The Holy Trinity

One of the founding paintings of true linear perspective. At the base, painted as if carved in stone, a tomb with a skeleton and the inscription: 'I WAS ONCE WHAT YOU ARE, AND WHAT I AM YOU WILL BE.' The architecture above is constructed around a vanishing point at the viewer's eye level — it feels real enough to step into. Masaccio died at 26, the year after he painted it. Now at Santa Maria Novella, Florence.