Table Of ContentMASACCIO
Saint Andrew
and The Pisa Altarpiece
M A S A C C IO
Saint Andrew
and
The Pisa Altarpiece
Eliot W. Rowlands
G E T T Y M U S E UM S T U D I E S O N A RT
Los Angeles
To my beloved son, Andrew
© 2003 J. Paul Getty Trust All photographs are copyrighted by the issuing
institutions, unless otherwise noted.
Getty Publications
1200 Getty Center Drive, Suite 500 Cover:
Los Angeles, California 90049-1682 Masaccio (Tommaso di Ser Giovanni di Mone
www.getty.edu Cassai; Italian, 1401-1428). Saint Andrew [detail],
1426. Tempera and gold leaf on panel, 46.1 x
Christopher Hudson, Publisher 30.2 cm (18 I/a x ii 7/s in.). Los Angeles, J. Paul
Mark Greenberg, Editor in Chief Getty Museum (7g.pB.6i).
Mollie Holtman and Tobi Kaplan, Editors
Frontispiece:
Diane Mark-Walker, Copy Editor
Masaccio, The Adoration of the Magi, 1426 [detail].
Jeffrey Cohen, Designer
(See Figure 30.)
Suzanne Watson, Production Coordinator
Anthony Peres, Photographer
Dusty Deyo, Illustrator
Typeset by G & S Typesetters, Inc.,
Austin, Texas
Printed in Hong Kong by Imago
Library of Congress Control Number:
2003102523
ISBN 0-89236-286-3
CONTENTS
i Introduction
9 Masaccio's Life and Work
39 Masaccio's Pisa Altarpiece
69 Ser Giuliano and the Carmelites: The Patronage
of the Altarpiece
86 The Later History of the Altarpiece
97 Notes
112 Acknowledgments
See the foldout and key at the back of the book for the author's proposed
reconstruction of the Pisa Altarpiece
INTRODUCTION
I
n 1979 the J. Paul Getty Museum acquired one of the rarest of pictures, a
panel painting in tempera and gold leaf by the Florentine Renaissance mas-
ter Masaccio [FIGURE il. Its subject, the apostle Saint Andrew, stands in three-
quarter-length format, his voluminously draped body turned in profile toward a
strong, unseen light source at the left. The saint's form consists of a simple sil-
houette set against a gold-leaf background and interrupted only by the insertion
of a wooden cross at the left. This, the identifying attribute of the apostle (he
was crucified on an X-shaped cross), and a dark book tucked along the inside of
his left forearm are set in perspective, with diagonals leading up toward the left.
The saint's gaze—one sad, droopy eye is visible, set in a deep, arched socket—
follows in the same direction. His only other visible facial feature, an unusually
long, craggy nose, leads on to a foxtail-shaped, white-to-gray beard.
The blocklike shape of Masaccio's Saint Andrew, and probably the fig-
ure's intense regard, owes something to a statue by Giovanni Pisano (ca. 1245-
ca. 1319) and his workshop that originally crowned the Baptistery in Pisa [FIG-
URE 21.1 In 1426, the year Masaccio executed the Saint Andrew, he was in that
city and would have seen this and other sculptures by Pisano and his father,
Nicola Pisano (ca. i225~before 1284), the two most renowned sculptors of early-
fourteenth-century Italy. As will be shown, this tendency to draw inspiration
from sculpture, rather than from the paintings of near contemporaries, is an
essential characteristic of Masaccio's revolutionary style.
Figure 1
Masaccio (Tommaso As simplified as the bulky outline of Masaccio's Saint Andrew appears,
di Ser Giovanni di Mone
it is animated by some of the most dynamic and convincing drapery design in
Cassai) (Italian, 1401-
1428), Saint Andrew, Italian painting to date. At the right, the saint's robes cascade from the left
1426. Tempera and gold shoulder, appearing increasingly bunched as they descend toward his left hand.
leaf on panel, 46.1 x
30.2cm (18Va x In contrast to Andrew's left sleeve is the uppermost swath of drapery that
Il7/s in.). Los Angeles, arches uninterruptedly over his back down to the base of the cross, while effec-
J. Paul Getty Museum
tively highlighting the saint's expressive head and echoing the shape of the arch
(79.PB.61).
