Cappella Brancacci

The first time I saw the frescoes in this tiny chapel, they literally brought tears to my eyes. In 1771, a great fire all but destroyed the church of Santa Maria del Carmine but miraculously, the Brancacci Chapel survived and with it, one of the most important fresco cycles in Florentine art. The chapel was decorated between 1425 and 1485 by three great Renaissance painters (Masolino, his pupil Masaccio and Filippino Lippi) and the frescoes became famous from the very start for their use of the new rules of perspective and their light and shade effects (chiaroscuro). The much-damaged frescoes were restored in the 1980s, and are today brilliantly vivid. The best known are probably those of Adam and Eve by Masaccio, particularly ‘The Expulsion from Paradise’.