Masolino da Panicale
(b. 1400, Panicale, d. 1447, Firenze)

Italian painter, born in Panicale, near Florence as Tommaso di Cristoforo Fini. He is known to have joined the Florentine painters guild in 1423 and to have spent some time working in Hungary. With his associate, the Florentine painter Masaccio, Masolino executed a series of frescoes for the Brancacci Chapel in the Church of Santa Maria del Carmine, Florence. Masolino's contributions, completed between 1424 and 1427, include The Preaching of St. Peter, The Raising of Tabitha, and The Fall of Adam and Eve.
Other important frescoes were done for the Collegiata, a church in Castiglione d'Olona; for the Church of San Clemente, Rome; and for the Church of Sant'Agostino, Empoli. An existing fragment of the last (1424?), with its exceedingly graceful yet forceful lines and its delicate, harmonious pastel colors, reveals Masolino's links with the older International Gothic style. His earliest known work is a Madonna and Child, painted on wood (1423, Kunsthalle, Bremen); another panel, which is devoted to the Annunciation (1423?-26), is hanging in the National Gallery of Art in Washington, D.C.

Works