Tommaso di Cristoforo Fini (c. 1383 – c. 1447)

• Cristoforo Fini, known by his nickname Masolino da Panicale.
• Was an Italian painter.
• Masolino was possibly born in Panicale, present-day Umbria.

• 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. 

• In 1420 he collaborated with his younger colleague, Masaccio, to paint the frescoes in the Brancacci Chapel in the Basilica of Santa Maria del Carmine, Florence.

• He painted a cycle of 300 famous historical figures in the Orsini Palace in Rome about 1433–34 and also worked in Todi. 

• He spent his later years, after 1435, working for Cardinal Branda Castiglione in Castiglione Olona.

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