y good grace, and they show grandeur in the manner,
softness and harmony in the colouring, and relief and force in the
draughtsmanship; the work was much esteemed by reason of its novelty and
of the methods used in many parts, which were totally different from the
manner of Giotto; but, being overtaken by death, he left these scenes
unfinished.

[Illustration: MASOLINO DA PANICALE: MADONNA AND CHILD

(_Empoli: S. Stefano. Fresco_)]

Masolino was a person of very good powers, with much harmony and
facility in his pictures, which are seen to have been executed with
diligence and with great love. This zeal and this willingness to labour,
which he never ceased to show, brought about in him a bad habit of body,
which ended his life before his time and snatched him prematurely from
the world. Masolino died young, at the age of thirty-seven, cutting
short the expectations that people had conceived of him. His pictures
date about the year 1440. And Paolo Schiavo--who painted the Madonna and
the figures with their feet foreshortened on the cornice on the Canto
de' Gori in Florence--strove greatly to follow the manner of Masolino,
from whose works, having studied them many times, I find his manner very
different from that of those who were before him, seeing that he added
majesty to the figures, and gave softness and a beautiful flow of
folds to the draperies. The heads of his figures, also, are much better
than those made before his day, for he was a little more successful in
making the roundness of the eyes, and many other beautiful parts of the
body. And since he began to have a good knowledge of light and shade,
seeing that he worked in relief, he made many difficult foreshortenings
very well, as is seen in that beggar who is seeking alms from S. Peter;
for his leg, which is trailing behind him, is so well proportioned in
its outlines, with regard to draughtsmanship, and in its shadows, with
regard to colouring, that it appears to be really piercing the wall.
Masolino began likewise to give more sweetness of expression to the
faces of women, and more loveliness to the garments of young men, than
the old craftsmen had done; and he also drew passing well in
perspective. But that wherein he excelled, more than in anything else,
was colouring in fresco, for this he did so well that his pictures are
blended and harmonized with so great grace, that his painting of flesh
has the greatest softness which one is able to imagine; wher