Giovanni Cimabue (c. 1240 – 1302)

• Pseudonym of Cenni (Bencivieni) di Pepo.
• He was an Italian painter.

• We have news of him since 1272, and Dante cited him as the eldest of the generation before that of Giotto.

• According to Ghiberti and the Book of Antonio Billi, he was Giotto's teacher and discoverer.

• Cimabue was present in Rome in 1272; commissioned to make a cartoon for the mosaic of the apse of the Cathedral of Pisa.

• The document from Rome, dated June 8, 1272, records the painter's testimony on the patronage that Cardinal Ottobono Fieschi assumed on behalf of Pope Gregory X of a monastery of nuns in San Damiano which for the occasion, was rededicated to St. Augustine and his Rule.

• On 1 and 5 November 1301 he was in Pisa, where he signed for the execution of a great Majesty with sacred stories for the church of the hospital of Santa Chiara.

• On March 19, 1302, just four months later, a Florentine document speaks of Cimabue's "heirs" regarding a house in the town of San Maurizio in Fiesole.

• On 4 July of that year, the chamberlain of Pisa was given some objects, who therefore must have died while attending to a work for the Cathedral of Pisa.

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