Little is known about the life of Cenni di Pepo, better known as Cimabue. Likely born around 1240 in Florence, and passing away in 1302, this pioneering artist transformed the pictorial conventions of his era. Having studied under Coppo di Marcovaldo, then considered the finest painter of his generation, Cimabue soon eclipsed his master to become the most sought-after artist working between Florence and Rome.
What made Cimabue so revolutionary? He managed to breathe life into the rigid, flat world of Byzantine art. Under his brush, religious figures gained physical presence and inner life: bodies acquired real weight and dimension, while faces conveyed authentic human emotion. The sacred remained majestic, yet it no longer felt distant, so divinity became something viewers could understand and connect with.
Though time has taken its toll on his works, what survives speaks volumes about his genius. His frescoes in Assisi’s Basilica of St. Francis still radiate emotional power; the Madonna Enthroned from Santa Trinita church, now a treasure of the Uffizi, shows us a Virgin Mary who is simultaneously queenly and warmly maternal; the San Domenico Crucifix in Arezzo (around 1270) is the first work we can definitively attribute to him; while his mosaic of John the Baptist in Pisa Cathedral (1301) represents his only known venture into that medium.
It was beneath this very Arezzo Crucifix that art historian Miriam Fileti Mazza chose to unveil her comprehensive study of the artist. This latest addition to the Menarini Art Series chronicles the journey of an artist who “broke free from Byzantine artistic constraints to pioneer a revolutionary approach to visual representation.” In doing so, Cimabue established the artistic foundation that Giotto would build upon, ultimately sparking the Renaissance and permanently altering the trajectory of Western art.
Fittingly, art historian Miriam Fileti Mazza presented her monograph on Cimabue standing before that very Arezzo Crucifix. Her book, the latest in the prestigious Menarini Art Collection, tells «the story of a man who, breaking free from the constraints of Byzantine tradition, inaugurated a new way of seeing and representing the world, opening the path toward the art that would eventually lead to the Renaissance». By doing so, Cimabue laid the groundwork for his student Giotto and, ultimately, for the Renaissance itself, forever changing how Western culture sees and depicts the world.