Name by which the Italian painter Tomasso di Ser Giovanni Guidi (S. Giovanni Valdarno 1401 - Rome 1428) is known. There's a short amount of information about his life, but great was the fame that surrounded Masaccio , that was considered by the Florentine artists as the initiator and the master of the Renaissance painting. Vasari says he was one of Masolino's pupils, but the differences between the two artists demonstrate how Masaccio must have learned from his teacher only the manual practice of the techniques. As a matter of fact, in the first of the works that are left of him, the Madonna e S. Anna , in the Galleria degli Uffizzi in Florence , painted in collaboration with Masolino, Masaccio 's art appears in plain contrast with that of his teacher. The group of the Madonna col Bambino is powerfully highlighted in a blocked plasticity, and the tone-rich chiaroscuro and the very type of the bare and simple figures, are opposed to Masolino's refined and dreamy images. His art must instead be linked to Giotto's, having in common with it the spiritual deepness and the exaltation of the human figure above every other element of the composition, and to Brunelleschi's art, the perspective of which Masaccio was transferring to painting. With his particular plastic sense in tune with his spatial sense, Masaccio gets to the creation of a new humanity, breaking with every gothic residue. The fresco of Carmine di Pisa's Cloister, that the artist made around 1423, was lost, while a few parts remain, spread in the European Galleries, of the polyptych painted for the Carmelites of Pisa. In the Madonna in trono (London, National Gallery), that constituted the central part of the polyptych, Masaccio gives value to the sense of perspective and with the light that falls upon the characters he creates an accentuated illusion of plasticity.

In the Crocefissione (Naples, National Gallery) Masaccio, always self-restrained, gives full way to the ardor of his passion, depicting the human drama of pain, through Christ's death, the characters of John and Mary seem to crystallize in a wordless pain, while the Magdalene with open arms and the blonde cascade of her hair on the red cloak, is like a tearing cry. In the polyptych's predella with the Adorazione dei Magi, the backdrop of hills with no vegetation highlights men and things with new evidence. Masaccio 's masterpieces, that comprise his artistic will, are the frescoes Brancacci's Chapel (Brancacci was a wealthy Florentine merchant and diplomat) in the church of Carmine in Florence . He painted those from 1426 to 1428, the year in which he moved to Rome , succeeding Masolino that had begun the decoration in 1424. Masaccio ' s unmistakable personality can be recognized in the following paintings : Cacciata di Adamo ed Eva , Tributo , Battesimo dei neofiti , S. Pietro che risana gli infermi con la sua ombra , S. Pietro che distribuisce i beni alla comunità and in part of the Resurrezione del figlio di Teofilo , continued by Filippo Lippi . In the Cacciata the dramatic feeling violently bursts out, as in the Crocefissione in Naples, and both ancestors, harshly flogged by the light, advance under the drive of their desperate pain splendidly depicted by Adam's back and Eve's face corroded by chiaroscuro. In the Tributo, the most notable of the Chapel's frescoes, three different moments of the Gospel's story are put together: the request of the tax at Capernaum 's gates, the money found by Peter in the fish's mouth, the paid tax. The unity of the composition is ensured by the vast spatial vision; in a squalid landscape the figure of Christ, which distinguishes itself for its beauty in the middle of the group of the Apostles, disposes with the peremptory guise of his gesture the succession of the events. And the command he gives to Peter troubles the Apostles, that, constructed with plastic wideness, anxious and suspended in the expectation of the miracle, stare at Christ with the most various expressions. In S. Pietro che risana gli infermi the context full of reality – the background is a street in Florence of the early fifteenth century – transfigures itself in a spirit of solemn severity; St. Peter, followed by St. John advances as if he were day-dreaming, while the tragic misery of the sick is evidenced by the light raining from above, thus affirming the volumetric play of the masses.

The Trinità , painted in the church of S. Maria Novella in Florence , is attributed to the last phase of his activity; in this work's rigorous perspective frame the still images express greatness.