Masolino da Panicale

Tommaso di Cristoforo Fini (c. 1383 – c. 1447), known by his nickname Masolino da Panicale (lit. 'Tommy from Panicale'), was an Italian painter. His best known works are probably his collaborations with Masaccio: Madonna with Child and St. Anne (1424) and the frescoes in the Brancacci Chapel (1424–1428).

Masolino was possibly born in Panicale, present-day Umbria. He may have been an assistant to Ghiberti in Florence between 1403 and 1407. In 1423, he joined the Florentine guild Arte dei Medici e Speziali (Doctors and Apothecaries), which included painters as an independent branch. He may have been the first artist to create oil paintings in the 1420s, rather than Jan van Eyck in the 1430s, as was previously supposed.

He spent many years traveling, including a trip to Hungary from September 1425 to July 1427 under the patronage of Pipo of Ozora, a mercenary captain. He was selected by Pope Martin V (Oddone Colonna) on the return of the papacy to Rome in 1420 to paint the altarpiece for his family chapel in the Basilica of Santa Maria Maggiore, and later by Cardinal Branda da Castiglione to paint the Saint Catherine Chapel in the Basilica of San Clemente, Rome.