Brancacci Chapel
The Brancacci Chapel is a chapel in the Church of Santa Maria del Carmine in Florence, central Italy. It is sometimes called the "Sistine Chapel of the early Renaissance" for its painting cycle, among the most famous and influential of the period. Construction of the chapel was commissioned by Felice Brancacci and began in 1422. The paintings were executed over the years 1425 to 1427. Public access is currently gained via the neighbouring convent, designed by Brunelleschi. The church and the chapel are treated as separate places to visit and as such have different opening times and it is quite difficult to see the rest of the church from the chapel.
The patron of the pictorial decoration was Felice Brancacci, descendant of Pietro, who had served as the Florentine ambassador to Cairo until 1423. Upon his return to Florence, he hired Masolino da Panicale to paint his chapel. Masolino's associate, 21-year-old Masaccio, 18 years younger than Masolino, assisted, but during painting Masolino left to Hungary, where he was painter to the king, and the commission was given to Masaccio. By the time Masolino returned he was learning from his talented former student. However, Masaccio was called to Rome before he could finish the chapel, and died in Rome at the age of 27. Portions of the chapel were completed later by Filippino Lippi. During the Baroque period some of the paintings were seen as unfashionable and a tomb was placed in front of them.
The paintings
In his frescos, Masaccio carries out a radical break from the medieval pictorial tradition, by adhering to the new Renaissance perspectival conception of space. Thus, perspective and light create deep spaces where volumetrically constructed figures move in a strongly individualised human dimension. Masaccio therefore continues on Giotto's path, detaching himself from a symbolic vision of man and propounding a greater realistic painting. The cycle from the life of Saint Peter was commissioned as patron saint from Pietro Brancacci, the original owner of the chapel.The paintings are explained below in their narrative order.
''The Temptation of Adam and Eve''
By Masolino da Panicale.In contrast with Masaccio's Expulsion, this is a serene and innocent raffiguration.
The cycle begins with this painting by Masolino, placed on the higher rectangle of the arch delimiting the Chapel, within the pillar thickness. This scene and the opposite one are the premises to the story narrated in the frescos, showing the moment in which humans severed their union with God, later reconciled by Christ with Peter's mediation.
The painting shows Adam standing near Eve: they look at each other with measured postures, as she prepares to bite on the apple, just offered to her by the serpent near her arm around the tree. The snake has a head with thick blond hair, much idealised. The scene is aulic in its presentation, with gestures and style conveying tones of late International Gothic. Light, which models the figures without sharp angles, is soft and embracing; the dark background makes the body stand out in their sensual plasticity, almost suspended in space.
''The Expulsion from the Garden of Eden''
Masaccio's masterpiece Expulsion from the Garden of Eden is the first fresco on the upper part of the chapel, on the left wall, just at the left of the Tribute Money. It is famous for its vivid energy and unprecedented emotional realism. It contrasts dramatically with Masolino's delicate and decorative image of Adam and Eve before the fall, painted on the opposite wall. It presents a dramatic intensity, with an armed angel who hovers over Adam and Eve indicating the way out of the Garden of Eden: the crying sinners leave at their backs the gates of Paradise.This work represents a neat separation from the past International Gothic style; Masolino's serene composures are also left behind, and the two biblical progenitors are portrayed in dark desperation, weighed down under the angel's stern sight, who, with his unsheathed sword, forcibly expels them, with such a tension never seen before in painting. Gestures are eloquent enough: on exiting Paradise's Gates, from where some divine rays are shooting forward, Adam covers his face in desperation and guilt; Eve covers her nudity with shame and cries out, with a pained face. The bodies' dynamism, especially Adam's, gives an unprecedented passion to the figures, firmly planted on ground and projecting shadows from the violent light modelling them. Many are the details which increase the emotional drama: Adam's damp and sticky hair, the angel's posture, foreshortened as if diving down from above. Eve's position is from an ancient representation, that of Venus Pudica . The foliage covering the couple's nudities was removed during a restoration in 1990.
