MASOLINO DA PANICALE (1383-1447)
Mottarone (1,491 m - 4,892 ft)
Italy
In Paesaggio, Castiglione Olona, Laggo Maggiore, 1435, Fresco, Palazzo Branda Castiglione
The painting
This geographical representation of a landscape supposed to be that of the mountains around Lake Maggiore (Italy) and in particular of the town of Castiglione Olona (near Varese), is quite surprising for that time. The painter wants to reproduce with accuracy the mountains peaks he can see from the shores of Lake Maggiore, which is not usual at that time, even if in Europe, the accuracy of the geographical representation becomes more and more a preoccupation for painters. One can see examples, almost contemporary, in paintings by Enguerrand Quarton or by Konrad Witz.
Here we can recognize (among others we can't !), the Mottarone (left of the frame) with, in the distance, the view of the Alps and the Monte Rosa massif and its many peaks. The village of Castigione Olona is planted in the middle of a kind of descending waterfall that does not exist on Lake Maggiore ! This is not geographically accurate, but it reflects at least the concerns and research about perspective of Masolino da Panicale, who was the first painter to make use of a central "Vanishing point" and probably the first artist to create oil paintings in the 1420s...
One of the mountains
Mount Mottarone (1,491 m - 4,892 ft) is located between Lake Maggiore and Lake Orta. The Mottarone is nowadays a place famous for its ski resort, its hiking possibilities and its views of Lake Maggiore, Orta and the Alps (Monte Rosa, Monviso ...).
Monte Rosa massif and Point Dufour peak :
Full Wandering vertexes entry =>
The Painter
Masolino da Panicale (nickname of Tommaso di Cristoforo Fini) was an Italian painter. His best known works are probably his collaborations with Masaccio: Madonna with Child and St. Anne (1424) and the frescoes in the Brancacci Chapel (1424–1428).
Masolino was probably the first painter to make use of a central Vanishing point in his 1423 painting St. Peter Healing a Cripple and the Raising of Tabitha.
He may have been the first artist to create oil paintings in the 1420s, rather than Jan van Eyck in the 1430s, as was previously supposed.
This very innovative and inventive painter spent many years traveling, including a trip to Hungary from September 1425 to July 1427 under the patronage of Pipo of Ozora, a mercenary captain. He was selected by Pope Martin V (Oddone Colonna) on the return of the papacy to Rome in 1420 to paint the altarpiece for his family chapel in the Basilica of Santa Maria Maggiore, and later by Cardinal Branda da Castiglione to paint the Saint Catherine Chapel in the Basilica of San Clemente, Rome.
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2019 - Wandering Vertexes...
by Francis Rousseau
