{[Renaissance:] Andrea de Castagno}[26th April 1991]

[Redbook9:192-193][19910426:1153c]{[Renaissance:] Andrea de Castagno}[26th April 1991]

.1153

[continued]

‘ Andrea de Castagno* was the leader in a group of younger painters who gave a new direction to the art of Masaccio. His “Last Supper” of about 1445[ce],** in the former convent of S. Apollonia in Florence, reveals the influence of Masaccio in the sculptured treatment of the figures, his concern with light, and his desire to create a credible and rationally conceived space. At the same time, Castagno betrays an almost pedantic interest in antiquity, which roughly parallels a similar development in letters, by the use of fictive marble panels on the rear wall and of sphinxes for the bench ends, both of which are direct copies of Roman prototypes. 

In the last years of his life, Castagno’s style made an abrupt change *** towards a highly expressive emotionalism that parallels a similar direction in the work of his contemporaries in painting and of Donatello in sculpture. His “The Trinity with Saints” in SS. Annunziata, Florence, was originally planned with calm and balanced figures as the underpainting, or sinopia, reveals. In the final painting, however, the figures, though sculpturally conceived, project an agitation heightened by the emaciated figure of St. Jerome and the radically conceived figure of the crucified Christ. 

The optimism, rationality, and calm human drama that had characterised earlier Renaissance in Florence was beginning to give way to a more personal, expressive, and linear style.’

****

*[1421-1457ce]

**2048JG~1408|G~1536[ce]

64A~1440[ce]

***cf [[Redbook9:190][19910426:1153]{The Conversion of Fra Angelico}[26th April 1991],] 190↑

**** – ibid [Encyclopaedia Britannica 25:] 345

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