Cimabue, or the moment when painting ceased to be a prayer and became a gaze

This man is Cimabue. The one whom Dante would later call "the master whose glory faded when Giotto appeared." A cruel phrase, almost unjust, for the man who was both the last great Byzantine painter and the first to dare paint humanity where his predecessors saw only symbols.

01The workshop where the sky parted

To understand Cimabue, one must first imagine the studio of a medieval painter. Not a silent, solitary place like Rembrandt’s, but a bustling hive where apprentices, assistants, and sometimes monks supervising the work mingled. The poplar panels, prepared with a layer of gesso—that mixture of animal glue and chalk that gives the surface its milky whiteness—await their gilding. For before even thinking of colors, one must first create the background: that golden field which is not mere decoration, but the very materialization of the divine.

Cimabue, however, does not merely apply the gold. He works it. With a stylus, he engraves patterns into the still-fresh leaf—stars, interlacings, geometric motifs that catch the candlelight and reflect it in a thousand shimmers. When you stand before his Maestà of Santa Trinita, now in the Uffizi, it is this light that strikes you first. Not the harsh glow of the museum’s spotlights, but that golden, trembling radiance that seems to come from within the painting itself, as if the Virgin and Child were glowing from within.

Yet what fascinates in this work is not just its Byzantine splendor. It is the way Cimabue, while respecting sacred conventions, slipped in details that belong to him alone. Look at the angels, for instance. In traditional icons, they are all identical, lined up like celestial soldiers. Here, some turn their heads, others seem to whisper among themselves. One, on the left, even makes a gesture almost timid, as if hesitating to approach the throne. And then there are those faces… Faces that, for the first time, express something. Tenderness, worry, perhaps even a touch of melancholy.

02The crucifix that still bleeds

If the Maestà is the work in which Cimabue most clearly heralded the Renaissance, it is in his Crucifix of Santa Croce that he dared the unthinkable: to paint a suffering Christ. Not the triumphant Christ of Byzantine mosaics, standing on his cross like a king on his throne, but a broken man, his head bowed, his ribs protruding, his fingers clenched around the nails.

This crucifix, commissioned for the church of Santa Croce in Florence, was meant to hang above the altar, at eye level for the faithful. When you looked up, you did not see a symbol, but a body. A body that bled, that still breathed, that looked back at you. The Franciscan monks, who preached a more intimate, more human religion, must have seen a revolution in it. For the first time, the Passion was no longer an abstract concept, but a flesh-and-blood reality.

And then there is that almost invisible detail: the blood trickling down Christ’s torso. In Byzantine representations, blood was stylized, almost decorative. Here, it is real. It follows the folds of the skin, pools in the hollows of the ribs, drips onto Adam’s skull—that skull at the foot of the cross, symbol of original sin redeemed by sacrifice. Cimabue does not merely show suffering: he makes it tangible.

This crucifix, now restored after the 1966 flood that nearly destroyed it, is perhaps the work in which Cimabue is most modern. Because he dared to do what no one had done before him: paint pain as a human experience, not just an allegory.

03The quarrel of the angels: Cimabue versus Duccio

At the same time, a hundred kilometers from Florence, another painter was working on a similar commission. In Siena, Duccio di Buoninsegna had just completed his Madonna Rucellai, a Virgin and Child just as sumptuous as Cimabue’s, but with one fundamental difference: where Cimabue sought to humanize the sacred, Duccio magnified it.

Compare the two works, and you will see two worldviews clashing. In Cimabue’s, the Virgin is a mother clutching her child to her, as if to protect him. In Duccio’s, she is a queen, distant, almost untouchable. Cimabue’s angels have almost timid expressions; Duccio’s are celestial creatures, hieratic, perfect. And then there are those details that betray two temperaments: Cimabue plays with light, shadow, volume. Duccio favors line, precision, the richness of detail—as in the golden brocades that drape the Sienese Virgin.

This rivalry between Florence and Siena was not merely artistic. It was political. The two cities vied for supremacy in Tuscany, and their painters were ambassadors. Cimabue, with his bolder, more "modern" style, embodied the Florentine spirit: innovative, sometimes brutal, but always forward-looking. Duccio represented the Sienese tradition, more refined, more mystical.

And yet… Yet when one looks at these two Maestàs today, one finds oneself preferring Cimabue’s. Not just because it foreshadows Giotto, but because it has something Duccio’s lacks: life.

