Cimabue

The endless flood of evils that had cast down and drowned wretched Italy had not only ruined those things that could truly be called buildings but, what mattered more, had completely extinguished the whole body of artists. Then, as God willed, Giovanni, surnamed Cimabue, was born in the city of Florence in the year 1240, to give the first light to the art of painting. He belonged to the Cimabui, a family noble in those days.

As he grew up, his father and others judged him to possess a fine and acute mind. He was therefore sent to Santa Maria Novella to be trained in letters by a relative of his who was a schoolmaster and then taught grammar to the novices of that convent. But instead of attending to his letters, Cimabue, feeling himself drawn to this by nature, spent the whole day drawing men, horses, buildings and various other imaginings in his books and on other sheets of paper.

Fortune favoured this natural inclination. Some Greek painters had been summoned to Florence by those who then governed the city, for no other purpose than to restore painting there, which had been lost rather than merely gone astray. Among the various works they undertook in the city, they began the Gondi Chapel in Santa Maria Novella, beside the principal chapel, where its vaults and walls can still be seen, almost consumed by time. Cimabue, having begun to take an interest in the art he loved, often ran away from school and spent the whole day watching those masters at work. His father and those painters judged him so well suited to painting that, if he devoted himself to the profession, an honourable outcome could be expected. To Cimabue’s considerable satisfaction, his father therefore placed him with them. Through constant practice, and so greatly aided by nature, he soon far surpassed the manner of the masters who taught him, both in drawing and in colouring. They had made the works that can still be seen today without caring to advance any further: not in the good ancient Greek manner but in the clumsy modern manner of their own times.

Although Cimabue imitated those Greeks, he added much perfection to the art and stripped away a great part of their clumsiness of manner. He honoured his native city by his reputation and by the works he made. His paintings in Florence bear witness to this: the dossal of the altar of Santa Cecilia, for example, and a panel in Santa Croce containing an image of Our Lady, which was, and still is, set against a pier on the right around the choir. After this, on a small panel with a gold ground, he painted a Saint Francis and portrayed him from life—as well as he knew how—which was a new thing in those times. Around the saint he placed all the stories of his life in twenty little compartments, full of small figures on a gold ground.

He then undertook a large panel for the Vallombrosan monks in the abbey of Santa Trinita in Florence. Applying great diligence in order to live up to the reputation he had already acquired, he displayed in that work better invention and a beautiful manner in the attitudes of Our Lady, whom he represented with her son in her arms and with many angels around her in adoration, on a gold ground. When it was finished, the monks placed the panel on the high altar of the church. It was later removed to make way for the panel by Alesso Baldovinetti that is there today and was placed in a smaller chapel in the left aisle of the church.

Next, in a fresco on the front of the Porcellana Hospital, at the corner of the new street leading towards Borgo Ognissanti, he painted the Virgin receiving the Annunciation from the Angel on one side of the main door, and Jesus Christ with Cleopas and Luke on the other, all life-sized figures. In this work he cast off that old-fashioned quality, making the draperies, garments and other things somewhat livelier, more natural and softer than in the manner of those Greeks, which was filled throughout with lines and contours, in mosaics as in paintings. For many, many years the painters of those times had taught this rough, clumsy and commonplace manner to one another through mere custom rather than study, never thinking of improving their drawing, making their colouring beautiful or achieving any worthy invention.

After this work Cimabue was again called by the same guardian who had commissioned his works in Santa Croce, and he made for him a large wooden Crucifix, which can still be seen in the church. The guardian considered himself so well served that, because of this work, he took Cimabue to their convent of San Francesco in Pisa to paint a Saint Francis on panel. The people there considered it a most rare thing, recognising in it a certain greater excellence—in the expression of the head and in the folds of the draperies—than had until then been employed in the Greek manner by anyone who had made such a work, not only in Pisa but in all Italy.

For the same church Cimabue then painted a large panel showing Our Lady with her son in her arms and many angels around them, again on a gold ground. Before long it was removed from the place where it had first been installed to make room for the marble altar now there, and it was placed inside the church, on the left beside the door. For this work he was greatly praised and rewarded by the Pisans. In the same city, at the request of the then abbot of San Paolo in Ripa d’Arno, he painted a small panel of Saint Agnes, surrounding her with small figures representing all the stories of her life. The panel is now above the altar of the virgins in that church.

