Wimberly 1 Alexandra Wimberly Professor Short HCC #29101 2 December 2011 One Way or Another: Perspective in The Holy

Trinity On the wall of the Dominic church of Santa Maria Novella, Masaccios The Holy Trinity stares down at passing worshipers from an illusionary alcove. The Holy Trinity is a painting by Masaccio from the Renaissance period; it portrays Christ on the cross with the Holy Ghost and God arranged behind him. Below and before him, the Virgin Mary and John the Evangelist stand just in front of the base of his cross, heads almost level with his feet. In front of them and to the sides, two unnamed donors from the Renaissance period kneel just above the horizon line. Directly below Christs cross, a skeleton lies in a sarcophagus engraved with the Latin phrase meaning I once was what you are, and what I am you will become. Masaccio painted the fresco in 1427 under the influence of Renaissance perspective, a perspective that transformed the portrayal of religious art: For the first time, artists created isotropic space and employed a vanishing point so that the finiteness of the picture makes perceptible the infiniteness and continuity of the space (Panofsky 192). This idea of duality is a recurring motif in various aspects of The Holy Trinity as well as in Renaissance art as a whole: Panofsky suggests that Renaissance perspective simultaneously creates distance and abolishes this distance by drawing this world of thingsinto the eye (196). By forcing the viewer to internalize the image in his minds eye and interpret it as a three-dimensional image, Renaissance artists like Masaccio use perspective to expand [the] human consciousness into a vessel for the divine and portray divinity in a way that humans can comprehend (Panofsky 198). Masaccio uses Renaissance

Wimberly 2 perspective and the physical placement of both the figures in the painting and the fresco itself to warn viewers that they must make a conscious decision between salvation through Christ and death through impiety. The placement of the vanishing point in The Holy Trinity divides the painting to imply a choice between two distinct possibilities: Salvation and death. Masaccio placed all of the figures except the skeleton above the horizon line, found by drawing a horizontal line through the vanishing point. The Trinity is the highest grouping of figures in the painting, just as it is the only divine characterall the other characters are entirely mortal. Below the Trinity, John the Evangelist and the Virgin Mary represent the divinely touched: While they are not in themselves divine, they are blessed through their close association with Jesus during His mortal life. At the lowest part of the paintings upper portion, the donors kneel on the very edge of the horizon line. These are the mortals who have earned blessedness through devotion to Jesus and the Christian Trinity. All of the characters above the vanishing point are blessed, but the lone character below the vanishing point is not. The skeleton lies prone at the base of the painting, unlike the other upright figureseven the Holy Ghost is oriented in a vertical manner. The more obvious contrast, however, is the lack of life: Every mortal character situated above the vanishing point will find salvation and life after death because they accept Christs sacrifice for their sins and show devotion to His church, but the skeleton represents those who dont find life in Christ. The Latin engraving is a warning for the viewer: The dead were once mortal like the viewer, but failure to choose devotion to Christ and the church, denoted in the painting by remaining below the vanishing point, results in a similarly doomed fate. In terms of depth, Masaccio used the illusionary isotropic space to emphasize how difficult it is for the average viewer to attain the divine blessing and the difference between the

Wimberly 3 two paths toward blessedness and death. The farthest figure is God, who stands behind the Holy Ghost and Jesus. Jesus is the closest of the divine figures, emphasizing the Christian dogma that Christ is the path to God. In front of Him, Mary and John are again portrayed as closer to God than the donors who show devotion to God and the Church with their donations and offerings. The skeleton is located directly beneath the donors, representing the fate of the nonbelievers and the faithless: Death, with no hope for an eternal afterlife in Heaven. The structure of the painting and the use of isotropic space create another subject even farther from the divine Holy Trinity: The viewer stands at the division between the upper and lower portions of the painting, suggesting that he has not yet made the decision to go toward Christ and blessedness or the skeleton and death. From the viewers perspective, Christ is much farther away than the skeleton, suggesting that death is much easier to attain; however, the use of dull and gloomy colors in the lower portion contrasting with Christs pale form and the brighter coloring in the upper portion make salvation seem more attractive, even disregarding the obvious preference of life over death. While the image implies that we will never achieve divinity, it reminds us that we are at the crossroads between salvation and death and urges us to accept Christs blessing. There is one exception to the otherwise-uniform isotropic space in the image: The Holy Trinity creates a different perspective to set it apart and above the rest of the image. From the perspective of the rest of the image, the viewer should see more of the underside of Christs body, not the almost head-on view that Masaccio created. Compared to the other figures, Christ is tilted forward slightly so that the viewer can see Him more completely. This serves several purposes. Firstly, it emphasizes Christs role in human salvation: Christ is a divine being, but He became mortal so that He could die for our sins and give us a path to salvation. Christ exists for our divine benefit, so Masaccio adjusted the image to present Christ to us. Secondly, the creation