''Peter's Calling''
By Masolino.In the left lunette, destroyed in 1746-48, Masolino had painted the Calling of Peter and Andrew, or Vocation, known thanks to some indications by past witnesses such as Vasari, Bocchi and Baldinucci. Roberto Longhi first identified an image of this lost fresco in a later drawing, which does not conform to the lunette's upper curvature, but appears today as a very probable hypothesis. In this scene, Masolino had divided his composition into two expanses, of sea and sky.
''La Navicella''
The opposite lunette housed the fresco of the Navicella, a traditional title for the scene where Christ, walking on water, rescues Peter from the surging waves of a storm and pulls him aboard the boat. This lunette again proposed a marine setting, on balance with the opposite scene and thus creating a sort of parable of Creation: from the skies of the Evangelists in the vault, to the seas of the upper register, to the lands and towns of the middle and lower registers, precisely like in Genesis. In a way, the viewer's sight shifts from Paradise to the terrene world in a consequential manner. Sources attribute this lunette to Masolino, but considering the alternating turns taken by the two artists on the scaffolding, some propound for a Masaccio fresco.''Peter's Repentance''
Peter's Repentance is found in the left semi-lunette of the upper register, where a very schematic preparatory drawing of the sinopia was hosted. The scene was attributed to Masaccio, on the basis of its greater incisiveness in the treatment as against Masolino's work.''The Tribute Money''
The most famous painting in the chapel is Tribute Money, on the upper left wall, with figures of Jesus and Peter shown in a three part narrative. The painting, largely attributed to Masaccio, represents the story of Peter and the tax collector from. The left side shows Peter getting a coin from the mouth of a fish and the right side shows Peter paying his taxes. The whole appears to be related to the establishment of the Catasto, the first income tax in Florence, in the time the painting was being executed.The miracle is not represented in a hagiographic key, but as a human occurrence that posits a divine decision: a historical event, then, with an explicit and indubitable moral meaning. On the narrational plane, the Tribute is developed in three stages: in the central part, Christ, from whom the tax collector asks a tribute for the Temple, orders Peter to go and fetch a coin from the mouth of the first fish he can catch; on the left, Peter, squatting on the shore, takes the coin from the fish; on the right, Peter tenders the coin to the tax collector. The three stages unite and the temporal sequences are expressed in spatial measures. The absence of a chronological scansion in the narrative, is to be sought in the fact that the painting's salient motif is not so much the miracle, as the actuation of the Divine Will, expressed by Jesus' the imperative gesture. His will becomes Peter's will who, by repeating his Lord's gesture, simultaneously indicates the fulfillment of Christ's will. The apostles' solidarity is shown by their serrated grouping around Jesus, as if to form a ring, a "coliseum of men". However, the very task is given to Peter: he alone will have to deal with mundane institutions. The portico's pillar becomes a symbolic element of separation between the grouped apostles and the conclusive delivery of tribute to the tax collector on Peter's part.
In the central group, the transverse directions formed by Christ's gesture with his right arm – replicated by that of Peter and, in opposite, by the turned collector – cross with those formed by the gestures of the right group, emphasizing escape points placed in the deepest space.
''Healing of the Cripple and Raising of Tabitha''
The upper scene on the right wall shows, on the left side, the Healing of the Cripple and, on the right side, the Raising of Tabitha. The fresco is generally attributed to Masolino, although Masaccio's hand has been discovered by some scholars. The scene shows two different episodes, with St. Peter appearing in both of them enclosed in a scenario of a typical Tuscan city of the 15th century depicted according to the strict rules of central perspective. The latter is generally regarded as Masaccio's main contribution, whereas the two central figures show Gothic influences.''St Peter Preaching''
By Masolino da Panicale.On the upper left wall one can see St Peter Preaching by Masolino, completed in eight days. Peter is shown, with an expressive gesture, preaching in front of a crowd. The people in the group have many and varied demeanours, from the sweet attention of the veiled nun in the foreground, to the sleepiness of both the girl behind her and the bearded old man, to the fear of the woman at back, whose worried eyes only can be seen. Mountains seem to continue from the preceding scene, with a spatial unity that was one of Masaccio trademarks. The three heads behind St Peter are probably portraits of contemporary people, same as the two friars on the right: all were formerly attributed to Masaccio.