1
above. Here Masaccio conveys an impressive sense of for-
ward motion by the conjunction of this same fold, the
cross whose sidepiece trails off behind the figure's shoul-
der, and the plunging line formed by his beard and sloping
chest. These three diagonal axes converge at Andrew's
right hand at a point that—in contrast to usual contem-
porary painting practice—lies flush with the very edge of
the picture plane. The motif serves to impel the saint for-
ward, an effect reinforced by two other features of the
drapery design: the parallel folds that cascade down the
subject's torso and two broad loops that stand out amid the
shadowed area at right.
There was only one other artist in Masaccio's Flor-
ence who modeled drapery this way—Donatello (13861?]—
1466), one of the greatest sculptors in the history of Italian
art. Active since i4oi, he had produced by the mid-i42os a
series of heroic standing figures of unsurpassed authority
for two public sites in Florence, the cathedral bell tower,
or campanile, and the exterior of the guild church of Orsan-
Figure 2
michele [FIGURE 3]. One niche at the second of these loca-
Giovanni Pisano (Italian,
act. ca. 1265-1314) tions contained Donatello's Saint Louis of Toulouse [FIGURE
and workshop, A Prophet, 4] of about 1423,2 whose generous play of drapery was a
ca. 1268-78. Marble,
172cm(673/4in.). major inspiration for Masaccio's Saint Andrew.^ The same
Pisa, Baptistery. Photo: statue also influenced the drapery design of an earlier
Opera della Primaziale
Masaccio figure, that of Saint Peter in Saint Peter Distribu-
Pisana.
Figure 3
Northeast corner,
Orsanmichele, Florence,
with statues in situ by
Lorenzo Ghiberti, Andrea
del Verrocchio, Nanni
di Banco, and others.
Photo: © Alinari/Art
Resource, NY.
2
ting Alms [FIGURE 5 ], one of the frescoes in the Brancacci
Chapel of Santa Maria del Carmine in Florence. It even had
an impact on Masaccio's earliest surviving work, the San
Giovenale Triptych [FIGURE 6], which is dated 1422. There
the way Donatello's young bishop grasps his crozier was
repeated by Masaccio in the figure of Saint Juvenal, who
appears at the right of the altarpiece [FIGURE 61.4 As that
painting was finished one year before the completion date
of Saint Louis of Toulouse, Masaccio must have known the
statue when it was still in Donatello's studio. Such a sce-
nario is entirely plausible. As we will see, the two artists
were not only friends, but Donatello's revolutionary art
was also a lasting inspiration for the young painter.
Masaccio's Saint Andrew can be imagined as a pal-
pable, living being who occupies space. The drapery sug-
gests mass and movement. The various textures, from the
saint's head of hair and beard to the plain weave of his gar-
ment, are carefully yet unpedantically rendered. What most
gives life to the figure, though, is Masaccio's depiction of
light. It models the forms to suggest a three-dimensional
reality. This achievement, revolutionary in Masaccio's day,
is one of the painter's signal contributions to art history.
The other is his vision of a heroic humanity, which is
achieved with an intense economy of means and uncanny
empathy with his subject matter. In an ultimately inexpli-
cable manner, the lofty message of his art—its grandeur
and gravitas—is perfectly conveyed by the artistic means
at his disposal.
As we will see, this accomplishment is epito-
mized by the altarpiece of which the Saint Andrew panel
once formed a part. The Getty Museum's picture thus intro-
Figure 4
duces one of the truly great polyptychs, or multipaneled Donatello (Italian,
1386 [?]-1466), Saint
paintings, in the history of Italian Renaissance art.
Louis of Toulouse,
Between February and December 1426, the so-called Pisa ca. 1423. Gilded bronze,
H: 266cm (105 in.).
Altarpiece was produced for the chapel of a notary in the
Florence, Museo
church of Santa Maria del Carmine in Pisa. Despite its dell'Opera di Santa
importance, such was the dynamic development of Ital- Croce. (Reproduced
from Paul Joannides,
ian painting in the century that followed that the style of "Masaccio, Masolino
Masaccio's polyptych soon became outdated.5 The history and Minor Sculpture,"
Paragone 451
of its subsequent ownership is obscure. Within 160 years
[September 1987].)
3
Description:mized by the altarpiece of which the Saint Andrew panel once formed least partially—what Masaccio's Pisa Altarpiece would have originally looked.
