TRINITAS IN CRUCE

The cross is the triumphal symbol
with which Christ knocks on the door of heaven
and throws it open.
Then the streams of divine light burst forth.

E. Stein

Born on December 21, 1401 in San Giovanni Valdarno, Tommaso di Giovanni Cassai, known as Masaccio, soon moved to Florence, where he was already a painter in 1419. In ten years of activity (he died in Rome in 1428), he brought about a revolution that had no precedent except with Giotto. Vasari immediately recognized its power: “Before him, things could be called painted, and his were alive, true and natural.” For Masaccio, however, painting is much more than a representation of the truth: painting is thought that the image returns plastically and visibly with line and colour. He is a philosopher of morality (Sgarbi) not of science like Paolo Uccello, who was obsessed with perspective, and even less a metaphysician like Piero della Francesca. The masterpiece of his maturity is The Trinity of Santa Maria Novella. The composition presents a double movement: ascending (from the skeleton to the eternal Father) and descending (from God to the crucified Christ to the bystanders). With the first movement a sort of path towards salvation is traced. From the reflection on the vanitas of existence (see the funeral warning: “I was already what you are and what I am you will be again”), through the passage of death (skeleton), in a spirit of faith (the two lateral praying figures, kneeling and with clasped hands), and with the intercession of the saints (Mary and John, the beloved Disciple), the human spirit reaches Trinitarian peace. This ascending movement is possible because God descended towards man in Jesus. Here then is the second movement that starts from the Father, in the Spirit (dove) to reach man through Christ. Masaccio reminds us of an important theological reality: the Trinity is a dogma. Dogma is born from revelation, and revelation always assumes a certain, defined, and true space. This space is the perspective of Brunelleschi’s architecture. Masaccio’s genius reaches its peak here because it iconographically translates one of the greatest Christian truths: the cross is the historical place of the Trinitarian manifestation of God.

Commentary by b. Sandro Carotta, osb
Abbazia di Praglia (Italy)

Translation by f. Mark Hargreaves,
Prinknash Abbey