The Old Masters and Their Pictures | Page 9

and foliage, having heads of prophets and sibyls
interspersed. So entire was the satisfaction the superb gate gave, that
Lorenzo was not merely loaded with praise, he received a commission
to design and cast a third and central gate which should surpass the
others, that were thenceforth to be the side entrances.
For his second gate Lorenzo Ghiberti repaired to the Old Testament for
subjects, beginning with the creation and ending with the meeting of
Solomon and the Queen of Sheba, and represented them in ten
compartments enclosed in a rich border of fruit and foliage, with
twenty-four full-length figures of the Hebrew heroes and prophets,
clearly and delicately designed and finished, occupying corresponding

niches. This crowning gate engaged the founder upwards of eighteen
years--forty-nine years are given as the term of the work of both the
gates.
The single defect which is found in those marvellous gates--left to us as
a testimony of what the life-long devotion of genius could produce--is
that they abound floridly both in ornament and action, in place of being
severely simple and restrained according to the classical standard.
Michael Angelo called these gates 'worthy to be the gates of Paradise,'
and they are still one of the glories of Florence. Casts of the gates are to
be found in the School for Art at Kensington, and at the Crystal Palace.
A young village boy learned to draw and model from Ghiberti's gates.
He in his turn was to create in the Brancacci Chapel of the Church of
the Carmine at Florence a school of painters scarcely less renowned
and powerful in its effects than that produced by the works in the
Campo Santa. You will find the Italian painters not unfrequently
known by nicknames, quite as often by their father's trades as by their
father's surnames, and still oftener by the town which was their place of
birth or nurture. This Tom village birth-place, was commonly called
Masaccio, short for Tomasaccio, 'hulking Tom,' as I have heard it
translated, on account of his indifferent, slovenly habits. I think there is
a tradition that he entered a studio in Florence as a colour boy, and
electrified the painter and his scholars, by brownie like freaks of
painting at their unfinished work, in their absence, better than any of
his masters, and by the dexterity with which he perpetrated the frolic of
putting the facsimile of a fly on one of the faces on the easels. His end
was a tragic conclusion to such light comedy. At the age of twenty-six,
he quitted Florence for Rome so suddenly that he left his finest frescoes
unfinished. It was said that he was summoned thither by the Pope. At
Rome, where little or nothing of Masaccio's life is known, he died
shortly afterwards, not without a suspicion of his having been poisoned.
A curious anecdote exists of the identification of the time when he
forsook Florence to meet his death in Rome. Just as we have read, that
the period of the death of Massinger the dramatist has been settled by
an entry in an old parish register, 'died, Philip Massinger a stranger,' so

there has been found some quaint equivalent to a modern tax-paper
which had been delivered at the dwelling of Masaccio when the word
'gone' was written down.
There is a further tradition--not very probable under the
circumstances--that Masaccio is buried, without name or stone, under
the Brancacci Chapel. Be that as it may, he very early rose to eminence,
surpassing all his predecessors in drawing and colouring, and he
combined with those acquirements such animation and variety of
expression in his characters, that it was said of him 'he painted souls as
well as bodies,' while his invention was not less bold and fresh.
It is difficult to indicate Masaccio's pictures because some of them have
been repainted and destroyed. As to those in the Brancacci Chapel from
the life of St Peter, (with the exception of two,) considerable confusion
has arisen as to which are Masaccio's, and which belong to his scholar
Filippino Lippi. The fresco which Masaccio left unfinished, that of the
Apostles Peter and Paul raising a dead youth (from traditional history),
was finished by Lippi. In the fresco of Peter baptizing the converts,
generally attributed to Masaccio, there is a lad who has thrown off his
garments, and stands shivering with cold, whose figure, according to
authority, formed an epoch in art. Lionardo da Vinci, Michael Angelo,
Andrea del Sarto, Fra Bartolommeo, all studied their art in this chapel.
Raphael borrowed the grand figure of St Paul preaching at Athens in
one of the cartoons, from one of Masaccio's or Filippo Lippi's frescoes.
Masaccio's excellence as an artist, reached at an immature age, is very
remarkable.
I have come to the last