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 standard of art to a very high level, he certainly infused new life into old and worn concepts. He threw a new energy and individuality into the empty forms of the older guildsmen, and he injected some poetry, feeling, and colour upon what could have appeared as a degenerate school of painting. The wonder is not that he clung to the models that first shaped his designs, but the fact that he was able to achieve the advance which gave him repute through utilizing the background and techniques available to him. There are no intrinsically Greek elements in his art, which he simply evolved out of the rough Italian materials which have been examined in the works of the twelfth and thirteenth centuries. It is impossible to objectively countenance the belief that better skill in painting could have been found amongst the Greeks than amongst the Italians of the age of Cimabue.
It is sufficient that we shall be able to agree with Vasari in thinking that Cimabue was the first Italian who gave an impulse to progress in the arts of drawing and painting at a time when both were in a state of atrophy. It may be that he was not only sensible of the necessity for a change, but proud of having helped to bring it on. We read in the Purgatorio how conscious he was of holding the field which Giotto later wrested from him. In light of the commentary regarding his destruction of even slightly criticised works, the apparent admiration of his contemporaries was such that the occurrence of such an action is hard to imagine. Either way, it is definitely in contrast with the popular local anecdote of the region, according to which the Madonna Rucellai (a work erroneously ascribed to him for centuries), when finished, was so admired that when taken to its place of exhibition in Santa Maria Novella, it was carried in procession preceded by a band of trumpeteers, only after the mightiest lords and patricians of Florence had been invited to see it in the painter’s rooms. It can now be found in the Galleria degli Uffizi in Florence.[2]
Cimabue, Saint John the Evangelist, c. 1301–1302.
Mosaic. Apse, Cathedral of Pisa, Pisa.
Cimabue, Crucifix, c. 1272. 336 × 267 cm.
Church of San Domenico, Arezzo.
It is equally difficult to assign a date to the beginning of Cimabue’s independent practice as a painter and to say when the Madonna of Santa Maria Novella was first placed on the altar, where it continues to stand. “We must be content to accept the fact that, for the time in which it was executed, the Madonna Rucellai is a masterpiece.”
In this great and important picture, the Virgin is represented in a red tunic and blue mantle, her feet rest on an open-worked stool