Tag: Fresco

Restoration of Masaccio’s Holy Trinity, Santa Maria Novella, Florence.

Restoration of Masaccio’s Holy Trinity, Santa Maria Novella, Florence.

Holy Trinity (c.1426), Masaccio (Italian, 1401 – 1428)

Basilica di Santa Maria Novella, Florence

During restoration work it will be possible to admire closely the great and wonderful Masaccio’s Holy Trinity up close for the first time ever and see the restorers at work!

Restoration Holy Trinity (c.1426), Basilica di Santa Maria Novella, Florence.

Tommaso Guidi, known as Masaccio, was born in San Giovanni Valdarno, a village between Arezzo and Florence, on 21 December 1401. Already by October of 1418 he was working as a painter and living in Florence. Since the oldest sources report that he died at twenty-six or twenty-seven years of age, the year of his death is probably 1428.

Around 1427 Masaccio won a prestigious commission to produce a Holy Trinity for the Dominican church of Santa Maria Novella in Florence. Probably the donor is represented to the left of the Virgin in the painting, while his wife is right of St. John the Evangelist. The fresco, considered by many to be Masaccio’s masterwork, is the earliest surviving painting to use systematic linear perspective, possibly devised by Masaccio with the assistance of Brunelleschi.

Holy Trinity (c.1426), Masaccio (Italian, 1401 – 1428), fresco, 667x317cm, Basilica di Santa Maria Novella, Florence.

Masaccio started by producing a rough drawing of the composition and perspective lines on the wall. The drawing was covered with fresh plaster for making the fresco. To ensure the precise transfer of the perspective lines from the sketch to the plaster, Masaccio inserted a nail in at the vanishing point under the base of the cross and attached strings to it, which he pressed in (or carved into) the plaster. The marks of the preparatory works are still visible.

The sacred figures and the donors are represented above an image of a skeleton lying on a sarcophagus. An inscription seemingly carved into the wall above the skeleton reads: “Io fui gia quel che voi siete e quel ch’io sono voi anco sarete” (I once was what now you are and what I am, you shall yet be). This skeleton is a reminder to viewers that their time on earth is transitory. It is only through faith in the Trinity, the fresco suggests, that one overcomes this death. The Holy Spirit is seen in the form of a dove, above Jesus.

In 1570 Giorgio Vasari covered the fresco with a stone altar and a painting. The Holy Trinity fresco was rediscovered in good condition during an 18th century restoration of the Church. It was removed from the wall and reassembled on the inner wall of the facade. When another restoration was undertaken in 1952 the skeleton painted by Masaccio at the bottom of the Holy Trinity fresco was discovered and then the Holy Trinity fresco was put back in its original place. 

Restoration work as on April 9, 2024; Holy Trinity (c.1426), Masaccio (Italian, 1401 – 1428), fresco, 667x317cm, Basilica di Santa Maria Novella, Florence.
  • For visiting the Basilica di Santa Maria Novella, Florence, click here.
  • The Basilica di Santa Maria Novella is located next to the Santa Maria Novella Station in Florence., Florence. Click here for directions.
Last Supper (1450), Andrea del Castagno, Florence, Italy.

Last Supper (1450), Andrea del Castagno, Florence, Italy.

Andrea del Castagno (Italian, 1420 – 1457)

Cenacolo di Sant’Apollonia, Florence

This Last Supper is a fresco by the Italian Renaissance artist Andrea del Castagno, located in the refectory of the convent of Sant’Apollonia, now the Museo di Cenacolo di Sant’Apollonia, and accessed through a door on Via Ventisette Aprile at the corner with Santa Reparata, in Florence. The painting depicts Jesus and the Apostles during the Last Supper, with Judas, unlike all the other apostles, sitting separately on the near side of the table, as is common in depictions of the Last Supper in Christian art.

Last Supper (1450), Andrea del Castagno (Italian, 1420 – 1457), fresco, 453x975cm, Museo di Cenacolo di Sant’Apollonia, Florence.

