In the second edition of The Lives of the Most Famous Painters, George Vasari attributes to Masaccio the altar image he saw in the Church of Maria Maria Maggiore in Rome. In the 17th century, this image was removed from the church, and soon it was lost. That was a two-way triptych. In 1950, in one private collection in England, two panels of this image were discovered and immediately acquired by the London National Gallery.
The one depicts Saint Jerome and John the Baptist, and the second depicts Saint Liberius and Matthew. The then director of the National Gallery announced that, in his opinion, only the panel with the image of Saint Jerome belonged to Masaccio’s brush, while Mazolino was the author of the second panel.
The panels in question are really made in a different manner, and the figures of St. Jerome and John the Baptist are written much more expressively and more skillfully than the figure of St. Matthew. Four more panels of this altar image are known – two of them are in Naples and two in Philadelphia. They are credited with Mazolino. It is possible that work on the creation of the altar image was begun by Masaccio, and after his death Mazolino continued and was completed.
(1 votes, average: 5.00 out of 5)