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(piano playing)
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Dr. Zucker: In the Brancacci
Chapel in Santa Maria del Carmine
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just to the left of Masaccio's
great painting the Tribute of Money
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is another painting by Masaccio,
the Expulsion from Eden.
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Dr. Harris: The fresco's in
this Chapel all tell the story
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of the life of St. Peter
except for the expulsion.
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We could ask what is the
Expulsion doing here?
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This is the story of Adam and Eve
being expelled from the Garden of Eden.
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They've eaten the forbidden
fruit from the tree of knowledge
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and God has discovered that transgression
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and has banished them from Eden
and we see a foreshortened Angel.
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Dr. Zucker: That's an armed Angel,
it looks like the Marshall to me.
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Dr. Harris: Chasing them
out of the Garden of Eden.
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Dr. Zucker: Their being evicted.
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Dr. Harris: What follows from this
is that mankind knows then and ...
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Dr. Zucker: And death.
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Dr. Harris: Exactly.
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This is the moment from
which everything else comes
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in terms of Catholic
understanding of man's destiny.
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Dr. Zucker: That's right because
it is from this fall from
grace that Christ is required.
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Dr. Harris: It makes Christ's
coming necessary to redeem us,
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but it also makes necessary the
Church that St. Peter found.
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Sometimes Mary and Christ are
seen as the second Adam and Eve.
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Adam and Eve who caused the fall into sin
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and Mary and Christ who
make possible salvation.
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Dr. Zucker: That idea is
something that everybody in this
church would be familiar with.
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I love the architecture
on the extreme left,
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the gate of Heaven itself,
that they've just left,
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reminds me of the
indebtedness that Masaccio has
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to people like Giotto in
the previous century where
architecture is sometimes used,
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simply as a foil, as a kind of stage set.
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Dr. Harris: There's so much emotion.
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Dr. Zucker: I'm especially interested
in the contrast of emotion.
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Adam is covering his face, there is a kind
of shame and a real awareness of his sin.
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His body is exposed to us and
actually that's interesting.
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This whole Chapel was
fairly recently cleaned
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and for a very long time there was
a vine that covered up his genitals.
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Dr. Harris: That someone
had painted over it.
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Dr. Zucker: That's right, long after.
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But we've been restored to the
original nudity that Masaccio gave us,
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which is absolutely era appropriate,
but he's not covering his body,
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he's covering his face; it's a
kind of internal sense of guilt.
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Whereas Eve seems to have
been taken directly from the
Ancient classical prototype
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of the modest Venus.
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She's shown in a beautiful
contrapposto covering herself,
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but it's her shame which seems more
physical, but because her face is exposed
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we can see the real pain that
she expresses through it.
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Dr. Harris: You said beautiful
contrapposto, but I think about
contrapposto as a standing,
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relaxed pose and these
figures are in motion.
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Dr. Zucker: They are,
they're moving forward.
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Dr. Harris: Masaccio is first
artist in a very long time
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to attempt to paint the
human body naturalistically.
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Dr. Zucker: Yup.
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Dr. Harris: And as a result he hasn't
quite gotten all of it perfectly.
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Dr. Zucker: No, there's
some awkward passages there.
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Dr. Harris: Yeah, Adam's arms
are a little bit too short,
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Eve's left arm is a little bit too long.
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Given that Masaccio's the first
artist to really attempt this
naturalism in 1,000 years,
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some of that is to be forgiven.
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Dr. Zucker: I have to say that I
think he's done an extraordinary job.
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If you look at Adam's
abdomen, for example,
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it is really beautifully rendered.
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There is a physicality here,
there's a sense of weight
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and there's a sense of musculature that I
can't remember seeing in earlier painting.
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Dr. Harris: Masaccio's employing
modeling very clearly from light to dark.
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He's so interested in modeling
because that's what makes the forms
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appear three dimensional and also
that foreshortened Angel is helping
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to create a sense of space
for the figures to exist in,
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even though, as you pointed out, that
architecture is more symbolic than real.
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Dr. Zucker: Yeah, it's just
totally schematic isn't it?
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Dr. Harris: Yeah.
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Dr. Zucker: A couple of changes
that are probably worth noting.
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One is that you can
really see the giornata.
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You can see that Adam was
painted separately from Eve
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and you can see the darker
blue and back of Adam
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that really highlight those
different patches of plaster.
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Dr. Harris: Those were not
differentiatable in the 15th Century.
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Dr. Zucker: Right, no
that's changed over time.
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Dr. Harris: By giornata you
mean that the different days,
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the different parts of the
fresco were painted in?
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Dr. Zucker: Right,
giornata means a days work.
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Dr. Harris: This is buon fresco, which
means that it was painted onto wet plaster
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and so an artist could only
do a small section at a time
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because the plaster would otherwise dry.
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Dr. Zucker: Other changes that
have taken place in the painting
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that I think are worth noting are
that the sword and the rays of light
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that are emanating from Eden are now
black, but that's oxidized silver
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and it would have been
very shiny initially.
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I think it's importantalso to
note that the Expulsion is the
first scene that we look at
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as we enter into this Chapel, they
literally walk into this story.
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Almost like a panel in the cartoon it
is leading our eye from left to right
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so that we can read through
this story of St. Peter.
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(piano playing)
