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Giotto, Masaccio and the others: Fresco cycles in Florence
Biblia pauperum, the Bible of the poor, this is how the frescoes were defined which depicted the sacred stories in Medieval churches, thanks to their educational usefulness, and the possibility of teaching the stories of God and his saints to a population composed mainly of illiterates. But aside from their purpose, the fresco cycles are one of the fields where the best artists of the past were put to the test by Giotto, Masaccio and Michelangelo.
In Florence two of the most famous fresco cycles decorate the walls of the Cappella Bardi and Cappella Peruzzi in Santa Croce, painted by Giotto and his workshop with stories of St. Francis and St. John the Baptist and Evangelist. But in reality, the Church also preserves other cycles of significant interest: Agnolo Gaddi is the author of the frescoes with the Story of the Invention of the True Cross in the Cappella Maggiore and the stories of the Saints Antonio Abate and John the Baptist and Evangelist in the Cappella Castellani.
The stories told in the churches normally regard the saint the church is dedicated to, the religious order supporting the church or the families who own the chapels. In the latter case, the selected saint often coincides with the name of the customer. Thus if in Santa Croce the stories of Saint Francis are told, in Santa Maria Novella the frescoes in the Cappellone degli Spagnoli by Andrea del Bonaiuto (1367-c.69) depict the fight of the Dominicans against Christian heresy; while inside the church, the chapel of Filippo Strozzi's family was frescoed by Filippino Lippi with stories of San Filippo (1494-1502).
In addition to the developed subject, the mural stories offer present-day visitors other sights: often the scene is set in the contemporary city with period architecture, clothing and furnishing, painting a type of postcard of the past. This is the case of the Cappella Tornabuoni by Ghirlandaio in Santa Maria Novella (1485-90), where you can admire the lavish clothing of the depicted noblewomen and the very bright interiors of fifteenth century houses.
But the fresco cycles were mainly a test field for representing figures in space, for the application of prospective. This problem, previously dealt with by Giotto with a type of empirical prospective, was resolved by Masaccio in the Cappella Brancacci cycle in the Chiesa del Carmine (1424-28), with such authoritativeness to become a type of school for later artists, including Michelangelo.
Biblia pauperum, the Bible of the poor, this is how the frescoes were defined which depicted the sacred stories in Medieval churches, thanks to their educational usefulness, and the possibility of teaching the stories of God and his saints to a population composed mainly of illiterates. But aside from their purpose, the fresco cycles are one of the fields where the best artists of the past were put to the test by Giotto, Masaccio and Michelangelo.
In Florence two of the most famous fresco cycles decorate the walls of the Cappella Bardi and Cappella Peruzzi in Santa Croce, painted by Giotto and his workshop with stories of St. Francis and St. John the Baptist and Evangelist. But in reality, the Church also preserves other cycles of significant interest: Agnolo Gaddi is the author of the frescoes with the Story of the Invention of the True Cross in the Cappella Maggiore and the stories of the Saints Antonio Abate and John the Baptist and Evangelist in the Cappella Castellani.
The stories told in the churches normally regard the saint the church is dedicated to, the religious order supporting the church or the families who own the chapels. In the latter case, the selected saint often coincides with the name of the customer. Thus if in Santa Croce the stories of Saint Francis are told, in Santa Maria Novella the frescoes in the Cappellone degli Spagnoli by Andrea del Bonaiuto (1367-c.69) depict the fight of the Dominicans against Christian heresy; while inside the church, the chapel of Filippo Strozzi's family was frescoed by Filippino Lippi with stories of San Filippo (1494-1502).
In addition to the developed subject, the mural stories offer present-day visitors other sights: often the scene is set in the contemporary city with period architecture, clothing and furnishing, painting a type of postcard of the past. This is the case of the Cappella Tornabuoni by Ghirlandaio in Santa Maria Novella (1485-90), where you can admire the lavish clothing of the depicted noblewomen and the very bright interiors of fifteenth century houses.
But the fresco cycles were mainly a test field for representing figures in space, for the application of prospective. This problem, previously dealt with by Giotto with a type of empirical prospective, was resolved by Masaccio in the Cappella Brancacci cycle in the Chiesa del Carmine (1424-28), with such authoritativeness to become a type of school for later artists, including Michelangelo.