tween the Virgin and
John the Evangelist," a mosaic, now much damaged, which stamps him as
the leading artist of his time in that material. This was probably the
last work that he produced.

The debt which art owes to Cimabue is not limited to his own
performances. He was the master of Giotto, whom (such at least is the
tradition) he found a shepherd boy of ten, in the pastures of
Vespignano, drawing with a coal on a slate the figure of a lamb. Cimabue
took him to Florence, and instructed him in the art; and after his death
Giotto occupied a house which had belonged to his master in the Via del
Cocomero. Another painter with whom Cimabue is said to have been
intimate was Gaddo Gaddi.

It had always been supposed that the bodily semblance of Cimabue is
preserved to us in a portrait-figure by Simon Memmi painted in the
Cappella degli Spagnuoli, in S. Maria Novella,--a thin hooded face in
profile, with small beard, reddish and pointed. This is, however,
extremely dubious. Simone Martini of Siena (commonly called Memmi) was
born in 1283, and would therefore have been about nineteen years of age
when Cimabue died; it is not certain that he painted the work in
question, or that the figure represents Cimabue. The Florentine master
is spoken of by a nearly contemporary commentator on Dante (the
so-called Anonimo, who wrote about 1334) as _arrogante e disdegnoso_; so
"arrogant and scornful" that, if any one, or if he himself, found a
fault in any work of his, however cherished till then, he would abandon
it in disgust. This, however, to a modern mind, looks more like an
aspiring and fastidious desire for perfection than any such form of
"arrogance and scorn" as blemishes a man's character. Giovanni Cimabue
was buried in the cathedral of Florence, S. Maria del Fiore, with an
epitaph written by one of the Nini:--

"Credidit ut Cimabos picturae castra tenere,
Sic tenuit vivens; nunc tenet astra poli."

Here we recognize distinctly a parallel to the first clause in the
famous triplet of Dante:

"Credette Cimabue nella pintura
Tener lo campo; ed ora ha Giotto il grido,
Si che la fama di colui s' oscura."

Besides Vasari, and Crowe and Cavalcaselle (re-edited by Langton), the
following works may be consulted:--P. Angeli, _Storia della basilica
d' Assisi_; Cole and Stillman, _Old Italian Masters_ (1892); Mrs Ady,
_Painters of Florence_ (1900). (W. M. R.)

CIMAROSA, DOMENICO (1749-1801), Italian m