Who was Cimabue?
(1240-1302, Cenni di Peppi,) Giovanni Cimabue was a church mural painter/mosaicist born in the city of Florence, Italy, in the year 1240. He gained reknown for breaking away from the crude, stiff, two-dimensional and mediocre Byzantine style. Historical context: Born just 14 years after Thomas Aquinas, Cimabue appeared at the dawn of the Renaissance. His art accentuated and brought to light the history of the church by liberating the artist’s media from the flatness of traditional Byzantine, icon painting. Visual images were vital during this time period because they served as a teaching tool in the face of nearly universal illiteracy. Dante, a contemporary of Cimabue, wrote an epitaph in the Divine Comedy, in the eleventh Canto of the Purgatorio regarding Cimabue. “Once Cimabue thought to hold the field In painting; Giotto’s all the rage today; The other’s fame lies in the dust concealed.”(1) Another commentator on Dante shed additional light on Cimabue’s character about 10-12 years a
