However that be, Masaccio probably succeeded to the work in 1425, his twenty-fourth year, and the next fresco after the Adam and Eve may well have been the adjoining subjects of Peter raising Tabitha from the Dead and healing a Cripple, Figure 88. As a whole the composition is somewhat marred by inadvertences and afterthoughts. It shows the influence of Masolino in the trite and conventional gestures of the mourners about the bier, and in certain strained facial expressions, notably that of the turbaned bystander. Such survivals are precisely what one would expect in a young painter just emancipated from his master. The entirely Masolino-like pair of strollers in the centre seem to be due to an afterthought. The first intention is registered in the unnaturally straight back of St. Peter’s companion, in the centre. The fresco was apparently to have been cut into two compartments by a pilaster at that point.[36] When the plan was abandoned in favor of putting two episodes in one space, the two unrelated figures had to be added to fill space and provide a transition. One is a little ashamed of pointing out small defects in what in all essentials is a noble and impassioned work. Technically there is nothing better in the Chapel than the establishing of the city background. It has scale, admirable atmospheric placing, dignity and pictorial significance. How anybody who knows Masolino’s niggling and haphazard treatment of such architectural features at Castiglione d’Olona can imagine that he had earlier created this grandiose setting remains a mystery to me. Even more remarkable are the gravity and grandeur of the Peter and the Tabitha. Here we are reminded of Giotto. Masaccio must often have pored over the Stories of St. John in Santa Croce, and while he by no means adopted Giotto’s shorthand indications for mass, he did adopt Giotto’s sense for classic dignity, beautifully calculated order, and moderation. As we continue through these remarkable frescoes we shall see continually that the quite ruthless innovator that was Masaccio was also a reverent traditionalist. The particular form of his art was settled between nature and himself, as Leonardo da Vinci later justly observed; the spirit of his art derived mostly from Giotto. It was highly important for the whole ongoing of art in Italy that so revolutionary a spirit was tempered by the finest respect for the great classic tradition. And in this great fresco of St. Peter’s miracles one may see how a quite homely and drastic realism can be invested with abstract power and dignity. How different it all is from the small and often charming vivacity which Masolino displays at Castiglione d’Olona and at Rome.