Masaccio: Saint Andrew and the Pisa Altarpiece (Paperback) (ISBN-13: 9780892362868)

Ranked by many scholars as the greatest master of early Italian Renaissance painting, Masaccio (1401-1428) was the first artist to use effects of light to create three-dimensional images on a two-dimensional plane. This achievement, revolutionary in Masaccio's day, is one of the painter's significant contributions to art history.

This book explores Masaccio's accomplishment as epitomized by the multipaneled painting of which the Saint Andrew panel is thought to have once formed a part: the Pisa Altarpiece, one of the truly great polyptychs in the history of Italian Renaissance art, produced in 1426 for a chapel in the church of Santa Maria del Carmine, Pisa.

The text discusses Masaccio's short life and illustrious career; the commission for the altarpiece; its patron and program; the painting's original location; and the role that the church friars played in the actual commission. Finally, after examining the polyptych's individual panels, the book traces their subsequent history and recounts how art historians came to identify them.

Author: Eliot W. Rowlands
ISBN-10: 0892362863
ISBN-13: 9780892362868
Publisher: J. Paul Getty Trust Publications
Language: English
Published: 09/25/2003
Pages: 112
Format: Paperback
Weight: 0.74lbs
Size: 9.28h x 7.58w x 0.32d

Review Citation(s):
Choice 04/01/2004 pg. 1460

About the Author

Eliot Rowlands is a senior researcher at Wildenstein and Company in New York. He is the author of The Collections of the Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art I: Italian Painting, 1300-1800.