abstract:Masaccio (; December 21, 1401 – autumn 1428), born Tommaso di Ser Giovanni di Simone, was the first great painter of the Quattrocento period of the Italian Renaissance. According to Vasari, Masaccio was the best painter of his generation because of his skill at recreating lifelike figures and movements as well as a convincing sense of three-dimensionality.
You had only to study the previous two centuries of Florentine drawing, from the rocky pillars of Masaccio to the twisting perfection of Michelangelo, to see how knowledge grew through a contest in observation.
Yet he also absorbed the daring new techniques that were emerging at the time, illustrated here by the work of Masaccio and Uccello with their grasp of three- dimensional form and the rules of perspective.
For Berenson, looking at a picture was always an emotional experience, a new discovery and only then to be placed in the continuum of Italian Renaissance painting from Duccio, Masaccio and Giotto through Botticelli, Titian, Leonardo and Michelangelo.