CIMA
772
CIMBEBASIA
attached to the name of Cimabue, which explains the
verse of Dante (Purg., XI): —
Credette Cimabue nella pintura
Tener lo campo, ed ora ha Giotto il grido
Si che la fama di eolui s' oscura.
(Cimabue thought himself the master of painters, Giotto took from him the glory and relegated him to oblivion.) From this verse of Dante, which pre- served for posterity the name of Cimabue, it was inferred that he was the master of Giotto. There was nothing more to do but furnish him with a biog- raphy and a list of works. Legend did the rest, as we have already seen. We learn, how- ever, from these verses that Cima- bue was a re- nowned master in his time. A re- cently discovered text tells us that Cimabove, piclnrc de FlorenciA, re- sided at Rome in 1272. In 1301 he received ten "livres" from the Opera del Duomo of Pisa for "St. John the Baptist" in mosaic, which accompanies the "Christ" in the cathedral, and two notarial acts men- tion the price for an altar-screen of the Madonna, to be painted by the said master, Cenni de Pepo, called Cimabue, with one of his own associates. Here our certitude ends. Aside from the "St. John" of Pisa, a mosaic which has been much repaired, we have not a single work of Cimabue. Some critics ascribe several paintings to him, but it must be admitted that in the absence of docu- ments these surmises are without ground. The " Ma- donna " of the Louvre and that of the Academy of Florence have enough of the characteristics of Duccio to be taken as paintings of his school. The same must be said of the celebrated fresco of the "Virgin with St. Francis" in the right transept of the lower church of St. Francis at Assisi. But in the upper church the frescoes, now almost in ruins, of both transepts and the choir, representing the " Last Ends ", illustrating texts of the New Testament from the Crucifixion and the Acts of the Apos- tles to the Apocalypse, show a savage grandeur and suggest the work of a Byzantine ..Eschylus. Nothing confirms, and on the other hand nothing prevents, the attribution of them to Cimabue. At any rate they are the work of a great artist.
Crowe and Cavalcaselle, History of Painting in Italy (new ed., London, 1903); Venturi, Storm dell' arte italiana (Milan, 1002), II; Vasari, Vite de' pittori, ed. Milanesi (Florence, 1878), I; Douglas, The Krai Cimabue in The Nineteenth Century (1903), no. CCCXIII; Thode. Franz von Assist iL'n.l ed., Iierlin, 1905); Fry, Art before Giotto in Monthly Review (Oct., 1900).
Louis Gillet.
Cima da Conegliano, Giovanni Battista, a
Venetian painter, l>. at Conegliano in the province of
Treviso in 1459 or 1460; d. in 1517 or 1518. His
father, who died in 1484, was a cloth-shearer (rima-
tor), hence the family surname. In 1488 the young
painter was at work at Vicenza; in 1492 he estab-
lished himself at Venice, but by the summer of 1516
he had returned to his native place. Cima married
twice, his first wife, Corona, bearing him two sons,
the older of whom took Holy orders at Padua. By
Joanna, his second wife, he had six cliildren, three
being daughters.
His oldest painting inscribed with a date is the " Madonna of the Arbour ", made in 14S9, and now in the Museum of Vicenza. This picture is done in dis- temper and savours so much of the style of Bartolom- meo Montagna, who lived at Vicenza from 1480, as to make it highly probable that Cima was his pupil. Even in this early production Cima gave evidence of the serious, calm, and almost passionless spirit thai so eminently characterized him. Later he fell under the spell of the great Giovanni Bellini and became one of his ablest successors, forming a happy, if not indispensable link between this master and Titian. At first his figures were somewhat crude, but they gradually lost their harshness and gained in grace while still preserving their dignity. In the back- ground of his facile, harmonious compositions the mountains of liis country are invested with new im- portance. Cima was one of the first to assign the landscape a definite place in modern painting, and to formulate the laws of atmosphere and of the distribu- tion of light and shade. His "Baptism of Christ", in the church of S. Giovanni in Bragora (Venice, 1492), gives striking evidence of this. The colouring is rich and bright with a certain silvery tone peculiar to Cima, but which in his later works merges into a delicate gold. His conceptions are usually calm and undramatic, and he has painted scarcely any scenes (having depicted religious ones almost exclusively) that are not suggestive of "sante conversazioni". His "Incredulity of St. Thomas" (National Gallery, London) and his beautiful "Nativity" (Venice. Santa Maria del Carmine, 1509) are hardly aught else. But most of his paintings represent Madonnas en- throned among the elect, and in these subjects he observes a gently animated symmetry. The group- ing of these sainted figures, even though they maj not have a definitely pious character, and the evident blissfulness of their existence give the impression ol unspeakable peace. Such are, among others, the magnificent "Madonna Montinini" (about 1507) ir the Parma Museum; the "Madonna with Foui Saints" (about 1511) in the Berlin Museum, and the smaller "Virgin and Child Enthroned with St. Johr the Baptist and the Magdalen" (about 1513) in tin Louvre, which was Cima's last bequest as poet anc landscape painter.
Ridolfi, Meraviglie dell' arte (Venice, 164S); Crowe am Cavalcaselle, .4 History of Painting in Italy (Northen Schools); Botteon AND A.XJPRANDI, Bicerche intorno alia vita eUe inure di Giambattista Cima ilS93t; Bbrenson, Lorenzi Lotto (London, 19011; BuACKHAKDT, Cima da Conegliani (Leipzig, 1905).
LOUIS GlLLET.
Cimbebasia, Upper, Prefecture Apostolic of.— Cimbebasia was the name given for a long time to tin western part of Southern Africa. Originally it wai included in the immense vicariate made up of Sene gambia and French and Portuguese ( luinca which ha< been erected in 1S42 and of winch Bishop Barron wai appointed first vicar Apostolic. The Congregation o Propaganda separated Cimbebasia (3 July, 1879' from this vicariate and made of it a prefecture Apos tolic. The Congregation of the Holy Ghost was placed in charge of the new field, and Father Dupar quet of the same congregation was appointed first prefect Apostolic. The new mission was. however still very large, being made up of three distinct re
gions: the northern part, which included the territory of the Amboella and Gangela and was under the in- Buence of Portugal; the sunt hern pari, composed o Ovamboland and Damaraland, now under the con- trol of Germany; and Bechuanaland. After having tried to found stations in all these different territories
