A Pope (Saint Gregory?) and Saint Matthias

Masolino da Panicale was Masaccio's senior collaborator, a painter whose technically accomplished but stylistically conservative work makes him central to understanding the gap between the late Gothic tradition and Masaccio's revolutionary spatial realism. His Pope-and-Saint-Matthias panel most likely formed part of a polyptych or altarpiece programme, where the identification of the pope as Gregory the Great would be iconographically appropriate given Gregory's association with the early church's missionary programme. The panel dates from Masolino's later career, after his return from Hungary where he had served the papal legate Pippo Spano.

Masolino retains the gold ground convention while modelling his figures with the rounded, soft Florentine naturalism he had developed in the Baptistery and Brancacci Chapel work. The pope's vestments are painted with careful attention to liturgical accuracy — the pallium, tiara, and chasuble rendered with the heraldic precision of a court painter.