Cimabue

[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.

According to Vasari, Cimabue, while travelling from Florence to Vespignano, came upon the 10-year-old Giotto (c. 1277) drawing his sheep with a rough rock upon a smooth stone.

[11] This work established a style that was followed subsequently by numerous artists, including Duccio di Buoninsegna in his Rucellai Madonna (in the past, wrongly attributed to Cimabue) as well as Giotto.

Other works from the period, which were said to have heavily influenced Giotto, include a Flagellation (Frick Collection),[12] mosaics for the Baptistery of Florence (now largely restored), the Maestà at the Santa Maria dei Servi in Bologna and the Madonna in the Pinacoteca of Castelfiorentino.

[15] At Assisi, in the transept of the Lower Basilica of San Francesco, he created a fresco named Madonna with Child Enthroned, Four Angels and St Francis.

The left portion of this fresco is lost, but it may have shown St Anthony of Padua (the authorship of the painting has been recently disputed for technical and stylistic reasons).

Cimabue was to create the part of the mosaic depicting St John the Evangelist, which remains the sole surviving work documented as being by the artist.

"[19] The nickname Cimabue translates as "bull-head" but also possibly as "one who crushes the views of others", from the Italian verb cimare, meaning "to top", "to shear", and "to blunt".

"[19] In Canto XI of his Purgatorio, Dante laments the quick loss of public interest in Cimabue in the face of Giotto's revolution in art.