_Cimabue_ (Florentine: 1240-1302).
Giovanni Cenni, called Cimabue, has been called the "Father of
Modern Painting." He imitated the Byzantine style, says Vasari,
but "improved the art and relieved it greatly from its uncouth
manner." He did not entirely free himself from the dismal
formalism of his predecessors, but he infused new life into
the old traditional types. A contemporary of his was Niccola
Pisano, whose work in the allied art of sculpture shows a more
marked advance, and who perhaps really gave the new impulse
which art received at this period--an impulse carried on in the
field of painting by Cimabue's pupil, Giotto. Niccola Pisano,
says Ruskin, "is the Master of Naturalism in Italy,--therefore
elsewhere: of Naturalism and all that follows" (_Val d'Arno_,
§ 16). Well-authenticated pictures by Cimabue are the Madonna
panel with angels in the Academy at Florence (formerly in the
church of SS. Trinita), and the colossal Madonna still in the
Rucellai chapel in S. Maria Novella. The latter is the picture
of which the well-known story, referred to below, is told. Our
picture, which is also mentioned by Vasari, was originally
attached to a pilaster in the choir of S. Croce.[149]
Cimabue also executed some of the frescoes in the Upper
Church at Assisi: and at the time of his death was occupied
on the mosaics in the tribune of the Duomo at Pisa. Copies
of Cimabue's frescoes may be seen in the Arundel Society's
Collection.
The changes which Cimabue introduced into the art of painting were
twofold. In the first place, his pictures show an _increase of
pictorial skill_. This picture has suffered much from time. Thus in the
Madonna's face, which was originally laid in green and painted over
thinly, time and restorations have removed this over-painting, and left
the green exposed (see also Duccio's 566). The green and purple of her
dress also have changed into a dusky tone; but even so, the advance
in pictorial skill may be seen in the shading of the colours, and the
attempt to represent the light and dark masses of the drapery, whereas
in earlier pictures the painters had been content with flat tints. But
the advance made by Cimabue was even more in spirit than in technical
skill. He combined the contemplation of the South with the action of
the North. He gave the populace of his day something to look at--and
something to love. "Is she not beautiful," asks a critic before this
picture, "in simplicity and solemn majesty? Is she not a real mother
with a half sad and foreboding wistful look that goes straight to the
heart?" Cimabue's Madonna is still a Mater Dolorosa--"our Lady of
Pain," but there is an attempt alike in her and in the child, and in
the attendant angels, to substitute for the conventional image of an
ideal personage the _representation of real humanity_. It was this
change that explains the story told of one of Cimabue's works, that
it was carried in glad procession, with the sound of trumpets, from
his house to the church, and that the place was ever afterwards called
"Borgo Allegro" (the joyful quarter)--a name which it bears to this
day. "This delight was not merely in the revelation of an art they
had not known how to practise; it was delight in the _revelation of a
Madonna whom they had not known how to love_" (_Mornings in Florence_,
ii. 48). In telling this story, Vasari adds that "they had not seen
anything better"; the rudeness and quaintness which are all that at
first sight are now discernible would then, it must be remembered, have
been unseen. We may recall the poet's protest against those who,
Because of some stiff draperies and loose joints,
Gaze scorn down from the heights of Raffaelhood
On Cimabue's picture.
MRS. BROWNING: _Casa Guidi Windows_.