Through looking at Masaccio’s The Tribute Money, we had managed to examine some influence of earlier artists such as Donatello and Brunelleschi on the usage of continuous narrative and different perspective-building techniques such as linear perspective as well as atmospheric rendering of fading colors the further the sceneries are from the focus of the work, thus proving that by learning from their predecessors, the younger generation of Italian artists was able to create works that both live up to their time’s standards and even go further than that, creating an identity and style for themselves. Not only was this narrative told in a completely unexpected and surprisingly effective sequence (not by a then-standardized left-to-right order, this was done using gestures of the most prominent characters (Christ and St. Peter) to guide the viewers as the story unfolds.
This is made even more poignant as we go through his other works in the Brancacci Chapel, including Expulsion from the Garden of Eden, wherein the artist showcases his exceptional ability of depicting different vivid, different and visceral emotions, as well as using these emotions as a gateway to tell the deeper story within the frame. Despite borrowing the figure’s composition from an ancient Roman original, Masaccio managed to bring in his own artistry, through the way in which he rendered the human body as well as what surrounds it.
The same could be said about Donatello’s David, which obviously use elements of the ancient Greek masters including the contrapposto composition as well as the nudity of the figure, which was used as a tool to express something beyond its own exterior image, an idea of Florentine’s civic virtues that aligns with the original intention of the commissioners themselves – the then in-charge Medici family.