Healing of the Cripple and Raising of Tabitha

In 1424 two painters began work in this chapel at Santa Maria del Carmine in Florence, and one of them would change European painting. That was the young Masaccio. This scene, though, is by his older and gentler colleague Masolino, showing two miracles of Saint Peter along a single street. What makes it worth stopping for is the middle. Between the healing on one side and the raising of the dead woman Tabitha on the other, two fashionable young men stroll along chatting, entirely at ease. They wear the everyday fashions of 1420s Florence, dropped straight into a scene from the Bible.