Masaccio (140, San Giovanni Valdarno, 1427)

The first great painter of the Italian Renaissance, whose application of scientific perspective and depiction of natural lighting represent an important step in the development of modern painting. Masaccio, originally named Tommaso di Ser Giovanni di Mone, was born in San Giovanni Valdarno, Italy, near Florence, and joined the painters guild in Florence in 1422. His remarkably individual style owed little to other painters, except possibly the great 14th-century master Giotto. He was more strongly influenced by the architect Filippo Brunelleschi and the sculptor Donatello, both of whom were his contemporaries in Florence. From Brunelleschi he acquired a knowledge of mathematical proportion that was crucial to his use of the principles of scientific perspective. From Donatello he imbibed a knowledge of classical art that led him away from the prevailing Gothic style (see Gothic Art and Architecture; International Gothic Style). Masaccio inaugurated a new naturalistic approach to painting that was concerned less with details and ornamentation than with simplicity and unity, and less with flat surfaces than with the illusion of three dimensionality. Together with Brunelleschi and Donatello, he was a founder of the Renaissance (14th century to 17th century).

Masaccio (probable self-portrait below right) lived 27 years and painted for only eight, yet his work embodies some of the most important advances in Western realistic art. His paintings inspired Leonardo, Michelangelo and Raphael, and his artistic innovations contributed to a new way of looking at the world that gave birth to the Scientific Revolution.

Masaccio was the first European painter to employ linear perspective, to carefully control the projection of light, and to work with the idea of atmospheric perspective,where detail lessens the farther away an object appears in a painting.