My favorite artistic period is the
Renaissance, which covers a broad span of both time and geography and
has given us many transcendent works of art, as well as well-known
Masters such as Leonardo da Vinci, Michelangelo Buonarroti, Rafael,
Hans Holbein, Jan van Eyck, and Titian. But there were many notable
painters, sculptors, and architects who may not be household names to
those outside the art world.
One of these is Andrea del Castagno,
who was born some time around 1419-1421 and worked during the early
Renaissance. Originally named Andrea di Bartolo di Bargila, he was
born in Castagna, a small village near Florence, and in typical
Italian fashion, ended up with a name that identified him as being
from that area. Except for a brief period in Venice about 1442, where
he painted frescoes in the San Tarasio Chapel of the church of San
Zaccaria, del Castagno
worked in Florence, producing work for the church and for private
clients such as the Medici and other rich families. Particularly
noteworthy are his fresco entitled The Last Supper, at the top
of this page, and his series of frescoes on the Passion of the Christ
dating from 1445-to 1450 that were painted for the convent of Ste.
Apollonia.
Del Castagno employs architectural
features to display his skill in the nascent science of perspective,
as can be seen in The Last Supper, above, which has a similar
composition to that of the well-known fresco of the same name and
subject by Leonardo da Vinci. Del Castagno's broad, solid figures and
the emotional quality expressed both in the body posture and in the
faces of his subjects seems to show the influence of the Florentine
painters Giotto and Masaccio, and his later work shows an increasing
influence of the sculptural works by Donatello.
Some of this later
work includes Famous Men and Women, a series of nine pieces
for the Villa Carducci at Legnaia (c 1450, Ste. Apollonia, portrait of Dante Alghieri from this series pictured) and the
fresco entitled Niccolo da Tolentino (1456,
Florence Cathedral), an equestrian portrait of the military
leader. It is a painting of a “statue” that does not actually
exist, other than in the fresco, but was inspired by an actual
equestrian statue of Gattamelata by Donatello. Andrea del Castagno
died August 19, 1457, of the plague.
Credits: top image, The Last Supper,
from Wikimedia Commons
portrait of Dante Alghieri from the
Famous Men and Women series, from Wikimedia Commons
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