Masaccio frescoed it in the 1420s and died at twenty-six. The Expulsion from the Garden — Adam and Eve walking out howling — is the moment painted figures start having weight, shadow and grief. Michelangelo came here to copy them, and got his nose broken in the chapel by another student who had had enough of him.
The rest of the church burned in 1771 and this chapel survived, which is why it sits inside an otherwise eighteenth-century interior.
⚠️ Entry is capped and often timed, because it is a small room and the frescoes are fragile.
⭐ Ten minutes' walk from the Ponte Vecchio, and one of the genuinely important rooms in the history of art.
The Brancacci Chapel in pictures
