The Tribute Money (Masaccio)
The Tribute Money is a fresco by the Italian Early Renaissance painter Masaccio, located in the Brancacci Chapel of the basilica of Santa Maria del Carmine, Florence. Painted in the 1420s, it is considered among Masaccio's best work, a vital part of the development of renaissance art; the painting is part of a cycle on the life of Saint Peter, describes a scene from the Gospel of Matthew, in which Jesus directs Peter to find a coin in the mouth of a fish in order to pay the temple tax. Its importance relates to its revolutionary use of chiaroscuro; the Tribute Money suffered great damage in the centuries after its creation, until the chapel went through a thorough restoration in the 1980s. The Brancacci Chapel, in the basilica of Santa Maria del Carmine, was founded around 1366/7 by Felice Brancacci; the chapel passed to Piero's nephew, Felice Brancacci, who some time between 1423 and 1425 commissioned the painter Masolino to decorate the walls with a series of frescoes from the life of Saint Peter.
Peter was the name-saint of the founder, the patron saint of the Brancacci family, but the choice reflected support for the Roman papacy during the Great Schism. At some point Masolino was joined by the eighteen years younger Masaccio. Masolino left, either for Hungary in 1425 or for Rome in 1427, leaving the completion of the chapel to Masaccio. In 1427 or 28, before the chapel was completed, Masaccio joined Masolino in Rome. Only in the 1480s were the frescos by Filippino Lippi; the Tribute Money, though, is considered Masaccio's work entirely. Over the centuries the frescoes were altered and damaged. In 1746 the upper levels were painted over by the artist Vincenzo Meucci, covering up most of Masolino's work. In 1771, the church was ruined by fire; the Brancacci Chapel, though structurally undamaged by the fire, suffered great damages to its frescoes. It was not until the years 1981–1990 that a full-scale restoration of the chapel was undertaken, restoring the frescoes to their original state.
The paintings had suffered some irreparable damage though the parts that were painted a secco: in The Tribute Money, the leaves on the trees were gone, while Christ's robe had lost much of its original azure brilliance. The scene depicted in The Tribute Money is drawn from Matthew 17:24–27: 24, and when they were come to Capernaum, they that received tribute money came to Peter, said, Doth not your master pay tribute? 25. He saith, Yes, and when he was come into the house, Jesus prevented him, What thinkest thou, Simon? of whom do the kings of the earth take custom or tribute? of their own children, or of strangers? 26. Peter saith unto him, Of strangers. Jesus saith unto him, Then are the children free. 27. Notwithstanding, lest we should offend them, go thou to the sea, cast an hook, take up the fish that first cometh up; the story is only found in the Gospel of Matthew, which according to Christian tradition was written by the apostle Matthew, himself a tax collector according to Matthew 9:9–13.
The passage has been used as a Christian justification for the legitimacy of secular authority, is seen in conjunction with another passage, the "render unto Caesar..." story. In Matthew 22:15–22, a group of Pharisees try to trick Christ into incriminating himself, by asking if it is "lawful to give tribute unto Caesar, or not." Pointing out Caesar's image on the coin, he replies "Render therefore unto Caesar the things which are Caesar's. The painting diverges somewhat from the biblical story, in that the tax collector confronts the whole group of Christ and the disciples, the entire scene takes place outdoors; the story is told in three parts that do not occur sequentially, but the narrative logic is still maintained, through compositional devises. The central scene is that of the tax collector demanding the tribute; the head of Christ is the vanishing point of the painting, drawing the eyes of the spectator there. Both Christ and Peter point to the left hand part of the painting, where the next scene takes place in the middle background: Peter taking the money out of the mouth of the fish.
The final scene – where Peter pays the tax collector – is at the right, set apart by the framework of an architectural structure. This work maintains a heavy importance in the Art History world, as it is believed to be the first painting, since the fall of Rome, to use Scientific Linear One Point Perspective, or, all the orthogonals point to one vanishing point, in this case, Christ, it is one of the first paintings that does away with the use of a head-cluster. A technique employed by earlier Proto-Renaissance artists, such as Duccio. If you were to walk into the painting, you could walk around Jesus Christ, in the semicircle created, back out the painting again with ease. Christ and the disciples are placed in a semicircle; the tax collector, on the other hand, stands outside the holy space. While the group of holy men are dressed entirely in robes of pastel pink and blue, the official wears a shorter tunic of a striking vermilion; the colour adds to the impertinence expressed through his gestures.
