Masaccio

Masaccio (1401–1428), born Tommaso di Ser Giovanni di Simone near Arezzo, was the first great painter of the Florentine Quattrocento. Registered as a master in Florence's painters' guild in 1422, he worked with Masolino on the Brancacci Chapel frescoes, where his solid, lifelike figures and dramatic light set a new standard for realism.

His Trinity in Santa Maria Novella, painted around 1425–1427, applied Brunelleschi's linear perspective with rigorous precision. He died in Rome in the summer of 1428, aged twenty-six; later masters from Leonardo to Michelangelo studied his Brancacci figures.