Page:An Elementary History of Art.djvu/366

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336 Paintjnq whom is in the National Gallery), Maestro Bartolommeo of Florence, and Andrea Tafi (the greatest mosaic-worker of the thirteenth century), all of whom followed the Byzantine style, with certain modifications significant of the stirring of the new life in art. In the works of Giovanni Cimabue (1240 — 1312) of Florence, who has been called — not altogether with justice — the founder of modern Italian painting, we recognise a very decided advance in representing form and in the expression of action, although his figures are stilly of the long-drawn Byzantine type. Of his existing paintings the principal are a colossal Madonna in the Rucellai chapel of S. Maria Novella, Florence, of which a fine water-colour copy may be studied in the Crystal Palace ; a Madonna, and Child in the Academy of the same town; and the frescoes on the vaulted ceiling and above the walls of the nave of the upper church of S. Francesco at Assisi, of which the best are the Kiss of Judas, the Marriage at Cana, the Depo- sition from the Cross, and Joseph *and his Brothers. A Holy Family by Cimabue is in the National Gallery. As cotemporaries of Cimabue who were influenced by his work, we must name Jacobus Toriti (flour, ab. 1290), author of some fine mosaics in the tribunes of S. Giovanni in Laterano and S Maria Maojsdore at Rome ; Giovanni Cosmato (fl. ab. 1300), author of mosaics in the latter church and in that of S. Maria sopra Minerva, Rome ; Gaddo Gaddi (1239 — 1312), the painter of an Ascension of the Virgin in the cathedral of Pisa, a Coronation of the Virgin in the cathedral at Florence, etc. ; and, above all, Duccio di Buoninsegna of Siena (ab. 1260 — after 1320), the chief painter of the Sienese school of this period, who executed a famous series of paintings, representing scenes