In his frescoes the qualities essential to the style of the Renaissance--what Vasari calls the modern manner--appear precociously full-formed.

Besides life and nature they have dignity and breadth, the grand and heightened manner of emancipated art.

Masaccio is not inferior to Giotto in his power of telling a story with simplicity; but he understands the value of perspective for realising the circumstances of the scene depicted.

His august groups of the Apostles are surrounded by landscape tranquillising to the sense and pleasant to the eye.

Mountain-lines and distant horizons lend space and largeness to his compositions, and the figures of his men and women move freely in a world prepared for them.