For Reynolds:
[Masaccio's] manner was 'dry and hard, his compositions formal and not enough diversified, according to the custom of Painters in that early period, yet his works possess that grandeur and simplicity which accompany, and even sometimes proceed from, regularity and hardness of manner. We must consider the barbarous state of the Arts before his time, when skill in drawing was so little understood that even the best of the painters could not even foreshorten the foot, but every figure appeared to stand upon his toes; and what served for drapery, had, from the hardness and smallness of the folds, too much of the appearance of cords clinging round the body. He first introduced large drapery, flowing in an easy and natural manner: indeed he appears to be the first who discovered the path that leads to every excellence to which the Arts afterwards arrived, and may therefore be justly considered one of the great fathers of modern Art. ( Reynolds, Discourses, p. 218)
Reynolds, who largely follows Vasari on Masaccio, stresses the stories about Raphael and Michelangelo visiting the Brancacci Chapel to study the works of Masaccio - a point which Ruskin repeats in letters from Florence to his father in 1845 (on which see extracts in the footnotes at Works, 3.178 and Works, 3.180).