Masaccio

Masaccio, born Tommaso di Ser Giovanni di Simone, was a Florentine artist who is regarded as the first great Italian painter of the Quattrocento period of the Italian Renaissance. According to Vasari, Masaccio was the best painter of his generation because of his skill at imitating nature, recreating lifelike figures and movements as well as a convincing sense of three-dimensionality. He employed nudes and foreshortenings in his figures. This had seldom been done before him.

21 December 1401

Born on the same birth day (21 December): Florence Griffith Joyner • Glenn Coleman (rugby league) • Itubwa Amram • Kurt Waldheim • Leon MacDonald • Michelle Hurd • Philip Humber • Tony Lewis (musician) • William Conyers, 1st Baron Conyers • Zdeněk Fibich