Masaccio Holy Trinity

Monsantio also famously creates the Holy Trinity, and this is in Santa Maria Novella. We have visited this church before. We will be back to it again. And this is the premier example of the use of math in depicting space. The barrel vault in the background is reminiscent of a Roman triumphal arch. In fact, it's almost like we're looking inside the arch. And what we're seeing in the image is the Virgin and Saint John appear on either side of the crucifix. God the Father remains behind the cross, presenting it to the worshippers, reminding the worshippers of the sacrifice that's being made. The Holy Spirit appears between God's head and Christ's, and in this close-up you can see that it's represented by a white dove with those gold lines shining down. The patrons, Lorenzo Lenzi and his wife, kneel just outside the vault. And beneath it, a skeleton is painted with the inscription, I was once what you are and what I am you will become. Of course, the inscription is in Latin, but you get the idea. So let's go through a couple of things. First of all, in the last couple of paintings, I've talked about vanishing point, I've talked about perspective a little bit, and here we're going to see something very, very similar. The vanishing point has been manipulated here, and it is at the foot of the cross, pulling the eye to the cross, where it remains on this primarily vertical trajectory, moving up and down from that central point. Now that vanishing point happens to be roughly, and the vanishing point marked in red here, is roughly at eye level, or eye level at the time, it's about five feet high. And this allows the tomb, the skeleton, to appear below the viewer with the trinity above. The idea being, you have the spiritual above, mimicking the heavens, and the terrestrial below. The idea that we will all die, everything earthly will come to an end. This adjustment of the pictured space to the viewer's perspective would develop further to the Renaissance, sorry, in the Renaissance, and the Baroque, and to the person viewing it, it would be particularly powerful. It would be a reminder of the spiritual elements that we need to focus on, rather than the material things that will go away upon our death. After all, if you have a gold-plated toilet, it's really tricky to get it to heaven. But, if you give that up, if you focus on the spiritual, then you will find eternal peace. Or at least, that's the idea that's being presented here in Masaccio's work, and it's not even being presented obviously. This is all being done subconsciously by that manipulation of the vanishing point. It makes it very poignant, and particularly powerful. Now there's one other thing that happens. We see a pyramidal composition at the top, and this leads the viewer from the despair of death to the hope of eternal life. You are automatically drawn up the image. Your eye comes in at that vanishing point, but will always go to Jesus, to God, to Mary and Saint John, before going back down and looking at the skeleton, looking at the tomb. So you sit there and you say, there's no way that that's really what I'm doing. But it is. At a subconscious level, you're just bouncing up and down this image, looking at it over and over and taking in this message. Now also keep in mind, once again, context comes into play. If you have been raised in a fairly secular home in the 21st century, of course you're going to look at it differently than someone who's been raised in a Christian household of the 15th century, which would be far more conservative and far more familiar with the elements that you're seeing here.