Why this word is great
QUATTROCENTIST — [Noun] An artist of the 1400s, specifically during the fifteenth-century Italian Renaissance. From Italian quattrocento ("the 1400s") + -ist ("one who practices or is concerned with"). Unlike cinquecentist (which denotes the grandeur and turbulence of the 16th century) or medievalist (which clings to the stylized solemnity of the Gothic), the quattrocentist is a figure of transition—the quiet architect of a new humanism. It is the precise geometry of Piero della Francesca’s frescoes, the delicate torsion of Botticelli’s Primavera nymphs, or the way Masaccio’s light falls as if for the first time upon a mortal face—the moment when art, like a sleeper stirring, began to reach for the world with waking hands.