to know and love him best. Little wonder
that in after ages they looked upon him almost as a saint, and gave him
the title of 'Beato,' or the blessed angel-painter.

MASACCIO

It must have been about the same time when Fra Angelico was covering
the walls of San Marco with his angel pictures, that a very different
kind of painter was working in the Carmine church in Florence.

This was no gentle, refined monk, but just an ordinary man of the
world--an awkward, good-natured person, who, as long as he had pictures
to paint, cared for little else. Why, he would even forget to ask for
payment when his work was done; and as to taking care of his clothes,
or trying to keep himself tidy, that was a thing he never thought of!

What trouble his mother must have had with him when he was a boy! It
was no use sending him on an errand, he would forget it before he had
gone a hundred yards, and he was so careless and untidy that it was
enough to make any one lose patience with him. But only let him have a
pencil and a smooth surface on which to draw, and he was a different
boy.

It is said that even now, in the little town of Castello San Giovanni,
some eighteen miles from Florence, where Tommaso was born, there are
still some wonderfully good figures to be seen, drawn by him when he
was quite a little boy. Certainly there was no carelessness and nothing
untidy about his work.

As the boy grew older all his longings would turn towards Florence, the
beautiful city where there was everything to learn and to see, and so
he was sent to become a pupil in the studio of Masolino, a great
Florentine painter. But though his drawings improved, his careless
habits continued the same.

'There goes Tommaso the painter,' the people would say, watching the
big awkward figure passing through the streets on his way to work.
'Truly he pays but little heed to his appearance. Look but at his
untidy hair and the holes in his boots.'

'Ay, indeed!' another would answer; 'and yet it is said if only people
paid him all they owed he would have gold enough and to spare. But what
cares he so long as he has his paints and brushes? "Masaccio" would be
a fitter name for him than Tommaso.'

So the name Masaccio, or Ugly Tom, came to be that by which the big
awkward painter was known. But no one thinks of the unkind meaning of
the nickname now, for Masaccio is honoured as one of the great names in
the history of Art.

This painter, careless of many