ome. Just as we have read, that
the period of the death of Massinger the dramatist has been settled by
an entry in an old parish register, 'died, Philip Massinger a stranger,'
so there has been found some quaint equivalent to a modern tax-paper
which had been delivered at the dwelling of Masaccio when the word
'gone' was written down.

There is a further tradition--not very probable under the
circumstances--that Masaccio is buried, without name or stone, under the
Brancacci Chapel. Be that as it may, he very early rose to eminence,
surpassing all his predecessors in drawing and colouring, and he
combined with those acquirements such animation and variety of
expression in his characters, that it was said of him 'he painted souls
as well as bodies,' while his invention was not less bold and fresh.

It is difficult to indicate Masaccio's pictures because some of them
have been repainted and destroyed. As to those in the Brancacci Chapel
from the life of St Peter, (with the exception of two,) considerable
confusion has arisen as to which are Masaccio's, and which belong to
his scholar Filippino Lippi. The fresco which Masaccio left unfinished,
that of the Apostles Peter and Paul raising a dead youth (from
traditional history), was finished by Lippi. In the fresco of Peter
baptizing the converts, generally attributed to Masaccio, there is a lad
who has thrown off his garments, and stands shivering with cold, whose
figure, according to authority, formed an epoch in art. Lionardo da
Vinci, Michael Angelo, Andrea del Sarto, Fra Bartolommeo, all studied
their art in this chapel. Raphael borrowed the grand figure of St Paul
preaching at Athens in one of the cartoons, from one of Masaccio's or
Filippo Lippi's frescoes. Masaccio's excellence as an artist, reached at
an immature age, is very remarkable.

I have come to the last and probably the best appreciated among modems
of the early Italian painters. Fra Angelico da Fiesole, the gentle
devout monk whom Italians called '_Il Beato_,' the Blessed, and who
probably did receive the distinction of beatification, a distinction
only second in the Roman Catholic Church to that of canonization. He was
born at the lovely little mountain-town of Fiesole near Florence, 1387,
and his worldly name, which he bore only till his twenty-first year, was
Guido Petri de Mugello. In his youth, with his gift already recognized,
so that he might well have won ease and honour in the world, he entered