04The man who taught Giotto to see

Legend has it that Giotto, then a young shepherd, was discovered by Cimabue while drawing sheep on a stone. The master, impressed by his talent, is said to have taken him on as an apprentice. Vasari, in his Lives of the Most Excellent Painters, even recounts that Cimabue, seeing his pupil’s progress, once exclaimed: "It is he who surpasses me!"

This story, like most legends, is probably untrue. Historians now agree that Giotto must have worked in Cimabue’s workshop, but not as his official apprentice. Yet the anecdote contains a kernel of truth: Cimabue did indeed pave the way for Giotto. Not by teaching him techniques, but by teaching him to see.

For that, perhaps, is Cimabue’s greatest merit: having understood that painting was not just a matter of skill, but of vision. Before him, Byzantine painters copied models, schemas, formulas. He dared to look at the world—and to reproduce it. Not faithfully, as the Renaissance painters would later do, but with the brilliant intuition that the truth of an image lay not in its formal perfection, but in its power to move.

Look, for example, at the Virgin’s hands in the Maestà. They are not idealized, like those in Byzantine icons. They are a little thick, the fingers slightly spread. As if Cimabue had observed the hands of a real woman, not those of a sacred figure. And it is this very observation, this attention to reality, that would make Giotto the first "modern" painter.

05The last project: the mosaics of Pisa

In 1301, as Giotto began to make a name for himself in Florence, the aging Cimabue accepted one final commission: to decorate the apse of Pisa’s Duomo. The task was to create a mosaic of Saint John the Evangelist, a monumental work meant to crown his career.

At the time, mosaics were considered the noblest art. More prestigious than painting, more enduring, they were reserved for the greatest projects. And yet, when one looks at Cimabue’s, one finds the same boldness as in his paintings. The saint, seated on a throne, holds an open book. His face, framed by a carefully combed beard, expresses a serenity that is almost human. And then there are those details that betray the master’s hand: the folds of the robe that follow the body, the fingers that seem to truly grip the book, the eyes that, once again, look.

This mosaic, Cimabue’s last known work, is also his least known. Perhaps because it lies in Pisa, far from Florence’s great museums. Perhaps, too, because it is less spectacular than his Maestàs or his crucifixes. And yet, it encapsulates everything Cimabue brought to painting: the ability to reconcile the grandeur of the sacred with the intimacy of the real.

06Oblivion and rediscovery

After his death around 1302, Cimabue gradually faded into obscurity. Giotto, then Masaccio, then the great masters of the Renaissance eclipsed his name. Even Vasari, who devoted a few pages to him in his Lives, presented him as an artist surpassed by his pupil. For centuries, he was spoken of only as a precursor, a link in the chain leading to the Renaissance.

And then, in the 19th century, something changed. The Romantics, fascinated by the Middle Ages, rediscovered his work. John Ruskin, in The Stones of Venice, cited him as one of the first painters to dare break with Byzantine rigidity. The Impressionists, for their part, saw in his play of light the seeds of their own revolution. And today, as museums around the world celebrate Giotto, Cimabue is finally getting his due.

Why? Perhaps because his work, more than any other, embodies that singular tension between tradition and modernity. Cimabue did not invent perspective, as Brunelleschi would. He did not revolutionize the representation of the human body, as Michelangelo would. But he did something more important: he showed that painting could be both an act of devotion and an act of creation. That a sacred image could also be a work of art.

07What we owe to Cimabue

Today, when you enter a church or a museum and come across a Virgin and Child, a crucifix, or a medieval fresco, ask yourself: does this image look at me, or do I look at it? If it looks at you, if it seems alive, then you are in the presence of Cimabue’s legacy.

For that, in the end, is his genius: having understood that painting was not just a means of representing the divine, but of making it present. Of ensuring that when you stand before one of his works, you do not see an image, but an encounter.

And perhaps that is why, despite the centuries that separate us from him, his paintings still move us. Because they are not merely beautiful. They are true. Not in the sense that they faithfully reproduce reality, but in that they capture its essence. That fragile, sublime humanity that Cimabue was the first to dare paint.

So the next time you pass one of his works, take a moment to stop. Look at those faces that, for the first time, dare to express something. Those hands that seem to truly hold, those gazes that seem to truly see. And remember: before Giotto revolutionized painting, before the Renaissance upended the world, there was a man in Florence who simply dared to look. And in looking, he changed art forever.