This semester I am taking an art history course that starts in Italy in the 14th century. This time period has a lot of religious pieces and being Roman Catholic a lot of them seem very powerful to me. One that my professor told us about is called the Holy Trinity by Masaccio. This piece is 22 feet tall and 10 feet wide. It shows Jesus on the cross with Mary and John at the bottom. God and a dove, the Holy Spirit, are shown behind Jesus’ head. The audience, or us, would view this piece from the very bottom where the skeleton is. It towers over the audience and leaves people in a state of awe. This piece shows Christ as the Savior on the cross. Mary, his mother, is shown looking at the audience.
This piece leaves the audience in a sense of awe and tremendum. Tremendum is that feeling that there is something greater than them. It can be best described as walking into a massive cathedral and feeling it engulf you. This piece is so large and shows such a touching scene from the story of Jesus. People look at this piece and think “He did that for me.” This feeling is one that I have experienced just in seeing and hearing about this fresco, I can only imagine seeing it in real life.
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