Page:Vasari - Lives of the Most Excellent Painters, Sculptors, and Architects, volume 1.djvu/50

36 —and Cimabue, often escaping from the school, and having already made a commencement in the art he was so fond of, would stand watching those masters at their work, the day through. Judging from these circumstances, his father, as well as the artists themselves, concluded him to be well endowed for painting, and thought that much might be hoped from his future efforts, if he were devoted to that art. Giovanni was accordingly, to his no small satisfaction, placed with those masters. From this time he laboured incessantly, and was so far aided by his natural powers, that he soon greatly surpassed his teachers both in design and colouring. For these masters, caring little for the progress of art, had executed their works as we now see them, not in the excellent manner of the ancient Greeks, but in the rude modern style of their own day. Wherefore, though Cimabue imitated his Greek instructors, he very much improved the art, relieving it greatly from their uncouth manner, and doing honour to his country by the name that he acquired, and by the works which he performed. Of this we have evidence in Florence, from the pictures which he painted there, as, for example, the front of the altar of Santa Cecilia, and a picture of the Virgin, in Santa Croce, which was, and is still, attached to one of the pilasters on the right of the choir. After this he painted a small picture of St. Francis, in panel, on a gold ground, drawing it, a new thing in those times, from nature, with such means as he could obtain, and placing around it the whole history of the saint in twenty small pictures, full of minute figures, on aground of gold.