Sant’Apollonia was a Benedictine convent of cloistered nuns, and Castagno’s fresco was not publicly known until the convent was suppressed in 1866. Thus its exclusively female audience should be considered in analyzing the work. Castagno painted a large chamber with life-sized figures that confronted the nuns at every meal. The fresco would have served as a didactic image and an inspiration to meditation on their relationship with Jesus.

Although the Last Supper is described in all four Gospels, Castagno’s fresco seems most closely aligned with the account in the Gospel of John, in which eleven of the apostles are confused and the devil “enters” Judas when Jesus announces one of his followers will betray him. Saint John’s posture of innocent slumber neatly contrasts with Judas’s tense, upright pose and exaggeratedly pointed facial features. Except for Judas, Christ and his apostles, including the recumbent Saint John, all have a translucent disc of a halo above their heads.

Portrait of Andrea del Castagno, from the series “Serie degli Uomini i più illustri nella pittura, scultura e architettura” (c.1770), made by Giovanni Battista Cecchi, engraving, 17x12cm, British Museum, London.

Andrea del Castagno (1420 – 1457) was an Italian Renaissance painter in Florence, influenced chiefly by Masaccio and Giotto. In 1447 Castagno worked in the refectory of the Benedictine nuns at Sant’Apollonia in Florence, painting, in the lower part, a fresco of the Last Supper, accompanied above by other scenes portraying the Passion of Christ: the Crucifixion, Entombment, and Resurrection, which are now damaged. The fresco of the Last Supper is in an excellent state of conservation, in part because it remained behind a plaster wall for more than a century. Many important Florentine families had daughters in the convent at Sant’Apollonia, so painting there probably brought Andrea to Florentine fame. Del Castagno’s Last Supper may have been seen by Leonardo da Vinci before he painted his own Last Supper, about 50 years later. Castagno died of the plague in 1457. 

Museo di Cenacolo di Sant’Apollonia, Florence.
Last Supper (1525), Andrea del Sarto, Florence, Italy.

Last Supper (1525), Andrea del Sarto, Florence, Italy.

Andrea del Sarto (Italian, 1486 – 1531)

Cenacolo di Andrea del Sarto, Florence.

In the old refectory of the San Salvi monastery on the outskirts of Florence, Andrea del Sarto painted the life-like Last Supper. Initially, the artist painted the sub-arch, which took 18 days. Work was suspended for about fifteen years, and then he was called back to fresco the Last Supper properly and completed it in 46 days. During the siege of Florence it was one of the very few surviving works outside the walls of Florence, the only one of importance, and it seems that the imperial soldiers were so enchanted by its surprising modernity that they spared it. In 1534 the monastery became a female monastery and then a strict enclosure was introduced, which made the work de facto invisible until the monastery was suppressed. 

Last Supper (1525), Andrea del Sarto (Italian, 1486 – 1531), fresco, 468x871cm, Museo del Cenacolo di Andrea del Sarto, Florence.

At this Last Supper, the apostles are seated, shocked by the announcement of the betrayal just uttered by Jesus. Judas, as Leonardo already did in his Last Supper, is not separated from the table on this side as in so many other Last Suppers, but is at the right hand of Jesus, faithful to the Gospel text of John with his hand on his chest to demonstrate his disbelief, as he receives a piece of soaked bread from Jesus. Jesus had just told the group that one of them will betray him, the one he will rech out to with a piece of bread.

Selfportrait (1528), Andrea del Sarto (Italian, 1486 – 1531), fresco, 51x38cm, Galleria degli Uffizi, Florence.

Andrea del Sarto (1486 – 1530) was an Italian painter from Florence, whose career flourished during the High Renaissance and early Mannerism. Although highly regarded during his lifetime as an artist senza errori or without errors, his renown was eclipsed after his death by that of his contemporaries Leonardo da Vinci, Michelangelo, and Raphael.

Museo del Cenacolo di Andrea del Sarto, Florence.