Location:
Exhibitions/Events
2004 – Mnemonic/Just for One Moment I thought I was Masaccio
Maraviglia, Pescia, Tuscany (collaboration with Anne Grebby)
2008 – Mnemonic/Just for One Moment I thought I was Masaccio
Lanchester Gallery, Coventry University (collaboration with Anne Grebby)
2009 – Just for one last time, he thought he was Masaccio
Alsager Arts Centre
Date:
2004-2009
Most of the action associated with Just for one moment he thought he was Masaccio (also referred to a Mnemonic or The Mnemonic Mirror) took place in Tuscany. The location was a 13th century coach-house in the old town of Pescia a small market town situated between Pisa and Florence. The coach-house was called Maraviglia and next door to the town’s duomo and about 200 metres from the Capella di San Francesco.
Just for one moment he thought he was Masaccio is made up of a body of work derived from a story that emerged during visits to Pescia. More than a story, more a legend or local myth that connects this rather sleepy Tuscan market town with some of the key artists and thinkers from Quatroccento Florence. There are two locations in this story. The first is the Capella di San Francesco, more specifically the Capella Cardini which runs to the left of the main nave of the Capella. Then there is the space directly in front of Masaccio’s La Trinita in the Basilica of Santa Maria Novella, with the pulpit designed by Brunalleschi immediately behind and his carving of the Crucifixion away to the right. These locations are connected through the main character in the story – Andrea Cavalcanti who was responsible for the design of Capella Cardini in Pescia in 1454, and the final execution of Brunalleschi’s design for the Santa Maria pulpit in 1448. Andrea Cavalcanti di Lazzaro was also known as Il Buggiano – the liar – and was Brunalleschi’s adopted son and assistant. The hero of the story – Masaccio – painted the Trinity between 1425 and 1427 and died a year later in 1428. Legend has it that he was poisoned by a jealous artist.
… at the high eastern door those entering the church found themselves across the nave from Masaccio’s fresco.The innovative Brunalleschian architecture and the perspective originally must have set this image off from the older decoration on the west wall creating the illusion of a truly deep, modern chapel (Vasari says the wall appeared to cut through at this point). The total effect would have been similar to what Brunalleschi’s adoptive son Buggiano executed in actual architecture twenty years later in the church of San Francesco, Pescia. And, as at Pescia, the real altar that stood before Masaccios fresco was in all likelihood a table altar detached from the wall and open underneath so that visitors entering from the cemetery could see the painted skeleton through the colonettes.
Timothy Verdon (2003) Masaccio’s Trinity: Theological, Social and Civic Meanings in The Cambridge Companion to Masaccio ed. Diane Cole Ahl
See also Selected Writings: For the very last time he thought he was Masaccio – A comparative study of a chapel and a fresco from the Quattrocento (2010)
