Masaccio brought a new sense of realism to painting, through his continuous study he "cleared away, in a great measure the hardness, the imperfections and the difficulties of the art, and he gave a beginning to beautiful attitudes, movements, liveliness, and vivacity, and to a certain relief truly characteristic and natural; which no painter up to his time had ever done" (Vasari, G. 1550).
The Trinity space is defined by columns depicting the start of the Chapel, the theological space ,God the Father at the apex of the picture, standing behind the crucifixion of his son Jesus and the Holy Spirit as the dove descending down towards the dying Jesus. All three are haloed to represent the spirituality of the moment. On further analysis, the three phases of the human life can be interpreted, God and the dove, being the spiritual life. .
The Trinity is considered to be the first painting to define true linear perspective, Masaccio created the illusion of a chapel with a vaulted ceiling, for his patrons the Lenzi family, along the west side wall of Santa Maria Novella. Research suggests that Brunelleschi may have designed or collaborated with Masaccio but there is no documented evidence to prove this. Giorgio Vasari described the fresco. "The most beautiful thing, apart from the figures is a barrel-shaped vaulting, drawn in perspective and divide into squares filled with rosettes, which are foreshortened and made to diminish so well that the wall appears to be pierced" (Vasari G. 1550). .
Masaccio uses linear perspective to suggest, that the figures recede back into the depicted chapel space. The coffers on the ceiling create the lines, and the vanishing point is at the base of cross, which happens to be at the eye level of the viewer. This creates the illusion that the space we are looking at in the fresco is actually a continuation of the chapel space the viewer is standing in.
