excellent, Masaccio having found means to marshal his figures so admirably well on the level space of that piazza, in ranges of five or six in a file, and they are gradually diminished to the eye with such judgment and truth of proportion, that it is truly wonderful. There is also to be remarked that he has had the forethought to make these men not all of one size, but differing, as in life; insomuch that one distinguishes the short and stout man from the tall and slender figures, as one would if they were living. The feet of all are planted firmly on the plane they occupy, and the foreshortening of the files is so perfect that they could not look otherwise in the actual life.[1]
After this Masaccio returned to the works of the Brancacci chapel, wherein he continued the stories from the life of St. Peter, commenced by Masolino da Panicale, of which he completed a certain part. The installation of St. Peter as first pontiff, that is to say, the healing of the sick, the raising to life of the dead, and the making the halt sound, by the shadow of the apostle falling on them as he approaches the temple with St. John. But remarkable above all the rest is the story which represents St. Peter, when, by command of Christ, he draws money to pay the tribute from the mouth of the fish; for besides that we have here the portrait of Masaccio himself, in the figure of one of the apostles (the last painted by his own hand, with the aid of a mirror, and so admirably done that it seems to live and breathe:) there is, moreover, great spirit in the figure of St. Peter as he looks inquiringly towards Jesus, while the attention given by the apostles to what is taking place, as they stand around their master awaiting his determination, is expressed with so much truth, and their various attitudes and gestures are so full of animation, that they seem to be those of living men. Saint
- ↑ Baldinucci laments the loss of this picture, which was barbarously destroyed. The original drawing of it is believed to be now in the possession of some lover of art in Lombardy. Lanzi saw it in the hands of a professor of the University of Pavia. So far the usually accurate Masselli, who is copied, without acknowledgment, by the later Florentine editors. But the German translator of Vasari, the late erudite and lamented Ludwig Schorn, assures us that he has seen this drawing—which is that of a portion only of the work—in the collection of the Florentine Gallery (the Uffizj). See also Heinrich Meyer, in Goethe’s Propyläen, iii, 38, for remarks on this and other drawings by the same master in the above-named collection.
