98



The Medici and the (Quattrocento

Masaccio (1401-1428), one of ''the inheritors of
unfidfiUed renown," is the first great painter of the
Renaissance, and bears much the same relation to the
fifteenth as Giotto to the fourteenth century. Vasari's
statement that Masaccio's master, Masolino, was
Ghiberti's assistant appears to be incorrect ; but it
illustrates the dependence of the painting of this epoch
upon sculpture. Masaccio's frescoes in the Carmine,
which became the school of all Italian painting, were
entirely executed before the Medicean regime. The
Dominican, Fra Angelico da Fiesole (13 87-1 45 5),
seems in his San Marco frescoes to bring the denizens
of the Empyrean, of which the mediaeval mystics
dreamed, down to earth to dwell among the black
and white robed children of St Dominic. The Car-
melite, Fra Lippo Lippi ( 1 406- 1 469), the favourite
of Cosimo, inferior to the angelical painter in spiritual
insight, had a keener eye for the beauty of the external
world and a surer touch upon reality. His buoyant
humour and excellent colouring make '<the glad
monk's gift " one of the most acceptable that the
Quattrocento has to offer us. Andrea del Castagno
(died in 1457) and Domenico Veneziano (died in
1 461), together with Paolo Uccello (died in 1475),
were all absorbed in scientific researches with an eye
to the extension of the resources of their art ; but the
two former found time to paint a few masterpieces
in their kind — especially a Cenacolo by Andrea in
Santa Apollonia, which is the grandest representation
of its sublime theme, until the time that Leonardo da
Vinci painted on the walls of the Dominican convent
at Milan. Problems of the anatomical construction
of the human frame and the rendering of move-
ment occupied Antonio PoUaiuolo (i 42 9-1 49 8) and
Andrea Verrocchio (143 5-1 488) ; their work was
taken up and completed a little later by two greater

99



The Story of Florence

meny Luca Signorelli of Cortona and Leonardo da
Vinci.
