St. Peter and St. Paul in 1295, found in the Palazzo Pubblico of Siena. In 1302, he pilloried twelve forgers in a portrait on the front of the tribunal of Justice. He was one of three sons of Gratiano, and lived in the parish of San Donate in Montanini. He brought up to his profession a son named Bartolommeo, or Meo, who afterwards (1319) worked in Perugia. Guido’s brothers, Mino and Guarnieri, or Neri, were also artists. If we concede any value to the inscription on the altarpiece of Guido in San Domenico, we must in turn suppose that the painter is Guido Gratiani and that his work is later than 1221, and dates from the close of the century.
Following this deduction, Siena could not lay claim to a superiority in art during the thirteenth century. Niccola and Giovanni Pisano furnished the chief ornaments of her cathedral, and under the guidance of these and other strangers, the school of which Agnolo and Agostino were afterwards the ornaments arose in 1300. The Sienese rivalled the Florentines after the time of Cimabue.
Duccio, Ugolino, Simone, and Lorenzetti are entitled to well-deserved admiration, but their influence remained second to that of Cimabue and Giotto.
Painting may be said to have followed much the same course at Arezzo as at Lucca, Pisa, and Siena. Crucifixes, portraits of St. Francis, and a few Madonnas were the staple of their production, and these were of a less attractive character than the works of other Italian cities. A small crucifix, of the close of the twelfth century in Santa Maria della Pieve, in which Christ is represented erect and open-eyed; another, of the same character and date in the chapel del Sacramento, contiguous to the Collegiata of Castiglione Aretino; and a third, colossal, of a later period, in San Domenico of Arezzo, in which the feet of Christ are still separate but the body is in a state of contortion, mark the progress of the same decline in Arezzo as elsewhere.
Christ in the Garden of Olives, 12th to 13th century.
Mosaic. Nave of the St. Mark Basilica, Venice.
Giovanni Cimabue 1240–1302
Giotto di Bondone, Maestà (Ognissanti Madonna), 1305–1310.
Tempera on wood, 325 × 204 cm.
Galleria degli Uffizi, Florence.
Giovanni of Florence, of the noble family of the Cimabue, aka Gualtieri, was born in 1240. At an early age, his parents sent him to study grammar in the school of the convent of Santa Maria Novella, where (as is also related of other innate painters), instead of conning his task, he distracted his teachers by drawing men, horses, and buildings on his schoolbooks; before printing was invented, this spoiling of schoolbooks must have been a rather costly fancy, and no doubt alarmed the professors of Greek and Latin. His parents, wisely yielding to the natural desire of his mind, allowed him to study painting under some Greek artists who had come to Florence to decorate the church of the convent in which he was a scholar. It seems doubtful whether Cimabue did indeed study under the specific painters alluded to by Vasari, but that his masters and models were the Byzantine painters of the time seems to be of no doubt whatsoever. The earliest of his works mentioned by Vasari still exists – a St. Cecilia, painted for the altar of that saint, but now preserved in the church of San Stefano. He was later employed by the monks of Vallombrosa, for whom he painted a Madonna with Angels on a gold background, now preserved in the Galleria dell’Academia in Florence. He also painted a Crucifixion for the church of Santa Croce, still on display, and several pictures for the churches of Pisa to the great contentment of the Pisans. By these and other works, his fame being spread far and near, he was called in the year 1265, when he was only 25-years-old, to finish the frescoes in the church of St. Francis in Assisi, which had been begun by Greek painters and continued by Giunta Pisano.
The decoration of this celebrated church is memorable in the history of painting. It is known that many of the best artists of the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries were employed there, but only fragments of the earliest pictures exist and the authenticity of those ascribed to Cimabue has been disputed by many. Lanzi, however, and Dr. Kugler agree in attributing him with the paintings on the roof of the nave, representing, in medallions, the figures of Christ, the Madonna, St. John the Baptist, St. Francis, and four magnificent winged and sceptred angels. “In the lower corners of the triangles are represented naked Genii bearing tasteful vases on their heads; out of these grow rich foliage and flowers, on which hang other Genii, who pluck the fruit or lurk in the cups of the flowers.”[1] If these are really by the hand of Cimabue, it must be concluded that here lies a great step in advance of the formal monotony of his Greek models. He executed many other pictures in this famous church, “con diligenza infinita” from the Old and New Testaments, in which, judging from the remaining fragments, he showed a decided improvement in drawing, in propriety of attitude, and in the expression of life. But still, the figures have only just so much animation and significance as are absolutely necessary to render the story or action intelligible. There is no variety, no expressive imitation of nature.
Cimabue, Saint Francis (detail).
Museo della Porziuncola, Church of Santa Maria degli Angeli, Assisi.
Cimabue, Saint Francis, detail from The Virgin and Child with Angels and Saint Francis, c. 1280–1283.
Fresco. Right transept, Lower Basilica of San Francesco, Assisi.
In his figures of the Virgin he did not improve much on the Byzantine models. The faces are not beautiful, the features are elongated, the extremities weak, the general effect flat. But to his heads of prophets, patriarchs, and apostles, whether introduced into his great pictures of the Madonna or in other sacred subjects, he gave a certain grandeur of expression and largeness of form, or, as Lanzi expresses it, “un non so che di forte e sublime”, in which he has not been greatly surpassed by succeeding painters. This energy of expression – his chief and distinguishing excellence which gave him the superiority over Guido of Siena and others who painted only Madonnas – was in harmony with his personal character. He is described to us as exceedingly haughty and disdainful, of a fiery temperament, proud of his high lineage, his skill in his art, and his various acquirements, for he was well studied in all the literature of his age. If a critic found fault with one of his works when in progress, or if he were himself dissatisfied with it, he would destroy it at once, whatever pains it might have cost him. From these traits of character, and the bent of his genius, which leaned to the grand and terrible rather than the gentle and graceful, he has been styled as the Michelangelo of his time. Vasari recorded of him that he painted a head of St. Francis “after nature”, a thing, he says, still unknown at the time. It could not have been a portrait from life, because St. Francis died in 1225. The earliest head ‘after nature’ which remains was the portrait of Frate Elia, a monk of Assisi, painted by Giunta Pisano around 1235. Perhaps Vasari meant that the San Francesco was the first representation of a sacred personage for which nature had been used as a model.
According to Vasari, all the arts apparently decayed at the same time. Sculpture was restored by Nicola Pisano, architecture by Duccio, mosaics and painting by Florentines taught by Greeks. However, the revival might not only be due to Greeks. There are no records confirming the statement that the Florentine State ever sent for Grecian painters. Similarly, Vasari is wrong in supposing that Cimabue was the descendant of a noble Florentine family. The register of receipts and expenses of the convent of Santa Chiara of Pisa, contains a contract, from which it appears that Giovanni, or Cenni, bore the nickname of Cimabue, and was the son of a certain Pepi and lived in Florence in the parish of St. Ambrose.
Wherever Cimabue was taught, he learnt something more than his immediate precursors. Though he did not raise the
Franz Kugler,
