Cimabue

Cimabue, Giovanni (1240-1302), an Italian painter of Florence, and the founder of the Florentine school to which Michael Angelo. Raphael, and Leonardo da Vinci belonged. He was the first to leave the stiff traditional forms, and to copy from Nature and from the living model. Of his pictures the most remarkable are two Madonnas - one in the Academy at Florence, and the other in the church of Santa Maria Novella, the latter of which is a landmark in the progress of art, and was received with great enthusiasm at the time of its production, and was carried to the church in grand procession. Cimabue executed some notable frescoes at Assisi, and he had charge of the mosaic work of the Duomo of Pisa, some of his mosaics being considered the finest of the period.