Cimabue san francesco dassisi biography
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Cimabue
Noted as the last Italian painter of the Byzantine style, Cenni di Pepo, called Cimabue, is also credited with progressing art towards the naturalism seen in early Renaissance painting. The great biographer of Italian artists, Giorgio Vasari ( – ) endears Cimabue as the foundation of Italian painting and is literally chapter one of his work, The Lives of Artists (first published in ).
Cimabue’s inkling towards naturalism started early on, as Vasari notes of his youth, “…instead of paying attention to his literary studies, Cimabue, as if inspired by his nature, spent the whole day drawing men, horses, houses and various other fantasies in his books and papers. Still, Vasari took much creative license with Cimabue’s life and much of it was proven untrue by modern critics, but the artist survives in bringing a more human side to the last days of Byzantine art.
Cimabue is famously mentioned in the poet Dante’s The Divine Comedy, in Purgatorio, proclaiming, “Cimabue thought hi
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Cimabue
Italian artist (–)
Giovanni Cimabue (Italian:[tʃimaˈbuːe]),[1]c.&#; – ,[2] was an Italian painter and designer of mosaics from Florence. He was also known as Cenni di Pepo[3] or Cenni di Pepi.[4]
Although heavily influenced by Byzantine models, Cimabue is generally regarded as one of the first great Italian painters to break from the Italo-Byzantine style.[5] Compared with the norms of medieval art, his works have more lifelike figural proportions and a more sophisticated use of shading to suggest volume. According to Italian painter and historian Giorgio Vasari, Cimabue was the teacher of Giotto,[2] the first great artist of the Italian Proto-Renaissance. However, many scholars today tend to discount Vasari's claim by citing earlier sources that suggest otherwise.[6]
Life
[edit]Little is known about Cimabue's early life. One source that recounts his career is Vasari's Lives of
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Summary of Cimabue
As the foremost Tuscan painter and mosaicist of his generation, Cimabue took the lead role in the transition from the medieval to modern era of Italian art. In a subtle, yet unmistakable, break with the flat schematic methods of the Byzantine painters, Cimabue's work pointed to the potential for pictorial three dimensions and more naturalistic representations, effectively preparing the ground for the full rebirth of 14th-century Florentine art. Cimabue put down his own marker on the timeline of art history and is today celebrated for his influence on the next generation of Italian artists; most notably his apprentice Giotto, who overtook his mentor to become the first true Renaissance Master.
Accomplishments
- Although history has tended to relegate him to a supporting role in the rise of his "superstar" protégé Giotto, modern scholars have secured Cimabue's substantial legacy solely on the quality of his own paintings and mosaics. It was Cimabue, after all,