Painting Analysis: The Holy Trinity (1427)

The Holy Trinity(1427), is a fresco created by the Early Italian Renaissance painter Masaccio. It is placed in the church of Santa Maria Novella, in Florence. I chose this artwork as it is a perfect example of a painting that applies Alberti's advices; it encompasses a set of techniques by the usage of perspective and histora that follow Alberti's ideas that he discussed in his book On Painting.

The Holy Trinity, Masaccio 1427

The perspective plays a vital role in creating meaning in this painting. To start with, Masaccio recreated a 3 dimensional physical reality on a flat surface. This strategy can be obtained through perfect observation of nature as well as studying geometry and mathematics. This is extremely important to Alberti as he stated in On Painting "I want the painter as far as he is able, to be learned in all the liberal arts, but I wish him above all to have a good knowledge in geometry." (88) To apply linear perspective, one should imagine the painting as an "open window" then draws imaginary lines to represent the horizon, this helps in connecting the spectator's eye to a point in the distance. To illustrate, if we traced the straight imaginary lines of The Holy Trinity, the vanishing point would be visible, which is on the surface that the donors are standing on. This vanishing point, can help in creating an illusion and accuracy.

Moreover, this painting has a narrative, functioning as story. This emphasizes on Alberti's idea of historia. "A 'historia' you can justifiably praise and admire will be one that reveals itself to be so charming and attractive as to hold the eye of the learned and unlearned spectator for a long while with a certain sense of pleasure and emotion."(75) The characters of the story are arranged in an appealing position, as there are enough subjects to make the painting interesting but not so many that the work looks crowded. The subjects in the paintings include Christ, God the Father, the Holy spirit Mary, John and the Donors. All of them occupy their own dimensional space except for God. This strategy makes the spectators experience a feeling of mortality and distance from God. Also, the viewers are closest to the skeleton as it functions a reminder that we a mortal and taken away by God. The message written next to the skeleton says "What you are, I once was. What I am, you will be." In addition, by directly facing the spectators, Mary helps in creating an emotional connection with them, which is fundamental in order to have a good histora.

All in all, The Holy Trinity(1427) is a masterpiece and by looking at its details we can find many characteristics that imitate Alberti's ideas. Even though I only focused on perspective and histroa, many more concepts can be found. This shows how important The Renaissance art is, as the artists have discovered a whole new voice in painting.