Cimabue

Cimabue (c. 1240–1302), also known as Cenni di Pepo, was a painter and designer of mosaics from Florence. Little is known of his early life. He is documented in Rome around 1272, later worked at Assisi during the pontificate of Pope Nicholas IV on the apse and transept of the Upper Basilica of San Francesco, and spent his last years in Pisa, where he worked on the apse mosaic of the cathedral and where he died. Though heavily influenced by Byzantine models, he is generally regarded as one of the first great Italian painters to break from the Italo-Byzantine style, giving his figures more lifelike proportions and using shading to suggest volume. His Maestà for San Francesco in Pisa, now in the Louvre, set a pattern followed by Duccio and Giotto. Vasari made him Giotto's teacher, a claim many scholars now discount, and Dante, in the Purgatorio, uses him as an example of fame quickly overtaken by Giotto. Here: Virgin and Child with Two Angels.