Thus perished, at the early age of twenty-seven, a painter whose work reveals not only the originality of real creative genius, but a maturity that moves our wonder.

What might he not have done if he had lived?
Between his style in the Brancacci chapel and that of Raphael in the Vatican there seems to be but a narrow gap, which might perchance have been passed over by this man, if death had spared him.
Masaccio can by no means be taken as a fair instance of the painters of his age.

Gifted with exceptional powers, he overleaped the difficulties of his art, and arrived intuitively at results whereof as yet no scientific certainty had been secured.

His contemporaries applied humbler talents to severe study, and wrought out by patient industry those principles which Masaccio had divined.

Their work is therefore at the same time more archaic and more pedantic, judged by modern standards.