Wimberly 4 of another dimension of space that doesnt conform to the rest of the image suggests that despite Jesus mortal body He is still divine and beyond our mortal plane. Therefore, He and the rest of the Trinity are in a section of isotropic space that doesnt conform to our understanding of reality. The divine is beyond human comprehension, so our laws of physics dont apply to the Trinity. Finally, just as the painting itself is a rising scale of blessedness with the top being true divinity and the bottom being death, the shifted perspective forces us to look up at Christ and see the Trinity looking down at us, placing the Trinity in a superior position. When looking specifically at the shifted perspective in Christ, the placement of that secondary vanishing point emphasizes the eternal promise of salvation through Christ. The edges of the cross point to a vanishing point just around Christs toes. Christ and the vanishing point share a duality in their hypostatic natures: Just as the vanishing point is both finite and infinite, Christ is both human and divine. Placing the vanishing point on the lower portion of Christs body instead of the heart of the Trinity sets Christ apart from the Holy Ghost and God by reminding us of His specific role as the bridge between the human and the divine. Further, while the vanishing point visually represents infinite space in paintings, it can also suggest eternal time. This implies that Christs sacrifice is the one path for salvation and blessedness in all of time, but it also suggests that the potential for salvation from Christs sacrifice is universal to all humanity, one of the central doctrines of Christianity. As a fresco painted directly onto the wall of the church, The Holy Trinity was intended as a permanent fixture in its current position; therefore, the positioning is important for understanding its less-obvious subthemes. The height and location of the fresco suggest that it may have been used as an altar for the Eucharist. That means that a priest would have placed a wafer into the Eucharist, which would have been placed directly in front of the vanishing point,

Wimberly 5 where it would be transformed into the flesh of Christ for Mass. Christians would then eat that wafer-flesh to receive His blessing, revisiting the motif of dual natures: The wafer is undeniably a wafer, but the power of faith transubstantiates it into a direct representation of Christs body so that it simultaneously consists of both the mundane and divine. If the painting were used as an altar for the Eucharist, however, a table would have been placed in front of the fresco at approximately the height of the vanishing point. The skeleton and its tomb would have been hidden from view, seemingly negating the purpose of painting the bottom half of the image at all. However, the lower portion of the fresco is a warning in more ways than previously stated: It was a warning against impiety, yes, but it was also a warning that would only be seen if the altar were removed. The only way to see the skeleton would be to stop seeking Christs blessing through the Eucharist; accordingly, the revealed image suggests that those who turn away from Christs blessing will be subject to the same eternal death as the skeleton. At one point the fresco was actually split in half along the horizon line, and the top half was moved to a different location. This separated the promise of salvation from the threat of death and undermined Masaccios intention; it was eventually restored to its original place and form. Christians believe that Jesus Christ is the bridge between the mortal plane and the divine: They claim that mankind can find neither blessedness nor salvation without accepting His sacrifice at the cross. According to Christian doctrine, Christ died to atone for all of humanitys sins; however, the only way to benefit from His death is to show faith and devotion to Him. Masaccios The Holy Trinity uses a visual argument to convince viewers to choose piety and devotion to the Trinity through a subtle interaction of subthemes, all of which ultimately lead to the decision: Salvation or death? Unlike Christ, the vanishing point, and the Eucharists wafer,

Wimberly 6 humans cannot be of two opposing states at once; Masaccio urges us to accept Christs blessing rather than fall into death.

Wimberly 7 Works Cited Masaccio. The Holy Trinity. 1472. Dominican Church of Santa Maria Novella. Florence. Panofsky, Erwin. Perspective as Symbolic Form. Humanities Core Course Guide and Reader. Ed. David T. Pan. Boston: Pearson, 2010. 190-198. Print.

Acknowledgements: Editing for first draft: Gretchen Short, Sandra Sok, Erica Bloom. Editing for final draft: Kristianna Sarkan.