Masaccio

Tommaso di Ser Giovanni di Simone, nicknamed Masaccio ('Clumsy' or 'Messy' Tom for his careless indifference to worldly matters outside art), was the primary genius of Early Renaissance painting. During an incandescent career that ended with his mysterious death in Rome at age 26, Masaccio demolished medieval decorative Gothicism.

In the Brancacci Chapel of Florence's Santa Maria del Carmine, his frescoes—notably The Tribute Money and the agonizing Expulsion from the Garden of Eden—introduced revolutionary volumetric weight, anatomically grounded figures, and emotional realism. In Santa Maria Novella, his Holy Trinity fresco incorporated Brunelleschi's strict mathematical one-point linear perspective for the very first time on a flat wall, directly inspiring Leonardo and Michelangelo.