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4 unusual facts about Brancacci Chapel


Brancacci Chapel

In the left lunette, destroyed in 1746-1748, Masolino had painted the Calling of Peter and Andrew, or Vocation, known thanks to some indications by past witnesses such as Vasari, Bocchi and Baldinucci.

Roberto Longhi first identified an image of this lost fresco in a later drawing, which does not conform to the lunette's upper curvature, but appears today as a very probable hypothesis.

The whole appears to be related to the establishment of the Catasto, the first income tax in Florence, in the time the painting was being executed.

Moreover, the commissioning patron's exile in 1436 hindered any possibility of the frescos completion by other artists; in fact, it is probable that some parts already painted by Masaccio were removed as a sort of damnatio memoriae, because of their portraiture of the Brancacci family members.



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