Cimabue: The Complete Story
Cimabue was the Florentine master who began prising Western painting away from the Byzantine icon, and the teacher of Giotto. Born around 1240, he was the most famous painter alive until his own pupil, in Dante's words, took the cry from him.
His story is the hinge of art history: the last of one world, the doorman of the next. And its latest chapter happened in a French kitchen in 2019.
Cimabue at a glance:
Active in Florence from about 1272; Dante made him the emblem of surpassed fame.
His Santa Trinita Maestà anchors the first room of the Uffizi.
The 1966 Florence flood destroyed most of his Santa Croce Crucifix.
Tradition makes him Giotto's discoverer and teacher.
A lost panel rediscovered in a French kitchen sold for 24 million euros in 2019.
The name before Giotto
His real name was Cenni di Pepo; Cimabue was the nickname history kept. In the Florence of the late 1200s he was the painter, filling churches with monumental crucifixes and enthroned Madonnas.
His Santa Trinita Maesta, painted around 1290 and now in the Uffizi, still stands at the entrance of the museum's story of painting: gold ground and Byzantine formula, but with a throne that recedes and faces that begin to breathe.
Assisi, and the accident that turned him modern
In the Basilica of San Francesco at Assisi he frescoed the Crucifixion and scenes of the apocalypse in the 1280s.
The lead white in his pigments has oxidised to black over the centuries, flipping the images into ghostly negatives, darkness where light was. Ruined, they are strangely the most modern looking pictures of the thirteenth century.
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Dante's warning label
Cimabue's fame carries a barb, planted around 1315: in the Purgatorio, Dante writes that Cimabue thought he held the field in painting, and now Giotto has the cry.
Vasari added the legend of the discovery, Cimabue finding the shepherd boy Giotto drawing a sheep on a stone and taking him in. The teacher became, forever, the man history passed.
The myth: the primitive before the genius
Filed as a mere forerunner, Cimabue reads better as the man who made Giotto possible. The weight in his figures, the grief on his painted mourners, the throne that occupies space: the break with the flat icon starts with him.
Even Dante's put down proves the point; you do not name check a nobody as the standard genius must surpass.
The flood that nearly took him
His giant Crucifix in Santa Croce, painted around 1280, was the most famous casualty of the Florence flood of 4 November 1966: submerged in oil and mud, most of Christ's face lost. Its decade long restoration became the emblem of the world's rescue of Florence, and it hangs again in the church, scars showing, kept as a memorial as much as a painting.
Where to see Cimabue
The Uffizi keeps the Santa Trinita Maesta, Santa Croce the flood scarred Crucifix, Assisi the blackened frescoes, and the Louvre his Maesta from Pisa. He died around 1302, in Pisa, working on the apse mosaic of its cathedral, the last documented work of his hand.
The flood that made him a symbol
On November 4, 1966, the Arno flood submerged Santa Croce and stripped most of the paint from his great Crucifix.
The ruined cross toured the world as the emblem of fragile heritage, and modern conservation science was largely built in its rescue workshops.
Dante's warning label
In the Purgatorio, Dante writes that Cimabue thought he held the field in painting, and now the cry is Giotto's.
One tercet fixed him forever as the man fame passed by, which is unfair and immortal at once: being surpassed by Giotto is the most distinguished defeat in art.
The kitchen panel of 2019
In 2019 an old woman near Compiègne had her house appraised; above the hotplate hung a small Mocking of Christ, catalogued as an icon.
It was Cimabue, part of a dispersed 1280 diptych, and sold for 24 million euros, a record for a pre-1500 painting. France barred export and bought it for the Louvre.
The Cimabue questions that keep coming up
What is he known for? Monumental Madonnas and crucifixes that began the break from Byzantine painting, and teaching Giotto.
What did Dante say about him? That he once held the field, and Giotto now has the cry: fame's short lease, in two lines.
What happened to his Crucifix? The 1966 Florence flood destroyed much of it; restored, it hangs in Santa Croce with its scars.
When did he die? Around 1302, in Pisa, working on the cathedral's apse mosaic.
What happened to the Santa Croce Crucifix? The 1966 Arno flood destroyed some sixty percent of its paint. Restored as a partial ruin, it hangs in the Santa Croce museum as conservation's great memento.
What was found in the French kitchen? A small Cimabue panel, The Mocking of Christ, hanging over a stove near Compiègne, sold in 2019 for 24 million euros and acquired by the Louvre.
More secrets to unlock
One last fact
In 2019 a small panel hanging over a cooker in an elderly woman's kitchen in Compiegne, France, was identified as Cimabue's Mocking of Christ.
2 million euros, a record for any painting made before 1500, and France barred it from export. Seven centuries after Giotto took the cry, Cimabue set the record.
