A New Look at Cimabue. At the Origins of Italian Painting

He was a genius, famous and yet little-known. What were his works, what was his life...? There are many grey areas surrounding this painter who was active at the end of the 13th century. Only one thing is certain: Cimabue is the father of Western painting, and this truth, accepted for centuries, has long been accepted without details. At first, he was just a name around which a myth was forged, without any work being associated with him. A name or rather a nickname - unexplained - since Cimabue’s real name was Cenni di Pepo. The first author to mention him was Dante a few years after his death, who did so in somewhat cruel terms, evoking through him the fleeting nature of Fame: Cimabue "had thought he had the field to himself, and now Giotto has the favour". The first author to link his name to concrete creations was Giorgio Vasari in his Vite in the 16th century, two hundred years later [1]... And while the body of work he proposes contains a number of errors, he already cites the Maestás of the Louvre and Santa Trinita, the Crucifixes of Arezzo and Santa Croce, the mosaic of Pisa and the frescoes of Assisi.

1. Workshop or school of Sandro Botticelli (1445-1510)
The Virgin and Child, c. 1500
Tempera on panel - 62.5 x 47 cm
Lille, Palais des Beaux-Arts
Photo: bbsg

See the image in its page

Cimabue was presented as the first to have broken with the ‘’Greek manner‘’ i.e. with the model of Byzantine icons widely used in Italy. Recognised as a visionary painter, he was nevertheless credited with works that were not his. The first collector to acquire one of his paintings was Piero de’ Medici at the end of the 15th century: it was a Lamentation over the Dead Christ now attributed to Lippo di Benivieni, a painter documented between 1296 and 1327. The first painting by Cimabue to enter the Louvre in 1802 was a Madonna and Child, actually painted c. 1500 by an artist from Botticelli’s entourage (ill. 1). The Marquis Campana had a fresco removed from…