Cimabue

Cimabue, GIOVANNI, the first of the restorers of the art of painting in Italy, which had fallen into neglect during the barbarism of the dark ages, was born at Florence in 1240. At this time the fine arts were practised in Italy chiefly by Byzantines, though there were such native artists as Guido of Siena and Giunta of Pisa; and painting had degenerated into a worn-out mechanical conventionalism. Cimabue at first adopted traditional forms, but he soon turned to nature, painting a St Francis from the living model, 'a new thing in these times,' as Vasari tells us, infusing life and individuality into the worn-out types of his predecessors, and leading the way to the naturalism of the works of his great pupil Giotto (q.v.). In the stiff forms of his draperies he made little progress upon former practice, but he softened his outlines, improved his flesh-tints, and gave projection and a sense of rotundity to his forms. Two remarkable pictures of the Madonna by Cimabue are still preserved in Florence—one in the Academy; the other, displaying a more purely original genius, in the church of Santa Maria Novella. It is said that this latter work in the time of Cimabue was admired as a miracle of art, and was carried to the church in a sort of triumphal procession. It is the first great production of the Florentine school which culminated in Michael Angelo, Raphael, and Leonardo. Cimabue executed several important frescoes in the south transept of the lower church of San Francesco at Assisi, and in the north transept of the upper church there; and during his later years he was appointed capo maestro of the mosaics of the Duomo of Pisa, his works in this method ranking as the finest of the period. His mosaic of Christ in glory in the apse was probably his last work; and his easel-picture of a Madonna and Child in the Louvre was executed for San Francesco at Pisa. He died about 1302.