Masaccio and the Late Antique

Abstract

It is surprising that so little is known of Masaccio's awareness and use of antique art considering his revolutionary position in the development of Renaissance painting in Florence.¹ Contemporary commentators wrote of the antique consciousness of Masaccio's peers – witness Donatello, the “grande imitatore degli antichi”² – but they stressed instead the imitation of nature in Masaccio's work, his sobriety and the three-dimensionality of his figures.³ Nor has modern scholarship yielded anything like the detailed and extended use of antique sources that Richard Krautheimer documented, for example, for the oeuvre of Ghiberti.⁴ Specific ancient models for Masaccio have been proposed, but few seem really convincing.⁵ The general resemblance of Masaccio's “illusionism” to that of ancient Roman painting has been discussed by Richard Offner, who did not, however, come to a clear conclusion as to their relationship.⁶