Tommaso di Ser Giovanni di Mone, nicknamed Masaccio ("Slovenly Tom") because he cares so little for his appearance and personal affairs and so much more for his art, is the first artist to employ the principles of Brunelleschi's linear perspective in a major painting when he executes his Trinity fresco, an astonishing visual tour-de-force painted around 1425-27 for the church of Santa Maria Novella in Florence.

In this monumental and rationally ordered work, Masaccio creates the three-dimensional illusion of a chapel receding beyond the wall on which it is painted.

He reinforces this perspective effect by the placement of the figures of the donors, who are portrayed kneeling on a shelf that appears to project forward.

He constructs the entire composition so as to direct the spectator's eye inexorably toward the focal point of the work, the pyramidal group composed of the Virgin and Saint John at the bases and God the Father and the crucified Christ at the apex, further heightening the sculptural appearance of the figures by his innovative use of chiaroscuro, or modeling in light and dark.