Cappella Brancacci

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Frescos by Masaccio and Masolino da Panicale, 1424-28
Cappella Brancacci (Brancacci Chapel)
Santa Maria del Carmine
Piazza del Carmine
Florence, April 2014

“The work was left unfinished by Masolino, who took off for Hungary, and by Masaccio, who decamped to Rome (where he died in 1428). Between 1435 and 1458, when the patron Felice Brancacci fell into political disgrace, the friars changed the dedication of the Brancacci Chapel to that of ‘La Madonna del Popolo’, moving the celebrated 13th-century Madonna and Child from the high altar into the chapel. It was perhaps on this occasion that part of Masaccio’s fresco with portraits of the Brancacci patrons was destroyed, a kind of damnatio memoriae. The chapel’s decoration was completed by Filippino Lippi, who between 1481 and 1485 worked on the lower register of the left wall, finishing the Raising of the son of Theophilus and St. Peter enthroned which Masaccio had begun, and painting on his own St. Peter in prison visited by St. Paul on the adjacent pilaster. On the opposite wall he frescoed the Disputation of St. Peter and St. Paul with Simon Magus, and the Crucifixion of St. Peter, and on the pilaster St. Peter visited in prison. Between 1746 and 1748 the chapel was extensively redecorated: Vincenzo Meucci frescoed the ceiling with the Virgin consigning the Scapular to St. Simon Stock, thus destroying Masolino’s Evangelists. At the same time the lunettes of the Shipwreck of the Apostles and the Calling of the Apostles were painted over. ” (Brancacci Chapel, The Museums of Florence)