Through these works Cimabue’s name became widely renowned, and he was taken to Assisi, a city of Umbria. There, in company with several Greek masters, he painted parts of the vaults in the Lower Church of San Francesco, and on its walls the life of Jesus Christ and that of Saint Francis. In these paintings he far surpassed those Greek painters. His courage thereby increased, and he began on his own to paint the Upper Church in fresco. In the principal tribune above the choir, on four wall surfaces, he painted several stories of Our Lady: her death; Christ carrying her soul into heaven upon a throne of clouds; and Christ crowning her amid a choir of angels, with a great number of male and female saints below, now consumed by time and dust.

He also painted many scenes on the five cross-vaults of that church. On the first, above the choir, he made the four Evangelists larger than life and so well that much good can still be recognised in them. The freshness of the colours in their flesh shows that, through Cimabue’s labours, painting began to make great advances in fresco work. He filled the second cross-vault with gold stars on a ground of ultramarine blue. On the third he made roundels containing Jesus Christ, the Virgin his mother, Saint John the Baptist and Saint Francis—one figure in each roundel and one roundel in each quarter of the vault. Between this and the fifth cross-vault, he painted the fourth, like the second, with gold stars on ultramarine blue. On the fifth he painted the four Doctors of the Church and, beside each, one of the four earliest religious orders: certainly a laborious work, carried out with infinite diligence.

When the vaults were finished, he painted in fresco along the upper walls on the left side of the entire church. Towards the high altar, between the windows and reaching up to the vault, he made eight scenes from the Old Testament, beginning with the opening of Genesis and continuing with its most notable events. In the space around the windows, down to where they end at the gallery running around within the wall of the church, he painted the rest of the Old Testament in another eight scenes. Opposite these, corresponding to them, he painted the deeds of Our Lady and of Jesus Christ in sixteen further scenes. On the wall at the foot of the church, above the main door and around the great circular window, he painted her Assumption into heaven and the Holy Spirit descending upon the Apostles.

This truly vast, rich and very well-executed work must, in my judgement, have astonished the world in those times, especially since painting had remained in such blindness for so long. When I saw it again in 1563, it appeared most beautiful to me; I marvelled that, amid so much darkness, Cimabue could see so great a light. Of all these paintings—and this must be taken into account—those on the vaults have been much better preserved than the others, being less exposed to dust and other accidents.

When these works were complete, Giovanni began to paint the lower walls, those below the windows, and made some things there. But, being summoned to Florence on business of his own, he did not continue the work. As will be told in the appropriate place, Giotto finished it many years later.

Having returned to Florence, Cimabue painted in the cloister of Santo Spirito, where other masters had painted in the Greek manner. Along the entire side facing the church he painted three small arches with scenes from the life of Christ, certainly with much drawing. At the same time, he sent several works he had made in Florence to Empoli, and these are still held in great veneration in the collegiate church of that town.

He then made for the church of Santa Maria Novella the panel of Our Lady that is placed high up between the Rucellai Chapel and the Bardi da Vernia Chapel. This work was larger than any figure that had been made up to that time. Although Cimabue still possessed the Greek manner, some of the angels around the Virgin show that he was drawing closer in part to the lineaments and method of the modern manner. Since nothing better had yet been seen, the work caused such wonder among the people of that age that it was carried from Cimabue’s house to the church with great festivity, trumpets and a most solemn procession; and he was richly rewarded and honoured for it.

It is said—and can be read in certain records of old painters—that while Cimabue was painting this panel in some gardens near the Porta San Piero, King Charles the Elder of Anjou passed through Florence. Among the many welcomes offered to him by the men of the city, they took him to see Cimabue’s panel. Since no one had yet seen it, all the men and women of Florence crowded in with the greatest festivity and the greatest crush imaginable when it was shown to the king. Because of the joy this brought the neighbours, they called the place Borgo Allegri; when it was later enclosed within the city walls, it kept that name.

