Cimabue
Italian painter and mosaic designer who broke from Byzantine style
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Cimabue, also known as Cenni di Pepo or Cenni di Pepi, was an Italian painter and mosaic designer from Florence who lived from 1240 to 1302.[1] He is considered one of the first great Italian painters to break from the Italo-Byzantine style, using more lifelike proportions and sophisticated shading.[2] According to Vasari, Cimabue was the teacher of Giotto, though many modern scholars discount this claim.[3][4]
Quick Facts
- Birth name
- Giovanni Cenni di Pepo
- Born
- c. 1240
- Died
- 1302
- Birthplace
- Florence, Republic of Florence
- Place of death
- Pisa, Republic of Pisa
- Notable works
- Santa Trinita Maestà
- Maestà at Santa Maria dei Servi
- Crucifix at Santa Croce
Facts from the source article.
Life and work
Cimabue was born in Florence and died in Pisa.[5] Around 1280, he painted the Maestà for San Francesco in Pisa, now at the Louvre, which established a style followed by Duccio and Giotto.[6] The Maestà of Santa Trinita, dated to 1290–1300 and now in the Uffizi, shows a softer expression suggesting Giotto's influence.[7] Cimabue spent 1301 to 1302 in Pisa, where he was commissioned to finish a mosaic of Christ Enthroned in the cathedral, and his surviving part depicts St John the Evangelist.[8]
According to Vasari, Cimabue was haughty and proud, and would destroy any work in which he noted a defect.[9] Pietro Toesca, an art historian, assigned the Crucifixion located in Arezzo's San Domenico church to Cimabue, with a proposed date of around 1270, which would make it his earliest known work to break from Byzantine conventions.[5] Records indicate Cimabue was in Rome about 1272, and subsequently produced a Crucifix for the Florentine church of Santa Croce; this piece displays naturalism that may have been influenced by Nicola Pisano's work.[10] Cimabue executed a fresco titled Madonna with Child Enthroned, Four Angels and St Francis in the transept of the Lower Basilica of San Francesco in Assisi while Nicholas IV, the first Franciscan pope, held the papacy.[11]
What the cited sources add
The Uffizi Galleries account states that Cimabue helped guide painting towards naturalism, paving the way for his pupil Giotto.[12] The Uffizi source suggests the painting could be the work of a collaborator or follower of Cimabue, possibly the artist responsible for the St. Michael frescoes in the Velluti Chapel at Florence's Santa Croce basilica.[12]
References
- Wikipedia, "Cimabue" (CC BY-SA 4.0), which cites: Giorgio Vasari, "Lives of the Artists}} Translated with an introduction and notes by J.C. and P Bondanella. Oxford: Oxford University Press (Oxford World's Classics), 1991, pp. 7–14. {{ISBN"; Joseph F. Clarke, "Pseudonyms", BCA, 1977, p. 38; "A History of Painting in Italy; Umbria, Florence and Siena from the Second to the Sixteenth Century", AMS Press, 1975, p. 202; "Cimabue", Collins English Dictionary (original not read by us) en.wikipedia.org
- Wikipedia, "Cimabue" (CC BY-SA 4.0), which cites: Fred Kleiner, "Gardner's Art through the Ages: A Global History", Cengage Learning EMEA, 2008, p. 502 (original not read by us) en.wikipedia.org
- Wikipedia, "Cimabue" (CC BY-SA 4.0), which cites: Giorgio Vasari, "Lives of the Artists}} Translated with an introduction and notes by J.C. and P Bondanella. Oxford: Oxford University Press (Oxford World's Classics), 1991, pp. 7–14. {{ISBN" (original not read by us) en.wikipedia.org
- Wikipedia, "Cimabue" (CC BY-SA 4.0), which cites: Hayden B.J. Maginnis, "The Cambridge Companion to Giotto", 2004, p. 12–13 (original not read by us) en.wikipedia.org
- Wikipedia, "Cimabue" (CC BY-SA 4.0), which cites: Paoletti, "Art in Renaissance Italy", Laurence King Publishing, 2005, p. 51 (original not read by us) en.wikipedia.org
- Wikipedia, "Cimabue" (CC BY-SA 4.0), which cites: Maxwell, "Tuscany & Umbria", Lonely Planet, 2010, p. 364 (original not read by us) en.wikipedia.org
- Wikipedia, "Cimabue" (CC BY-SA 4.0), which cites: Paoletti, "Art in Renaissance Italy", Laurence King Publishing, 2005, p. 85 (original not read by us) en.wikipedia.org
- Wikipedia, "Cimabue" (CC BY-SA 4.0), which cites: White, "Art and architecture in Italy 1250-1400", Yale University Press, 26 May 1993, p. 175; Kleinhenz, "Medieval Italy: An Encyclopedia", Routledge, 2004, p. 223–224 (original not read by us) en.wikipedia.org
- Wikipedia, "Cimabue" (CC BY-SA 4.0), which cites: Vasari, "Lives of the Artists, 1550", Oxford University Press, 1991, p. 13 (we also read that source) en.wikipedia.org
- Wikipedia, "Cimabue" (CC BY-SA 4.0), which cites: Van Vechten Brown, "A Short History of Italian Painting", J. M. Dent & Sons, Ltd., 1914; Brink, "Carpentry and Symmetry in Cimabue's Santa Croce Crucifix", The Burlington Magazine, October 1978 (original not read by us) en.wikipedia.org
- Wikipedia, "Cimabue" (CC BY-SA 4.0), which cites: Havely, "Dante and the Franciscans: Poverty and the Papacy in the 'Commedia'", Cambridge University Press, 2004, p. 39; Brooke, "The Image of St. Francis: Responses to Sainthood in the Thirteenth Century", Cambridge University Press, 2006, p. 352 (original not read by us) en.wikipedia.org
- "Madonna Enthroned with the Child, St. Francis, St. Dominic, and two Angels attributed to Cimabue", Uffizi Galleries. facts only, no text reused. uffizi.it
Each numbered sentence above was checked against the source it cites before publication. Sentences citing Wikipedia adapt text from the English Wikipedia article Cimabue (contributors), used under CC BY-SA 4.0; this entry is available under the same licence. Other sources were used for facts only; no text or images are copied from them.
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