The Concise Oxford Dictionary of Art and Artists (299 page)

(1889–1972).
Belgian
Expressionist
painter and print-maker, best known for his
romans in beelden
(novels in pictures), which are series of woodcuts telling a story without a text.

 
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Maso di Banco
(active second quarter of the 14th cent.).

Florentine painter. Almost nothing is known of his career (
Vasari
does not mention him), but he is regarded as the greatest of
Giotto's
followers on the strength of
Ghiberti's
testimony that he was the painter of the frescos illustrating the legend of St Sylvester in the Bardi Chapel of Sta Croce, Florence. The stately figures here are sometimes even more massive than Giotto's and the lucid and beautifully coloured compositions are of almost geometric clarity (although it has been argued that some of the effect of monumental simplicity may be due to restoration). On stylistic grounds other works have been attributed to Maso, including panels in Budapest (Mus. of Fine Arts), Chantilly (Musée Condé), and New York (Brooklyn Mus. and Met. Mus.).

 
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(
c.
1383–1447?).
Italian painter. He is generally considered to be a member of the Florentine School, but he travelled a good deal and even went to Hungary. His career is closely linked to that of
Masaccio
, but the exact nature of the association remains ill-defined. The tradition that he was Masaccio's master is now dismissed, for he became a guild member in Florence only in 1423 (a year after Masaccio) and although he was appreciably the older man it was he who was influenced by Masaccio rather than the other way round. They are thought to have collaborated on
The Madonna and Child with St Anne
(Uffizi, Florence,
c.
1425), but the major undertaking on which they worked together was the decoration of the Brancacci Chapel of Sta Maria del Carmine in Florence. Masolino's style was softer than Masaccio's and there is a fair measure of agreement about the division of hands. After Masaccio's death Masolino reverted to the more decorative style he had practised earlier in his career. At his best he was a painter of great distinction, his masterpiece perhaps being the fresco of the
Baptism of Christ
(
c.
1435) in the Baptistery at Castiglione d'Olona, near Como, a graceful and lyrical work that is a world away from Masaccio's
Baptism of the Neophytes
in the Brancacci Chapel.

 
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(1896–1987).
French painter, engraver, sculptor, stage designer, and writer, one of the leading figures of
Surrealism
. He was severely wounded in the First World War and deeply scarred emotionally. His pessimism was accompanied by a profound and troubled curiosity about the nature and destiny of man and an obscure belief in the mysterious unity of the universe, which he devoted the whole of his artistic activity to penetrating and expressing. In the early 1920s he was influenced by
Cubism
, but in 1924 he joined the Surrealist movement and remained a member until 1929, when he left in protest against
Breton's
authoritarian leadership. His work belonged to the spontaneous, expressive, semi-abstract variety of Surrealism, and included experiments with automatic drawings (see
AUTOMATISM
), chance effects, and the incorporation of sand in his paintings. Themes of metamorphosis, violence, psychic pain, and eroticism dominated his work. In 1934–6 he lived in Spain until the Civil War drove him back to France and in 1941–5 he took refuge from the Second World War in the USA. There his work formed a link between Surrealism and
Abstract Expressionism
. In 1945 he returned to France and two years later settled at Aix-en-Provence, where he concentrated on landscape painting, achieving something of the spiritual rapport with nature seen in some Chinese paintings.

 
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(1465/6–1530).
Netherlandish painter. He was born at Louvain but worked in Antwerp, where he became the leading painter of his day. Although he became a master in the guild there in 1491, his early career is obscure and his first dated works are the altarpiece of
St Anne
(Musées Royaux, Brussels, 1507–9) and the
Lamentation
(Musée Royal, Antwerp, 1508–11). Massys continued the tradition of the great masters of 15th-cent. Netherlandish art, but he was also clearly aware of Italian art (particularly the work of
Leonardo
) and may well have crossed the Alps at some point in his career. In his exquisite
Madonna and Child with Angels
(Courtauld Inst., London), for example, the
iconographic
type of the standing Virgin goes back to Jan van
Eyck
, but the
putti
holding a garland reveal
Renaissance
influence. The landscape backgrounds of some of his religious works were possibly done by
Patenier
. Massys also painted portraits and
genre
scenes. The satirical quality in his pictures of bankers, tax-collectors, and avaricious merchants has been linked with the writings of the great humanist Erasmus. Certainly the two met, for Massys painted a pair of portraits of Erasmus (Gal. Naz., Rome) and Petrus Egidius (Earl of Radnor Coll., Longford Castle, Wiltshire) as a gift for Sir Thomas More in 1517. They instituted a new type—the scholar in his study—that influenced
Holbein
among others. Massys had two painter sons,
Jan
and
Cornelis
.

 
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