In the cloister of San Francesco in Pisa, beside the door leading into the church, there is in one corner a small panel in tempera by Cimabue, among other works he made there. It contains Christ on the cross with several angels around him. Weeping, the angels take in their hands certain words written around Christ’s head and carry them to the ears of Our Lady, who stands weeping on the right, and to Saint John the Evangelist, who stands grieving on the left. The words addressed to the Virgin are Mulier, ecce filius tuus—“Woman, behold your son”—and those addressed to Saint John are Ecce mater tua—“Behold your mother”. Those held by another angel standing apart say Ex illa hora accepit eam discipulus in suam—“From that hour the disciple took her into his own home.” It should be observed in this that Cimabue began to give light and to open the way to invention, helping art with words in order to express his conception. This was certainly an imaginative and novel thing.

By means of these works Cimabue had gained both great profit and a very great name, and he was appointed as an architect, together with Arnolfo Lapi, then a man excellent in architecture, to the building works of Santa Maria del Fiore in Florence. Finally, having lived for sixty years, he passed to the next life in the year 1300, after all but resurrecting painting. He left many pupils, among them Giotto, who afterwards became an excellent painter. Giotto later lived in his master’s own houses in the Via del Cocomero.

Cimabue was buried in Santa Maria del Fiore with this epitaph, composed for him by one of the Nini:

Credidit ut Cimabos picturae castra tenere,Sic tenuit; nunc tenet astra poli.

Cimabue believed himself to hold the field of painting; so indeed he did; now he holds the stars of heaven.

I will not fail to say that, had the greatness of Cimabue’s pupil Giotto not stood against his glory, Cimabue’s fame would have been greater. Dante demonstrates this in his Comedy, where, in the eleventh canto of the Purgatorio, alluding to this same tomb inscription, he said:

Cimabue thought himself to holdthe field in painting; now Giotto has the acclaim,so that he obscures the other’s fame.

In explaining these verses, a commentator on Dante who wrote while Giotto was alive, ten or twelve years after Dante’s death—that is, around the year of Christ 1334—speaks of Cimabue in precisely these words:

Cimabue of Florence was a painter in the author’s time, of a nobility beyond what anyone knew; yet with this he was so arrogant and disdainful that, if anyone found any failing or defect in one of his works, or if he saw one himself—for it often happens that an artist errs because of a defect in the material on which he works, or because of a shortcoming in the instrument he uses—he would immediately abandon that work, however precious it might be. Giotto was, and is, the greatest among the painters of the same city of Florence; his works bear witness to this in Rome, Naples, Avignon, Florence, Padua and many parts of the world, and so forth.

This commentary is now in the possession of the Most Reverend Don Vincenzio Borghini, prior of the Innocenti: a man renowned not only for his nobility, goodness and learning, but also such a lover and connoisseur of all the finest arts that Duke Cosimo judiciously chose him as his lieutenant in our Accademia del Disegno.

But to return to Cimabue: Giotto truly obscured his fame, just as a great light diminishes the splendour of a much smaller one. For although Cimabue was, as it were, the first cause of the renewal of the art of painting, Giotto—his own pupil—was moved by praiseworthy ambition and aided by Heaven and by nature. Raising his thought still higher, he opened the door of truth to those who afterwards brought painting to the perfection and greatness in which we see it in our own century.

Our age, accustomed every day to seeing the marvels, miracles and apparent impossibilities achieved by artists in this art, has now reached such a point that it is not at all astonished by anything men make, however divine rather than human it may be. And fortunate indeed are those who labour worthily if, instead of receiving praise and admiration, they do not reap blame and, very often, shame.

A portrait of Cimabue by Simone of Siena can be seen in the chapter house of Santa Maria Novella. It is a profile figure in the Story of the Faith, with a lean face, a small reddish pointed beard and a hood, in the fashion of those times, beautifully wrapped around his head and beneath his chin. The figure beside him is Simone himself, the master of that work, who portrayed himself with two mirrors, reflecting one into the other so as to show his head in profile. The armoured soldier between them is said to be Count Guido Novello, then lord of Poppi.

It remains for me to say of Cimabue that, at the beginning of one of my books in which I have assembled drawings made by the own hands of all those who have practised drawing from his time onwards, several small works by Cimabue can be seen, made in the manner of miniatures. Although today they may perhaps appear clumsy rather than otherwise, they show how greatly drawing improved through his work.

[[end]] End of the Life of Cimabue.