Lorenzo Ghiberti, Gates of Paradise (East Doors), Baptistry of San Giovanni, Florence, 1425–52
Florence Baptistery, constructed between 1059 and 1128 -renowned for its three sets of bronze doors with relief sculptures (south doors created by Andrea Pisano; north and east doors by Lorenzo Ghiberti) Figure from the 1804 edition of De Pictura (1435) of Leon Battista Alberti, showing the vanishing point
Alberti’s treatise was the first surviving European treatise on painting. Book I is a geometry of perspective. Book II describes the good painting. Book III discusses the education and life-style of the artist “Masaccio in painting “Masaccio was a very expressed the likeness of good imitator of everything in nature so well nature, with great and that with our eyes we seemed comprehensive to see not the images of rilievo, a good things but things componitore and puro, themselves.” without ornato, because he devoted himself only to the Alamanno Rinuccini, 1472 imitation of truth and to the rilievo of his figures.”
Cristoforo Landino, 1481
Masaccio, The Holy Trinity, 1427. Santa Maria Novella Church, Florence Interior of the Brancacci Chapel, Church of Santa Maria del Carmine, Florence. Frescoes by Masaccio and Masolino (c. 1423–28) and Filippino Lippi (c. 1482–84)
Masaccio. Tribute Money, fresco in the Brancacci Chapel, c. 1427. (2.3x 6 m) “And since he had excellent judgment, he reflected that all the figures that did not stand firmly with their feet in foreshortening on the level, but stood on tip-toe, were lacking in all goodness of manner in the essential points, and that those who make them thus show that they do not understand foreshortening.”
Vasari, Lives of Artists Raphael, Madonna of the Meadows, 1505–6, The Annunciation to the Shepherds, Cotton Kunsthistorisches Museum, Vienna MS Caligula A VII/1, fol. 5r, 12th century
“..And to keep you informed, I send a drawing of how the triptych is made of wood, and with its height and breadth. Out of friendship to you I do not want to take more than the labor costs of 100 florins for his: I ask no more….”
Filippo Lippi, Sketch of an Altarpiece, 1457. Florence, Archivio di Stato (Med. Av. Pr., VI, no. 258) “They[paintings] serve the glory of God, the honor of the city, and the commemoration of myself.”
Giovanni Ruccellai Gentile da Fabriano, Adoration of the Magi, 1423
Michelangelo Buonarroti, Sonnet “To Giovanni da Pistoia” and caricature on his painting the Sistine Ceiling. Casa Buonarroti, Florence Archivio Buanarroti (XIII, fol. 111) I've already grown a goiter from this torture, hunched up here like a cat in Lombardy (or anywhere else where the stagnant water's poison). My stomach's squashed under my chin, my beard's pointing at heaven, my brain's crushed in a casket, my breast twists like a harpy's. My brush, above me all the time, dribbles paint so my face makes a fine floor for droppings!
My haunches are grinding into my guts, my poor ass strains to work as a counterweight, every gesture I make is blind and aimless. My skin hangs loose below me, my spine's all knotted from folding over itself. I'm bent taut as a Syrian bow.
Because I'm stuck like this, my thoughts are crazy, perfidious tripe: anyone shoots badly through a crooked blowpipe.
My painting is dead. Defend it for me, Giovanni, protect my honor. I am not in the right place—I am not a painter.