Let us now read what a painter who lived in the sixteenth century, Vasari by name, wrote about the rise of painting in his native city.  Some learned people nowadays say that Vasari was wrong in many of the stories he told, but after all he lived much nearer than we do to the times he wrote about, and it is safer to believe what he tells us than what modern students surmise, except when they are able to cite other old authorities to which Vasari did not have access.

The endless flood of misfortunes which overwhelmed unhappy Italy not only ruined everything worthy of the name of a building, but completely extinguished the race of artists, a far more serious matter.  Then, as it pleased God, there was born in the year 1240, in the city of Florence, Giovanni, surnamed Cimabue, to shed the first light on the art of painting.  Instead of paying attention to his lessons, Cimabue spent the whole day drawing men, horses, houses, and various other fancies on his books and odd sheets, like one who felt himself compelled to do so by nature.  Fortune proved favourable to his natural inclination, for some Greek artists were summoned to Florence by the government of the city for no other purpose than the revival of painting in their midst, since the art was not so much debased as altogether lost.  In this way Cimabue made a beginning in the art which attracted him, for he often played the truant and spent the whole day in watching the masters work.  Thus it came about that his father and the artists considered him so fitted to be a painter that if he devoted himself to the profession he might look for honourable success in it, and to his great satisfaction his father procured him employment with the painters.  Thus by dint of continual practice and with the assistance of his natural talent he far surpassed the manner of his teachers.  For they had never cared to make any progress and had executed their works, not in the good manner of ancient Greece, but in the rude modern style of that time.  Cimabue drew from nature to the best of his powers, although it was a novelty to do so in those days, and he made the draperies, garments, and other things somewhat more life-like, natural, and soft than the Greeks had done, who had taught one another a rough, awkward, and commonplace style for a great number of years, not by means of study but as a matter of custom, without ever dreaming of improving their designs by beauty of colouring or by any invention of worth.

If you were to see a picture by Cimabue (there is one in the National Gallery which resembles his work so closely that it is sometimes said to be his), you would think less highly than Vasari of the life-like quality of his art, though there is something dignified and stately in the picture of the Virgin and Child with angels that he painted for the Church of St. Francis at Assisi.  Another story is told by Vasari of a picture by Cimabue, which tradition asserts to be the great Madonna, still in the Church of Santa Maria Novella at Florence.