other nations, "the Creator of the Italian or Epic style of Painting."
He was born at Florence in 1240, of a noble family, and was skilled both
in architecture and sculpture. The legends of his own land make him the
pupil of Giunta; for the men of Florence are reluctant to believe that
he was instructed in painting by those Greek artists who were called in
to embellish their city with miracles and Madonnas. He soon conquered an
education which consisted in reproducing, in exact shape and color, the
works of other men: he desired to advance: he went to nature for his
forms; he grouped them with a new skill; he bestowed ease on his
draperies, and a higher expression on his heads. His talent did not
reside in the neat, the graceful, and the lovely; his Madonnas have
little beauty, and his angels are all of one make: he succeeded best in
the heads of the old and the holy, and impressed on them, in spite of
the barbarism of his times, a bold sublimity, which few have since
surpassed. Critics object to the fierceness of his eyes, the want of
delicacy in the noses of his figures, and the absence of perspective in
his compositions; but they admit that his coloring is bright and
vigorous, his conceptions grand and vast, and that he loved the daring
and the splendid. Nevertheless, a touch of the mechanical Greek School,
and a rudeness all his own, have been observed in the works of this
great painter. His compositions were all of a scriptural or religious
kind, such as the church required: kings were his visitors, and the
people of Florence paid him honors almost divine.

CIMABUE'S PASSION FOR ART.

Cimabue gave early proof of an accurate judgment and a clear
understanding, and his father designed to give him a liberal education,
but instead of devoting himself to letters, says Vasari, "he consumed
the whole day in drawing men, horses, houses, and other various fancies
on his books and different papers--an occupation to which he felt
himself impelled by nature; and this natural inclination was favored by
fortune, for the governors of the city, had invited certain Greek
painters to Florence, for the purpose of restoring the art of painting,
which had not merely degenerated, but was altogether lost; those
artists, among other works, began to paint the chapel of Gondi, situated
next to the principal chapel in S. Maria Novella, where Giovanni was
being educated, who often escaping from school, and having already made
a commencemen