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And he had in his mind two vast conceptions, one being to restore to light the good manner of architecture, since he believed that if he could recover it he would leave behind no less a name for himself than Cimabue and Giotto had done; and the other was to find a method, if he could, of raising the Cupola of S. Maria del Fiore in Florence, the difficulties of which were such that after the death of Arnolfo Lapi there had been no one courageous enough to think of raising it without vast expenditure for a wooden framework.
Francis at Assisi. Another story is told by Vasari of a picture by Cimabue, which tradition asserts to be the great Madonna, still in the Church of Santa Maria Novella at Florence. Cimabue painted a picture of Our Lady for the church of Santa Maria Novella.
So he learned Latin with the man who had taught Dante, and Dante was admitted to be the most learned man of his times, and he ground the colours and washed the brushes for Cimabue, and drew under the master's eye everything that he saw, and became, as the chronicler Villani says of him, 'the most sovereign master of painting to be found in his time, and the one who most of all others took all figures and all action from nature. And Villani was his contemporary, and knew him when he was growing old, and recorded his death and his splendid funeral.
She had examined at Santa Maria-Novella the frescoes of Ghirlandajo, the stalls of the choir, the Virgin of Cimabue, the paintings in the cloister. She had done this carefully, in memory of her husband, who had greatly liked Italian art. She was tired. Choulette sat by her and said: "Madame, could you tell me whether it is true that the Pope's gowns are made by Worth?" Madame Marmet thought not.
To be sure, the thirteenth century was one of the greatest in the annals of the race. In it the foremost European universities were founded, the sublimest Gothic cathedrals were built, some of the world's finest works of handicraft were made; in it Cimabue and Giotto painted, Dante wrote, St. Thomas Aquinas philosophized, and St. Francis of Assisi lived.
They seem proud of their burden as they hold up the Madonna and Child." "Oh, nonsense, Barbara! you are putting too much imagination in there," exclaimed Malcom. "I think old Cimabue did do something, but it is an awfully bad picture, after all. There is one thing, though; it is not so flat as that Academy Magdalen. The child's head seems round, and I do think his face has a bit of expression."
Giunta the Pisan, Gaddo Gaddi, and Cimabue, are supposed to have worked there, painfully continuing or feebly struggling to throw off the decadent traditions of a dying art. In their school Giotto laboured, and modern painting arose with the movement of new life beneath his brush.
Vasari has it that Arnolfo was assisted on the Duomo by Cimabue; but that is doubtful. The foundations were consecrated in 1296 and the first stone laid on September 8th, 1298, and no one was more interested in its early progress than a young, grave lawyer who used to sit on a stone seat on the south side and watch the builders, little thinking how soon he was to be driven from Florence for ever.
The main points, however, to be borne in mind is that whereas Cimabue and Duccio started painting on walls under the influence of Byzantine teachers, Hubert van Eyck, a century later, began painting on wooden panels under that of illuminators and painters in books.
We fancy he only surpassed Cimabue eclipsed by greater brightness. Not so. The sudden and new applause of Italy would never have been won by mere increase of the already-kindled light. Giotto had wholly another work to do.
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