Cimabue and Giotto a Comparison

Cimabue and Giotto A Comparison of Cimabue and Giotto Cimabue's Enthroned Madonna and Child (c. 1285) and Giotto's Ognissanti Madonna (c. 1305) are very similar in several ways. However, the two artists represent very different tendencies in iconography and didacticism. This paper will compare the two works of these artists according to style, compositional organization, material/medium, size, color, and texture, and show how Cimabue represents the late medieval tradition and how Giotto represents the new, modern naturalism of the early Renaissance.

Vasari compares Cimabue and Giotto in his famous Lives of the Artists, but the fact that they are both discussed at the beginning of his volume indicates that the two have more in common than not. Vasari writes, "Cimabue was, in one sense, the principal cause of the renewal of the art of painting, but Giotto, though his follower,…was the man whose thoughts rose even higher and who opened the gates of truth…" (Vasari 13). This analysis may be seen in Cimabue's Enthroned Madonna and in Giotto's Ognissanti.

From the standpoint of style alone, the former expresses the vivid but overall two-dimensional, flat iconography of the medieval world with great finesse and lucidity. The latter, however, shows a remarkable depth (not unsought by Cimabue), a solid, three-dimensional representation of an iconic subject that fills the work with a naturalistic sense and gives the characters a realistic nuance.

Giotto, in other words, brings the same subject depicted by Cimabue to life in a more realistic way, breaking all ties with the Byzantine school that so greatly informed Cimabue, Giotto's master. Thus, Vasari did not hesitate to call Giotto's work a gateway to truth. The style of the two works can also be illustrated by their medium, size, color, texture, compositional organization. Cimabue's Madonna is a tempera on panel, of 385 x 223 cm. dimensions.

The Madonna occupies the middle of the panel, is clothed in a dark blue cloak and flanked by angels in lighter colored robes. Beneath the Madonna one finds the representations of the foundations of the Catholic Church: Four figures from the Old Testament -- two prophets (Jeremiah and Isaiah) and two patriarchs (Abraham and King David). Everywhere the eye is mesmerized by brilliant gold, which serves as the background color as well as the color for the mighty columns (themselves representations of the structural Church that seats Our Lady).

The gold color establishes the sense of royalty that the Madonna embodies as she and her Divine Child are literally enthroned by the Church and the Angels. Although Cimabue is operating with two-dimensional forms, he works his subjects with such spatial care that a tension is created: It is as though his two-dimensional forms are chafing to create a three-dimensional effect. The work is indeed not without such an effect: The arches directly under the Madonna's throne give the illusion of depth.

This, however, is not enough to claim that Cimabue's work is as three-dimensional as Giotto's. Giotto, for example, gives his characters more depth and better realism. Giotto's Ognissanti Madonna is a tempera on wood, 325 x 204 cm. In size, which makes it slightly smaller than Cimabue's tempera on panel used on the "high altar of Santa Trinita church in Florence" (Kren, Marx "The Madonna in Majesty"), signifying that its primary purpose was devotional, abstract, and didactic. Giotto's Madonna is certainly somewhat less traditionally didactic than Cimabue's.

Cimabue, after all, gives a history lesson in his icon, incorporating Old Testament figures into the story of the New Testament Christ, illustrating how the ancient prophets and patriarch pre-figured and served as the foundation for the Christ. Giotto's work, however, is more representational: It strives not to teach so much as to make the subjects come to life in a real way. In other words, Giotto's objective is to make the subjects more human and less scholastic.

The medieval world was certainly scholastic, and the Byzantine style of structure, order, symmetry, balance, and design is perfectly seen in Cimabue's Madonna. Giotto prefers to break out of this mold. His Madonna would also serve as an altarpiece, but its style effects a different tendency in thought. The central point in the picture is not the Madonna, but the Christ Child's "gesture of benediction" (Kren, Marx "Ognissanti Madonna").

Indeed, the blessing by the Christ Child appears to transfix the angels and saints that surround Giotto's Madonna as she sits enthroned with her Child on her lap. Gold is everywhere as in Cimabue's and the Madonna dons a similarly colored dark blue cloak. Her robe underneath is much lighter.