And I have seen the aged Giotto, and he in turn was pupil to
Cimabue, before whom there was no art in Italy, for the Greeks were brought to paint the chapel of the Gondi at Florence.
The imitation of insect life was a signal of artistic invention: Vasari's life of Giotto retells an anecdote in which the artist, studying as a child with
Cimabue, painted on the nose of one of
Cimabue's figures a fly so realistic that the older artist attempted to brush it off.
He breaks down this development into three distinct periods: in the first age, beginning with
Cimabue and Giotto, art was reborn in Florence through the rediscovery of rudimentary technical and emotional realism; in the second, beginning with Masaccio, Brunelleschi, and others, art progressed toward increasing naturalism and fluency; in the third age, beginning with Leonardo and ending with Michelangelo, art reached its "perfection." It is a hierarchical and historiographic model of progress in the arts that has endured down to the present, one that is fully reflected in how art is curated and displayed in museums today.
One can imagine Baldinucci, author of Notizie de' professori del disegno da
Cimabue in qua (Notes on teachers of drawing from
Cimabue until now) and an amateur artist himself, collecting drawings to show Leopoldo while holding some back for himself.
From left: Untitled, 1963-70; Homage to
Cimabue Study, 1968.
[iii] Vasari G (1550) Le Vite de' piu Eccellenti Architetti, Pittori, et Scultori Italiani, da
Cimabue Insino a' Tempi Nostri.
In Arezzo, besides architectural monuments, there are noteworthy works of art by Donatello,
Cimabue, Piero della Francesca, Giorgio Vasari, and Pietro Annigoni, among others; there is a gold museum that speaks to the city's long involvement in the jewelry-making industry.
E fato que, como bem lembra Andre Malraux, "um crucifixo romanico nao era, de inicio, uma escultura; a Madona de
Cimabue nao era, de inicio, um quadro; nem sequer a Atena de Fidias era, de inicio, uma estatua".
Pode dizer-se que Joao Marcos "recria uma iconografia de raiz intemporal e essencialista, na tradicao iconologica protocrista, com passagens eletivas pela iconologia bizantina, por Giotto e por
Cimabue" (Silva, 2001), ao mesmo tempo que se reconhece que
Cimabue - painter of the Florentine school; anticipated the move from Byzantine to naturalistic art (1240-1302)