Pisa Altarpiece (1426)

The altar Masaccio painted for Santa Maria del Carmine, the Carmelite church in Pisa, is his best-documented work; all payments were recorded and his patron is known. Stylistically it is an early work, although the painter died at the age of twenty-seven, one year after the altarpiece was finished.

The altarpiece was confined within an old-fashioned format: a richly carved, conservative Gothic retable, with little images of saints set into the frame, one on top of the other. The great central Madonna and Child with Angels is in the National Gallery, London, the three predella panels and the four little saint from the frame are in the Staatliche Museen, Berlin. The panels from the top representing St Andrew and St Paul are in the Getty Museum, Malibu, and the in the Museo Nazionale, Pisa, respectively. The centrally placed, uppermost Crucifixion is in the Museo Nazionale di Capodimonte, Naples.