Masaccio

Masaccio, born Tommaso di Ser Giovanni, was the first great painter of the Italian Renaissance, though he died at about 26. Using Brunelleschi’s linear perspective and a strong fall of light, he gave his figures a solidity not seen since Giotto. His frescoes in the Brancacci Chapel of Santa Maria del Carmine in Florence, including The Tribute Money and The Expulsion from the Garden of Eden, and his Holy Trinity in Santa Maria Novella, became a school for later painters. The National Gallery in London has the central panel of his Pisa Altarpiece, the Virgin and Child.