Although heavily influenced by Byzantine models, Cimabue is generally regarded as one of the first great Italian painters to break from the Italo-Byzantine style.^[6] While medieval art then was scenes and forms that appeared relatively flat and highly stylized, Cimabue’s figures were depicted with more advanced lifelike proportions and shading than other artists of his time. According to Italian painter and historian Giorgio Vasari, Cimabue was the teacher of Giotto,^[3] the first great artist of the Italian Proto-Renaissance. However, many scholars today tend to discount Vasari’s claim by citing earlier sources that suggest otherwise.^[7]
Legacy
History has long regarded Cimabue as the last of an era that was overshadowed by the Italian Renaissance. As early as 1543, Vasari wrote of Cimabue, “Cimabue was, in one sense, the principal cause of the renewal of painting,” with the qualification that, “Giotto truly eclipsed Cimabue’s fame just as a great light eclipses a much smaller one.”^[19]