CIMABUE GEB: High Renaissance and Mannerism 1510-1600 (Monographs Series; 14) - Hardcover

Definitive and richly illustrated, this volume is the first extensive examination of Cimabue's work to appear in English in more than thirty years. Cimabue (c. 1240-1302) was the most admired artist of his time in Tuscany and Central Italy. His paintings and mosaics are seen by some as the last great flowering of Medieval art, and by others as the first works of the Renaissance. The earthquakes that shook Central Italy in late 1997 struck hardest at the legacy of Cimabue, crumbling his brilliantly-colored paintings in the vault of the Upper Basilica of San Francesco in Assisi. The tragic Florentine flood of 1966 had already destroyed much of the master's famous Santa Croce Crucifix. But in this book a combination of archival and newly commissioned photographs - including pictures of the Assisi vault shot just moments before its collapse - offer a complete panorama of the artist's works, before flood or earthquake damage, and before and after recent restorations.

Creator of brilliant devotional paintings and mosaics, Cimabue (c. 1240-1302) represented the transition from medieval to early Renaissance art; his legacy is revealed in this authoritative volume, the first new monograph in 30 years. Cimabue is credited with bringing a naturalistic style to the stiff Byzantine forms of 13th-century art. The appeal of his work is undeniable: his trademark elements -- gilt thrones for the Madonna and angels with great multicolored wings -- were echoed by generations of artists, and even today his pieces speak with immediacy and power.

In the absence of surviving documentation, many elegant, classical works are convincingly attributed to Cimabue, works in the collections of the Uffizi, the Louvre, and the National Gallery in Washington, D.C. Other of his saints and Madonnas still decorate the churches for which they were created: paintings in Arezzo, Bologna, Florence, and Pisa, as well as the frescoes in the church of St. Francis in Assisi that were severely damaged in the earthquakes of 1997 (the frescoes are reproduced here as they looked just before the tremors). Luciano Bellosi's text examines the written and painted documentary evidence -- not only of Cimabue's work but that of the artists he influenced -- to create a vivid portrait of the artist in the historical, political, and cultural context of Tuscany and central Italy.