Another way contrast is achieved is in the way – both in the central scene and on the right – the tax collector's postures are copying exactly those of Peter, only seen from the opposite angle. This gives a three-dimensional quality to the figures, allowing the spectator to view them from all sides. Masaccio is compared to contemporaries like Donatello and Brunelleschi as a pioneer of the renaissance
Giovanni Pisano
Giovanni Pisano was an Italian sculptor and architect, who worked in the cities of Pisa and Pistoia. He is best known for his sculpture which shows the influence of both the French Gothic and the Ancient Roman art. Henry Moore, referring to his statues for the facade of Siena Cathedral, called him "the first modern sculptor". Born in Pisa, Giovanni Pisano was the son of the famous sculptor Nicola Pisano, he received his training in the workshop of his father and in 1265–1268 he worked with his father on the pulpit in Siena Cathedral. His next major work with his father was the fountain Fontana Maggiore in Perugia. Nicola Pisano is thought to have died either around 1278 or in 1284 when Giovanni took up residence in Siena; these first works were made in Nicola's style and it is difficult to separate the contributions of the two artists. However the Madonna with Child can be attributed with certainty to Giovanni, showing a new style with a certain familiarity between Mother and Child. Giovanni's next work was at Pisa Cathedral, sculpting the statues in the two rows of traceried gables at the exterior of the Baptistry.
The vivacity of these statues is a new confirmation that he had left the serene style of his father behind. Between 1287 and 1296 he was appointed chief architect of Siena Cathedral; the architectural design and elegant sculptures for the facade of the cathedral in Siena show his tendencies to blend Gothic art with reminders of Roman art. The work was continued after his death, with still greater Gothic elaboration, by Memmo di Filippuccio. In 1296 he returned to Pisa to begin work on the Church of San Giovanni. In 1301 he continued his work on the Pulpit of Sant' Andrea, Pistoia which he had started in 1297; the pulpit has five reliefs: Nativity. Giovanni's work between 1302 and 1310 at the new pulpit for the Cathedral of Pisa shows his distinct preference for animation in his characters, moved further away his father's style; this pulpit with its dramatic scenes has become his masterwork. It shows nine scenes from the New Testament, carved in white marble with a chiaroscuro effect, it contains a bold, naturalistic depiction of a naked Hercules.
His figure Prudence in the pulpit may have been an inspiration for the Eve in the painting The Expulsion from the Garden of Eden by Masaccio. After the fire of 1595 it was packed away during the redecoration and was not rediscovered and re-erected until 1926; the church of San Nicola in Pisa was enlarged between 1297 and 1313 by the Augustinians by the design of Giovanni Pisano. He was responsible of the façade of San Paolo a Ripa d'Arno, his last major work dates from 1313 when he made a monument in memory of Margaret of Brabant at the request of her husband emperor Henry VII. One of his pupils was Giovanni di Balduccio, who became a famous sculptor, the architect and sculptor Agostino da Siena, he had an influence on the painter Pietro Lorenzetti. Giorgio Vasari included a biography of Pisano in his book Le vite dei più eccellenti pittori, scultori, e architetti The asteroid 7313 Pisano was named to honour Nicola and Giovanni Pisano. Giovanni di Cecco Duccio Arnolfo di Cambio Hohenfeld, Kai.
Die Madonnenskulpturen des Giovanni Pisano. Stilkritik, Kulturtransfer und Materialimitation. Kromsdorf. ISBN 978-3-89739-821-4. Mellini, G. L.. Il pulpito di Giovanni Pisano a Pistoia. Florence. Carli, Enzo. Giovanni Pisano. Milan. ISBN 88-7781-045-9
Decorum
Decorum was a principle of classical rhetoric and theatrical theory, about the fitness or otherwise of a style to a theatrical subject. The concept of decorum is applied to prescribed limits of appropriate social behavior within set situations. In classical rhetoric and poetic theory, decorum designates the appropriateness of style to subject. Both Aristotle and Horace discussed the importance of appropriate style in epic, comedy, etc. Horace says, for example: "A comic subject is not susceptible of treatment in a tragic style, the banquet of Thyestes cannot be fitly described in the strains of everyday life or in those that approach the tone of comedy. Let each of these styles be kept to the role properly allotted to it."Hellenistic and Latin rhetors divided style into: the grand style, the middle style and the low style. A discussion of this division of styles was set out in the pseudo-Ciceronian Rhetorica ad Herennium. Modeled on Virgil's three-part literary career, ancient and Renaissance theorists linked each style to a specific genre: epic and pastoral.
