Cimabue ~ Biography 1240 – 1302 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 (1511 – 1574) endears Cimabue as
the foundation of Italian painting and is literally chapter one
of his work, The Lives of Artists (first published in 1550).
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 thou