in a house for which they pay a rent of ten florins. Tommaso is twenty-five, Giovanni twenty, and their mother forty-five years of age. Their whole fortune is returned as six soldi, while their liabilities are described as numerous and heavy. Tommaso pays two florins a year for a shop which he rents with another artist from the Badia of Florence, and owes 102 lire to the painter Niccolò di Lapo, six florins to the gold-beater, Piero, and six florins to his assistant Andrea di Giusto. Besides which four florins are due to the brokers at the sign of the "Lion and the Cow," for goods pawned at different times. The painter's mother ought to receive a dowry of 100 florins a year, as well as the produce of a vineyard belonging to a house at Castel San Giovanni, from the heirs of her second husband; but neither the amount of the rent, nor the sum of the vineyard can be declared, since her sons are ignorant of both, and their mother does not receive the rent, or inhabit the house. Such was the conditions of Masaccio's financial affairs at a time when he was the foremost painter of his age, and had probably just finished the frescoes of the Carmine. Yet he had rapidly risen to fame, and his talent had been soon recognised. In 1421, he matriculated in the Painters' Guild, two years before his master Masolino, and, in 1424, he joined the Company of St. Luke. By this time he was already employed as Masolino's assistant in the Brancacci Chapel, and when in the following year that master went to Hungary, was left to finish the work alone. The close friendship which bound him to Brunellesco and Donatello was productive of great and enduring results, and his one aim was to apply their principles
