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 :. | Profile Portrait of a Young Man | Saints Jerome and john the Baptist | Virgin and Child with Saint Anne | St Paul sgy | Fresco in the Brancacci Chapel in Santa Maria del Carmine, Florence |
Related Artists:
Hans von Marees
(24 December 1837 - 5 June 1887) was a German painter. He mainly painted country scenes in a realistic style. Von Marees was born in Elberfeld, Germany. At age 16, he was sent to the Berlin Academy. In 1857, he moved to Munich. In 1869, he visited France, the Netherlands and Spain. He served in the Franco-Prussian War (1870-71) and then lived in Berlin and Dresden for a while. In 1873, he decorated the library walls of the newly built Naples Zoological Institute in Italy. The next year, he moved to Florence. He died in Rome at the age of 49 and is buried in the Protestant Cemetery there.
Philippe Jacques
1740-1812
Joseph van Lerius
painted Portrait of Henriette Mayer van den Bergh in 1857