Masaccio et al.
Tommaso di Ser Giovanni, called Masaccio, had one of the most extraordinary careers in the whole history of painting. He died very young at age twenty-eight. And thus his career which started in his teens could not have spanned more than ten years. Yet, in that one decade he changed Western art. And his paintings have been studied by every significant painter since the early Renaissance including the great Modernists, Picasso, Matisse and Rivera. His most influential work is in the Brancacci Chapel of the church of Santa Maria del Carmine in Florence. These frescoes which tell the stories of Saint Peter, have been visited by admirers almost every day for more than five hundred years.
