Brancacci Chapel

Step out of the Florentine sun and the air changes at once. It is cooler here, and quieter, with the faint smell of old stone and candle wax. Your eyes need a moment to adjust. Then the walls come forward, panel by panel, in soft blues, earthy reds and pale gold. You are standing in a small family chapel. It is only a few paces across, yet it holds one of the most important turning points in the story of European painting.

This chapel sits inside the church of Santa Maria del Carmine, in the Oltrarno. That is the neighbourhood on the far side of the Arno river from the cathedral. The Oltrarno has long been a district of workshops, artisans and small piazzas, and much of that character remains. The church facade outside is plain and unfinished, almost severe. Nothing about it prepares you for what waits in this corner of the right transept.

The chapel takes its name from the Brancacci family. In the 1420s, Felice Brancacci, a wealthy silk merchant and diplomat, paid for the walls to be covered in frescoes. A fresco is painting done on wet plaster. The pigment binds into the wall as it dries, so the artist must work fast, one fresh patch each day. The subject he chose was the life of Saint Peter, the fisherman who became the first leader of the Church.

Two painters began the work together. The older one was Masolino, an accomplished artist with a graceful, elegant style. The younger was Masaccio, still in his early twenties. They worked side by side, sometimes on the same wall. Yet their styles are very different. Once you learn to tell them apart, the chapel becomes a kind of conversation between two ways of seeing the world.

Look first at the narrow panels on either side of the entrance arch. On one side, Masolino painted Adam and Eve in the garden, just before the fall. They are calm, slender and composed. Opposite them, Masaccio painted the same couple being driven out of Paradise. The difference is immediate. Eve throws back her head with her mouth open in a cry. Adam covers his face with his hands. These are not symbols. They are two frightened human beings.

Here is a detail many visitors miss. For about three centuries, Adam and Eve were not fully visible. In a later and more prudish age, painted leaves were added to cover them. A major restoration in the 1980s removed those additions, along with layers of soot and old varnish. The cleaning also brought back the original colours, which had been hidden under centuries of grime. What you see today is far closer to what fifteenth-century Florentines saw.

Now find the wide scene on the upper left wall, known as the Tribute Money. A tax collector demands payment. Christ, at the centre, tells Peter to find a coin in the mouth of a fish. On the left, Peter crouches at the water's edge to take it. On the right, he hands the coin over. Three moments of one story appear inside a single landscape. Notice how solid the figures look, like statues wrapped in heavy cloth.

And here is the second surprise. Look at the shadows in Masaccio's scenes. They fall as if the light comes from one direction — from the real window of this chapel. Masaccio painted his figures as though they stood in the same light as you. He also used perspective, the new mathematical method for showing depth that his friend Brunelleschi had been exploring. For the first time, painted space and real space began to feel like one room.

Then the story stops. In the late 1420s, Masaccio left for Rome, and he died there very young, in his late twenties. Masolino had already moved on to other commissions. A few years later, Felice Brancacci himself fell into political trouble. He opposed the rising Medici family and was sent into exile in the 1430s. The chapel stood unfinished for roughly half a century, with parts of its walls left bare.

In the 1480s, the painter Filippino Lippi was asked to complete the cycle. He was the son of Fra Filippo Lippi, himself a painter. Filippino worked carefully to blend his scenes with the older ones, so the joins are hard to spot. Look at the lower register of the walls. Some scenes there were begun by Masaccio and finished by Lippi. A tradition holds that several faces in these panels are portraits of real Florentines of the time, perhaps including the artists themselves.

For generations after, young painters came here to learn. They stood where you stand and copied the figures into their sketchbooks. A young Michelangelo was among them. According to a well-known story, another student, Pietro Torrigiano, grew angry at Michelangelo's teasing during one of these sessions. He punched him in the face and broke his nose. Whether every detail is true, the tale shows how central this little room was to artists in training.

The chapel also had a lucky escape. In the eighteenth century, a serious fire swept through much of the church of Santa Maria del Carmine. Large parts of the interior had to be rebuilt afterwards. The Brancacci frescoes survived, though smoke darkened them. That survival is part of why the restoration of the 1980s mattered so much. It returned colour to walls that had come very close to being lost.

Before you go, give yourself one quiet minute. Stand back towards the centre of the chapel and let your eyes move slowly around all three walls. Try to sort the hands: Masolino's soft elegance, Masaccio's weight and shadow, Lippi's careful finish. Then look once more at Eve, crying out at the edge of the arch. As you step back into the Oltrarno light, notice the shadows the sun throws across the piazza — the same plain, honest light Masaccio chose to paint.