`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 things, cared with
all his heart and soul for the work he had chosen
to do. It seemed to him that painters had always
failed to make their pictures like living things.
The pictures they painted were flat, not round as
a figure should be, and very often the feet did not
look as if they were standing on the ground at all,
but pointed downwards as if they were hanging in
the air.

So he worked with light and shadow and careful
drawing until the figures he drew looked rounded
instead of flat, and their feet were planted firmly
on the ground. His models were taken from the
ordinary Florentine youths whom he saw daily in
the studio, but he drew them as no one had drawn