In the Middle Ages, this concept was called "Virgil's wheel". For stylistic purists, the mixing of styles within a work was considered inappropriate, a consistent use of the high style was mandated for the epic. However, stylistic diversity had been a hallmark of classical epic. Poetry more than any other literary form expressed words or phrases that were not current in ordinary conversation, characterized as poetic diction. With the arrival of Christianity, concepts of decorum became involved with those of the sacred and profane in a different way from in the previous classical religions. Although in the Middle Ages religious subjects were treated with broad humour in a "low" manner in medieval drama, the churches policed the treatment in more permanent art forms, insisting on a consistent "high style". By the Renaissance the mixture of revived classical mythology and Christian subjects was considered to fall under the heading of decorum, as was the increasing habit of mixing religious subjects in art with lively genre painting or portraiture of the fashionable.
The Catholic Council of Trent forbade, among other things, the "indecorous" in religious art. Concepts of decorum sensed as inhibitive and stultifying, were aggressively attacked and deconstructed by writers of the Modernist movement, with the result that readers' expectations were no longer based on decorum, in consequence the violations of decorum that underlie the wit of mock-heroic, of literary burlesque, a sense of bathos, were dulled in the twentieth-century reader. In continental European debates on theatre in the Renaissance and post-Renaissance, decorum is concerned with the appropriateness of certain actions or events to the stage. In their emulation of classical models and of the theoretical works by Aristotle and Horace, certain subjects were deemed to be better left to narration. In Horace's Ars Poetica, the poet counseled playwrights to respect decorum by avoiding the portrayal, on stage, of scenes that would shock the audience by their cruelty or unbelievable nature: "But you will not bring on to the stage anything that ought properly to be taking place behinds the scenes, you will keep out of sight many episodes that are to be described by the eloquent tongue of a narrator.
Medea must not butcher her children in the presence of the audience, nor the monstrous Atreus cook his dish of human flesh within public view, nor Procne be metamorphosed into a bird, nor Cadmus into a snake. I shall turn in disgust from anything of this kind. "In Renaissance Italy, important debates on decorum in theater were set off by Sperone Speroni's play Canace and Giovanni Battista Giraldi's play Orbecche. In seventeenth-century France, the notion of decorum was a key component of French classicism in both theater and the novel, as well as the visual arts - see hierarchy of genres. Social decorum sets down appropriate social behavior and propriety, is thus linked to notions of etiquette and manners; the precepts of social decorum as we understand them, of the preservation of external decency, were consciously set by Lord Chesterfield, looking for a translation of les moeurs: "Manners are too little, morals are too much." The word decorum survives in Chesterfield's reduced form as an element of etiquette: the prescribed limits of appropriate social behavior within a set situation.
The use of this word in this sense is of the sixteenth-century, prescribing the boundaries established in drama and literature, used by Roger Ascham, The Scholemaster and echoed in Malvolio's tirade in Twelfth Night, "My masters, are you mad, or what are you? Have you no wit, manners nor honesty, but to gabble like tinkers at this time of night?... Is there no respect of persons, place nor time in you?"The place of decorum in the courtroom, of the type of argument, within bounds, remains pertinent: the decorum of argument was a constant topic during the O. J. Simpson trial. During Model United Nations conferences the honorable chair may have to announ
Mama's Affair
Mama's Affair is a 1921 American silent romantic comedy film directed by Victor Fleming and based on the play of the same title by Rachel Barton Butler. Cast members Effie Shannon, George Le Guere and Katherine Kaelred reprise their roles from the Broadway play. A print of this film survives in the Library of Congress; as summarized in a film publication, a prologue, which explains where the author got her idea for the story, shows Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden. When the serpent tells Eve to bite the apple, Adam takes it away from her; the serpent tells her to go into hysterics and Adam will give her the apple. Shifting to the modern story, Mrs. Orrin, Eve's mother, goes into hysterics at the thought of losing her daughter. Mrs. Orrin and Mrs. Merchant, who lives with them, have decided that Eve will marry Mrs. Merchant's son Henry, an effeminate youngster with rimmed glasses. Fearing her mother's nerves, Eve is willing to marry Henry, so the four of them go to Mama Orrin's birthplace, where the wedding is scheduled to take place on her birthday.
