MASACCIO, a celebrated painter of the Florentine
school, was born in 1402 at San Giovanni in the Valdarno.
His real name was Tommaso Guidi, but his unfitness for
the cares of ordinary life procured for him at an early age
the nickname of Masaccio, or "Helpless Tom." Receiving
the first lessons in his art from Masolino da Panicale, he
was employed under that master in painting the Brancacci
chapel in the church of the Carmine at Florence. He also
carefully studied the sculptures of Ghiberti and Donatello,
and learned perspective from Brunelleschi. About 1420
Masaccio seems to have visited Rome, and there, according
to Vasari, he was employed in the execution of several im-
portant works. On the return, however, of his patron,
Cosimo de' Medici, from exile in 1434, he went back to
Florence, and was engaged to complete the paintings of the
Brancacci, left unfinished by the death of his old master
Masolino. He died, however, in 1443, before he had ful-
filled his engagement. The suddenness of his death, and
the envy in which he was known to be held by his rivals,
combined to originate the suspicion that he had been
poisoned.
Ever working with a clear perception that painting is
simply a close imitation of nature, Masaccio surpassed all
his contemporaries in the easy postures of his figures, in the
simplicity and dignity of his draperies, and in his natural
and harmonious colouring. So unprecedented was his skill
in foreshortening, and his knowledge of perspective, that he
may be said to have introduced a new era in the annals of
painting. The frescoes in the church of the Carmine at
Florence were his masterpieces, and were zealously studied
by Raphael and other great painters of the fifteenth and
sixteenth centuries. In his epitaph, written by Annibal
Cavo, it is said that Michael Angelo was the teacher of
other painters, but the pupil of Masaccio.