented by Brunelleschi. One-point perspective is also called
scienti¿ c or mathematical perspective. It is a formula for constructing
pictorial space in which apparently three-dimensional ¿ gures or buildings
seem to be situated as they are in reality. The picture space may be thought
of as an extension of the real world or as a separate world, depending on how
the system is applied.The perspective system is also applied to each of the ¿ gures and objects in a
technique called foreshortening. Because this illusion of space is constructed
with lines, the system is called linear perspective. An example would be
a painting of a large room with a tiled À oor, in which the horizontal lines
parallel to the picture plane intersect with diagonal lines. The diagonals
recede into the picture space in the way parallel lines in the real world, such
as railroad tracks, are perceived by our eyes as if they were converging in
the distance. The point at which the diagonals meet is called the vanishing
point and is located on the horizon line, usually near the center of the picture.
Because this point is aligned with our viewpoint, the picture space can
seem like an extension of our space. Leon Battista Alberti ¿ rst published
an explanation of this system in 1435. He used a helpful analogy—that the
painted picture surface was like a window.In his fresco The Trinity, Masaccio applied the principles of perspective
brilliantly. Perhaps Brunelleschi was associated with the planning of the
composition and spatial illusion. Above the tomb are two ¿ gures kneeling
outside of the architectural chapel. It appears that there are two tall pilasters
with columns, an architrave, a red arch, and a barrel vault. Six ¿ gures, the
patron and his wife, the Virgin Mary, St. John, Jesus, and God the Father, are
pictured. Although the other ¿ gures are depicted in rational space, God is
depicted non-rationally within that illusionistic space. Note the composition
of the interlocking pyramids, one from the two donors’ base to the head of
God and one created by the convergence of the vault’s receding diagonals
at a point near the bottom of the cross—a point exactly at eye level for an