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Masolino Da Panicale, (1383?-1447?), Italian painter, whose works combine the older International Gothic style with the early Renaissance style. Masolino was born Tommaso di Cristoano Fino in Panicale, Italy, near Florence, and is known to have joined the Florentine painters guild in 1423 and to have spent some time working in Hungary. His earliest known work is a Madonna and Child, painted on wood (1423, Kunsthalle, Bremen); another early work, a panel devoted to the Annunciation (1423?-1426), is hanging in the National Gallery of Art in Washington, D.C. 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.
Masaccio's innovations in perspective and the use of light and shadow to define form can be seen to have influenced Masolino's work. While the attribution of specific frescoes within the chapel to either Masaccio or Masolino has long been disputed, scholars now mostly agree on the assignment of the works. Masolino's contributions, marked by prettier and more delicate forms than those of Masaccio, were completed between 1424 and 1427 and include The Preaching of St. Peter, The Raising of Tabitha, and The Temptation of Adam and Eve.
After Masaccio's death in about 1427, Masolino increasingly reverted to the lyrical International Gothic style of his youth, which manifested itself in graceful yet forceful lines, delicate and harmonious pastel colors, and a decorative manner of painting. This gradual shift is evident in some of his important later works, such as the frescoes done for the Church of San Clemente in Rome (1428?-1431?) and for the baptistery and Collegiata in Castiglione d'Olona (mid-1430s).
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