In Masaccio's management of drapery we discern the influence of plastic art; without concealing the limbs, which are always modelled with a freedom that suggests the power of movement even in stationary attitudes, the voluminous folds and broad masses of powerfully coloured raiment invest his forms with a nobility unknown before in painting.

His power of representing the nude is not less remarkable.

But what above all else renders his style attractive is the sense of aerial space.

For the first time in art the forms of living persons are shown moving in a transparent medium of light, graduated according to degrees of distance, and harmonised by tones that indicate an atmospheric unity.

In comparing Masaccio with Giotto we must admit that, with so much gained, something has been sacrificed.