Who was Cimabue of Florence?

Question

Paintings he did, life history, why he is important.

Answer 1

From the Grove Dictionary of Art:
Italian painter and mosaicist. His nickname means either ‘bull-head’ or possibly ‘one who crushes the views of others’ (It. cimare: ‘top, shear, blunt’), an interpretation matching the tradition in commentaries on Dante that he was not merely proud of his work but contemptuous of criticism. Filippo Villani and Vasari assigned him the name Giovanni, but this has no historical foundation. He may be considered the most dramatic of those artists influenced by contemporary Byzantine painting through which antique qualities were introduced into Italian work in the late 13th century. His interest in Classical Roman drapery techniques and in the spatial and dramatic achievements of such contemporary sculptors as Nicola Pisano, however, distinguishes him from other leading members of this movement. As a result of his influence on such younger artists as Duccio and Giotto, the forceful qualities of his work and its openness to a wide range of sources, Cimabue appears to have had a direct personal influence on the subsequent course of Florentine, Tuscan and possibly Roman painting.

On his influence:Deodato Orlandi’s touchingly faithful imitation of the Santa Croce Crucifix from S Cerbone, Florence (1288; Lucca, Villa Guinigi, no. 40), demonstrates that Cimabue’s design acquired canonical status for Tuscan Crucifixes in this period, just as the usurpation of this role by the S Maria Novella Crucifix (in situ), generally attributed to Giotto, is shown by Deodato’s subsequent Crucifix of 1301 (San Miniato, S Chiara). Dante’s contemporary observation that ‘Cimabue thought to hold the field of painting; and now Giotto’s name is on everyone’s lips, to the point of obscuring Cimabue’s reputation’ (Purgatorio xi, 94–7) is clearly demonstrated through the bland idiom of Deodato’s paintings; this is developed in subsequent commentaries on the Divine Comedy (Jacopo della Lana, Pietro Alighieri) to include the claim that Cimabue was both ‘noble’ and arrogant to the point of refusing to complete works that had been criticized (‘Ottimo’, 1333–4). That Cimabue seems to have moved to Rome and Assisi when these were the centres of artistic patronage in Italy and to Florence as major monuments were beginning to be commissioned, but concluded his career in Pisa as Florence became established as the artistic capital of Tuscany, suggests that Dante’s account was accurate as far as Florentine opinion was concerned.

Ghiberti introduced the myth that Cimabue discovered Giotto drawing a sheep and made him his pupil; he describes him as ‘holding to the Greek manner’. The 16th-century Anonimo Magliabecchiano claimed that Cimabue rediscovered natural drawing and true proportion and held to the Greek manner, stating also that he had Gaddo di Zanobi Gaddi for an associate and Giotto as a pupil. Vasari’s biography contradicts modern chronology and includes Duccio’s Rucellai Madonna among Cimabue’s works but attributes to Cimabue the Assisi frescoes and the Santa Croce Crucifix. The claim that the representation of a knight of the English Order of the Garter in the chapter house of S Maria Novella, Florence, is the portrait of Cimabue to which Vasari refers is mistaken: the knight’s dress certainly does not belong to an artisan, and Vasari’s description is too generic and too distant in time to be either authoritative or identifiable. Cimabue’s prominence in the 20th-century art-historical view of the 13th and 14th centuries is substantially, though not entirely due to literary tradition and to the coincidence of his Florentine origins with the central role of Florence in early Italian literature. Although not ‘the artist who started Italian painting on a new course’ (Battisti), Cimabue is the most celebrated of the two generations that did.

Answer 2

Cenni di Pepo (Giovanni) Cimabue (c 1240 in Florence, Italy — c 1302 in Florence, Italy) also known as Bencivieni Di Pepo or in modern Italian, Benvenuto Di Giuseppe, was a Florentine painter and creator of mosaics. He is also known as the artist who discovered Giotto and with him moved towards treating figures as individuals. Cimabue is generally thought of as the last great painter working in the Byzantine tradition. The art of this time showed scenes and styles that appeared relatively flat. Cimabue was a pioneer in the move towards naturalism, as his figures showed more life-like proportions and shading. His works influenced later artists such as Giotto.

Not much is known about his life, there being little surviving documentation. His life was described in Giorgio Vasari's The Lives of the Most Excellent Painters, Sculptors, and Architects, widely regarded as the first art history book, though it was completed over 200 years after Cimabue's death. Although it is one of the few early records we have of him, its accuracy is undetermined. It says:

Instead of studying his letters, Cimabue spent all his time covering his paper and his books with pictures showing people, horses, houses, and various other things he dreamt up.
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Works
Judging by the commissions that he received, Cimabue appears to have been a highly regarded artist in his day. While Cimabue was at work in Florence, Duccio was the major artist, and perhaps his rival, in nearby Siena. Cimabue was commissioned to paint two very large frescoes for the Basilica of St Francis of Assisi. They are on the walls of the transepts a Crucifixion and a Deposition. Both paintings have the Cross at the centre and are filled with numerous figures. Unfortunately these works are now a dim shadow of the glory that they once were. During occupancy of the building by invading French troops, straw caught alight, severely damaging the frescoes. The white paint was partially composed of silver, which oxidised and turned black, leaving the faces and much of the drapery of the figures in negative.


The Madonna of St FrancisAnother sadly damaged work is the great Crucifix of Santa Croce reproduced on this page. It was the major work of art that was lost in the flood in Florence in 1966. Much of the paint from the body and face washed away.

Among Cimabue's few surving works are the Madonna of San Trinita, which is housed, with Duccio's Rucellai Madonna and Giotto's Ogni Santi Madonna, in the Uffizi Gallery. In the Lower Church of Saint Francis of Assisi is a most precious fresco. It shows The Madonna and Christ Child enthroned with angels and Saint Francis. It is claimed to be a work of Cimabue's old age.


Cimabue is important as he was an advocate of naturalism. Rather than the flat images of Medieval painting, he tended toward a more realistic approach and used colour and shading to produce depth.

Answer 3

no idea.