Page:The painters of Florence from the thirteenth to the sixteenth century (1915).djvu/104

80 Pippo Spano, invited Masolino to decorate a church which he had built at Stuhlweissenburg. Leaving Masaccio to finish the frescoes of the Brancacci Chapel, the Florentine master travelled to Hungary, where he entered the Hospodar's service, and remained there some time after his patron's death in the following year. This is proved by the following income-tax return of 1427, made by Masolino's father, Cristoforo di Fino, who was then living in the quarter of Santa Croce of Florence:—"Tommaso my son is in Hungary, and is said to have received a certain quantity of money from the heirs of Messer Filippo Scolari, but how much I do not know, and therefore cannot state. There are 360 florins of common property here."

On his return to Italy, Masolino stopped in Lombardy, at the invitation of Cardinal Branda di Castiglione, an illustrious Milanese prelate, who had been sent to Hungary as papal legate, and may have seen the artist when he passed through Florence on his way from Rome in 1425. Here Cardinal Branda employed him to paint the choir of the noble Collegiate Church which he had lately built in his native town of Castiglione on the banks of the river Olona, near Varese. The Church was consecrated in 1425, by Branda himself, and the decoration of the interior was completed in 1428, as we learn from an inscription on a bas-relief over the portal. These frescoes, which were only discovered sixty years ago, when the whitewash was removed from the walls, represent the history of the Virgin, and scenes from the life of St. Lawrence and St. Stephen, to whom the church was dedicated. The best preserved subjects are those