"Maestà di Santa Trinita"

Cimabue’s innovations included moving painting away from Byzantine flat depictions and stylized figures, favoring instead more realistic proportions and shading, as seen in the naturalistic drapery of the Virgin’s clothing and the placement of her feet suggesting movement. A more naturalistic treatment of space is also evident, as seen in the two lower angels, whose placement shows that they are clearly standing behind the towers before them, as their figures take on an aspect of three-dimensionality. A noted teacher, Cimabue trained Pacino di Bonaguida and was said to have discovered Giotto. As art critic John Haber wrote of Cimabue, “In his grand, multi-tiered architecture and spare, wiry human forms, he could serve as the culmination of past ages or the beginning of the new.”