During the stay at the hotel Mama has one of her "attacks" and Dr. Harmon is called in, he soon discovers the exact trouble and orders Mrs. Orrin to bed with instructions that she not see her daughter. Mrs. Orrin disobeys these orders and Eve's nerves give way, causing a second visit by the doctor, he takes Eve away from the mother, but after Henry accuses the doctor of being a fortune seeker, the doctor refuses to have anything to do with Eve. Eve's eyes are opened and she uses a "treat'em rough" theory on her mother. Besides winning the love of her doctor, she cures her mother of her hysterics. Constance Talmadge as Eve Orrin Effie Shannon as Mrs. Orrin Kenneth Harlan as Dr. Harmon George Le Guere as Henry Marchant Katharine Kaelred as Mrs. Marchant Gertrude Le Brandt as Bundy Mama's Affair on IMDb Synopsis at AllMovie
Holy Trinity (Masaccio)
The Holy Trinity, with the Virgin and Saint John and donors is a fresco by the Early Italian Renaissance painter Masaccio. It is located in Florence; the Trinity is thought to have been created by Masaccio sometime between 1425-1427. He died in late 1428 at the age of 26, or having just turned 27, leaving behind a small body of work; this painting was one of his last major commissions, is considered to be one of his masterpieces. The fresco is located along the middle of the basilica's left aisle. Although the configuration of this space has changed since the artwork was created, there are clear indications that the fresco was aligned precisely in relationship with the sight-lines and perspective arrangement of the room at the time. There was an altar, mounted as a shelf-ledge between the upper and lower sections of the fresco, further emphasizing the "reality" of the artifice. Not much is known about the details of the commission; the two donor portraits included in the fresco, one figure kneeling on either side of the archway, have not been positively identified.
The persons depicted are certainly contemporary Florentines. According to the established conventions of such depictions, it is but not universally, assumed that they were still alive at the time of the artwork's commissioning; the representations in the painting serve as accurate likenesses of their actual appearance at the time when their portraits were created. The leading theories as to their identity favour two local families. According to discovered records of the Berti family, they owned a tomb at the foot of the fresco, it has been suggested that they might have had a particular "devotional loyalty" to veneration of the Holy Trinity. Other sources mention a Lenzi tomb near the altar, with the inscription "Domenico di Lenzo, et Suorum 1426", as well as other Lenzi decorations in the chapel at that time, assume the donor portraits to be posthumous images of Domenico. In the Florentine dating system of that time, the new year began on March 25, it has been hypothesized that Fra' Alessio Strozzi and/or Filippo Brunelleschi may have been involved, or at least consulted, in the creation of Trinity.
Brunelleschi's work on linear perspective and architecture inspired the painting, this is demonstrated within Massacio's work. Fra' Alessio's involvement has been posited more on the matter of the appropriate depiction of the Holy Trinity, according to the preferences and sensibilities of the Dominican order. However, there is, to date, no concrete evidence for the direct involvement of either of these 2 persons, due to the lack of documentation about the exact circumstances of the piece's creation, theories about 3rd party involvement in the creative process remain speculative. Around 1568 Cosimo I Duke of Florence, commissioned Giorgio Vasari to undertake extensive renovation work at Santa Maria Novella; this work included reconfiguring and redecoration of the chapel-area in which Masaccio's fresco was located. Vasari had written about Masaccio, including a favorable mention of this specific work, in his Vite; when it came time to implement the planned renovations of the chapel containing Trinity, circa 1570, Vasari chose to leave the fresco intact and construct a new altar and screen in front of Masaccio's painting.
While it seems reasonably clear that it was Vasari's deliberate intention to preserve Masaccio's painting, it is unclear to what extent Duke Cosimo and/or other "concerned parties" were involved in this decision. To decorate the new altar, Vasari painted a Madonna of the Rosary. Masaccio's Holy Trinity was rediscovered when Vasari's altar was dismantled during renovations in 1860; the Crucifixion, the upper part of the fresco, was subsequently transferred to canvas, relocated to a different part of the church. It is unclear from available sources whether the lower section of the fresco, the cadaver tomb, remained unknown or was deliberately omitted during the 1860s construction work. Restoration was done to the Crucifixion section of the painting at that time, to replace missing areas of the design. While the painting was in damaged condition when rediscovered, it is likely that further damage was caused by the transfer from plaster to canvas. In the 20th century, the cadaver tomb portion of the work was rediscovered still in situ, the two halves were re-united in their original location in 1952.
