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Updated: June 1, 2025
It was this, perhaps, which caused the enthusiasm excited by Cimabue's great Madonna, and made the people shout and dance for joy when it was uncovered before them. Compared with the spectral rigidity, the hard monotony, of the conventional Byzantines, the more animated eyes, the little touch of sweetness in the still, mild face, must have been like a smile out of heaven.
Put yourself in old Cimabue's place and in that of the people who had known only such figures in painting as the Magdalen you saw last week in the Academy.
"What kind of painting is it?" queried Barbara, as a few minutes later they stood in the little chapel, and looked up at Cimabue's quaint Madonna and Child. "It is called tempera, and is laid upon wood. In this process the paints are mixed with some glutinous substance, such as the albumen of eggs, glue, etc., which causes them to adhere to the surface on which they are placed."
Vasari dines at the ducal table, while Galileo's pension is the rack; the mob which carries Cimabue's canvas in triumph, drives Dante into exile; Rubens is a king's ambassador, and Grotius is sent to jail; to Reynolds's levees, poor, bankrupt Goldsmith steals like an unwelcome guest, and Apelles's gold is paid to him in measures, while Homer, singing immortal lines, goes blind and begging.
On the general question, however, let me reassure the reader by stating that so far as possible I have avoided the mention of any pictures, in the following pages, about which there is any grave doubt, save in a few cases where tradition is so firmly established that it seems heartless to disturb it until final judgment is entered of which the following examples of Cimabue's reputed work may be taken as types.
Compare Flaxman and Thorwaldsen and Gibson with Phidias and Praxiteles, Stevens with Michael Angelo, Bouguereau's Virgin with Cimabue's, or the best operatic Christs of Scheffer and Müller with the worst Christs that the worst painters could paint before the end of the fifteenth century, and you must feel that until we have a great religious movement we cannot hope for a great artistic one.
But to this day, among all the Mater Dolorosas of Christianity, Cimabue's at Assisi is the noblest; nor did any painter after him add one link to the chain of thought with which he summed the creation of the earth, and preached its redemption. He evidently never checked the boy, from the first day he found him.
It is sometimes a little difficult for casual students of the time to understand the marvellous reputation acquired by this medieval physician. It should not be, however, when we recall the enthusiastic reception and procession of welcome accorded to Cimabue's Madonna, and the almost universal acclaim of the greatness of Dante's work, even in his own time.
We pass on at the Accademia from Cimabue's pupil Giotto, to Giotto's followers, Taddeo Gaddi and Bernardo Daddi, and Daddi's follower Spinello Aretino, and the long dependent and interdependent line of painters. For the most part they painted altar-pieces, these early craftsmen, the Church being the principal patron of art.
To reconcile Drama with Dream, Cimabue's task was comparatively an easy one. But to reconcile Sense with I still use even this following word reverently Nonsense, is not so easy; and he who did it first, no wonder he has a name in the world. I must lean, however, still more distinctly on the word "domestic." For it is not Rationalism and commercial competition Mr.
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