doubtless influenced all narrative painting, making for the sprightliness which dominates the end of the century. [Illustration: FIG. 85. School of Uccello. A Horse Race. Detail from a _Cassone_ Front.—_Cleveland, O._ ] [Illustration: FIG. 86. Masaccio. Birth of St. John Baptist.—_Desco da Parto. Berlin._ ] Besides these chest and wall panels, pictured salvers were prepared to celebrate the birth of a patrician child. Such wooden salvers were used to convey the congratulatory gifts which were offered with appalling promptness to every young mother. These _Deschi da parto_, or birth plates, as the Italians called them, bore pictures alluding either to love and beauty or to childbirth. One of the earlier mythological salvers is in the Bargello and represents the Judgment of Paris. As yet the artist is not sufficiently audacious to display the goddesses in classical nudity. The most famous of all birth-plates may serve as our introduction to the greatest artist of the first half of the century, Masaccio. It is in the Berlin Museum, the subject is the Birth of St. John the Baptist, Figure 86, and the date should be about 1422. In the excellent proportions of the Renaissance portico, in the gravity and mass of the figures, it shows the beginnings of a new and more truthful style, based not on previous artistic formulas but on direct and masterful observation of nature. Mr. Berenson justly calls it “a little giant of a picture.” Masaccio[35] was born December 21, 1401, at San Giovanni up the Arno. His real name was Tommaso di Ser Giovanni di Tommaso Guidi. And the slightly slurring character of his nickname was apparently given for absent-mindedness, untidiness, and a certain clumsiness of person. Tradition as late as Vasari declared that Masaccio lived in a world of intense speculation concerning his art. Contemporary tax-returns show that he died deeply in debt and that he never really knew how much he owed. Tradition again insists that he never troubled to collect payments due him unless his need of money were extreme.