Leonetto Tintori undertook restoration work on the combined whole during 1950-1954. The painting is 317 cm wide, 667 cm high; this gives an overall vertical-to-horizontal proportion of about 2:1. The ratio between the upper and lower sections of the work is roughly 3:1; the design includ
Fall of man
The fall of man, or the fall, is a term used in Christianity to describe the transition of the first man and woman from a state of innocent obedience to God to a state of guilty disobedience. Although not named in the Bible, the doctrine of the fall comes from a biblical interpretation of Genesis chapter 3. At first and Eve lived with God in the Garden of Eden, but the serpent tempted them into eating the fruit from the tree of knowledge of good and evil, which God had forbidden. After doing so, they became ashamed of their nakedness and God expelled them from the Garden to prevent them from eating from the tree of life and becoming immortal. For many Christian denominations, the doctrine of the fall is related to that of original sin, they believe that the fall brought sin into the world, corrupting the entire natural world, including human nature, causing all humans to be born into original sin, a state from which they cannot attain eternal life without the grace of God. The Eastern Orthodox Church accepts the concept of the fall but rejects the idea that the guilt of original sin is passed down through generations, based in part on the passage Ezekiel 18:20 that says a son is not guilty of the sins of his father.
Calvinist Protestants believe that Jesus gave his life as a sacrifice for the elect, so they may be redeemed from their sin. Judaism does not have a concept of "the fall" or "original sin" and has varying other interpretations of the Eden narrative. Lapsarianism, the logical order of God's decrees in relation to the Fall, is the distinction, by some Calvinists, as being supralapsarian or infralapsarian; the story of the Garden of Eden and the fall of man represents a tradition among the Abrahamic peoples, with a presentation more or less symbolical of certain moral and religious truths. The doctrine of the fall of man is extrapolated from Christian exegesis of Genesis 3. According to the narrative, God creates the first man and woman. God places them in the Garden of Eden and forbids them to eat fruit from the tree of knowledge of good and evil; the serpent tempts Eve to eat fruit from the forbidden tree, which she shares with Adam and they become ashamed of their nakedness. Subsequently, God banishes Adam and Eve from the Garden of Eden, condemns Adam to working in order to get what he needs to live and condemns Eve to giving birth in pain, places cherubim to guard the entrance, so that Adam and Eve will not eat from the "tree of life".
The Book of Jubilees gives time frames for the events that led to the fall of man by stating that the serpent convinced Eve to eat the fruit on the 17th day, of the 2nd month, in the 8th year after Adam's creation. It states that they were removed from the Garden on the new moon of the 4th month of that year. Christian exegetes of Genesis 2:17 have applied the day-year principle to explain how Adam died within a day. Psalms 90:4, 2 Peter 3:8 and Jubilees 4:29–31 explained that, to God, one day is equivalent to a thousand years and thus Adam died within that same "day"; the Greek Septuagint, on the other hand, has "day" translated into the Greek word for a twenty-four-hour period. According to the Genesis narrative, during the antediluvian age, human longevity approached a millennium, such as the case of Adam who lived 930 years. Thus, to "die" has been interpreted as to become mortal. However, the grammar does not support this reading, nor does the narrative: Adam and Eve are expelled from the Garden lest they eat of the second tree, the tree of life, gain immortality.
Catholic exegesis of Genesis 3 claims that the fall of man was a "primeval event, a deed that took place at the beginning of the history of man." Traditionally, the fall of Adam and Eve is said to have brought “four wounds” to human nature. These are enumerated by St Bede and others St Thomas Aquinas They are original sin, physical frailty and death, darkened intellect and ignorance; these negated or diminished the gifts of God to Adam and Eve of original justice or sanctifying grace, integrity and infused knowledge. This first sin was "transmitted" by Adam and Eve to all of their descendants as original sin, causing humans to be "subject to ignorance and the dominion of death, inclined to sin." Although the state of corruption, inherited by humans after the primeval event of Original Sin, is called guilt or sin, it is understood as a sin acquired by the unity of all humans in Adam rather than a personal responsibility of humanity. Children partake in the effects of the sin of Adam, but not in the responsibility of original sin, as sin is always a personal act.
Baptism is considered to erase original sin, though the effects on human nature remain, for this reason the Catholic Church baptizes infants who have not committed any personal sin. Eastern Orthodoxy rejects the idea that the guilt of original sin is passed down through generations, it bases its teaching in part on Ezekiel 18:20 that says a son is not guilty of the sins of his father. The Church teaches that, in addition to their conscience and tendency to do good and women are born with a tendency to sin due to the fallen condition of the world, it follows Maximus the Confessor and others in characterising the change in human nature as the introduction of a "deliberative will" in opposition to the "natural will" created by God which tends toward the good. Thus, according to St Paul in his epistle to th
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Masaccio's Expulsion of Adam and Eve from Eden, Smarthistory[1]
