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Cimabue, Santa Trinita Madonna & Giotto's Ognissanti Madonna

Created by Beth Harris and Steven Zucker.

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  • leaf green style avatar for user Dane Sheridan
    Why does Christ look so old and, let's just say, superior, if he is just an infant?
    (4 votes)
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    • marcimus pink style avatar for user cara.ann.pomeroy
      This is a question that gets answered in a few videos in the Medieval and Proto-Renaissance sections; It wasn't that the artists didn't know what a baby looked like, but giving Christ the features and countenance of a grown man was a way to signify his wisdom and ultimate purpose, making it clear that even as a baby, he was not a mere infant.
      (19 votes)
  • leaf green style avatar for user FinallyGoodAtMath
    At , Steven Zucker says, "I am not comfortable with the idea that Cimabue couldn't do [one-point perspective]," and Beth Harris agrees. Why would Cimabue decide to paint multiple perspectives?
    (8 votes)
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    • starky ultimate style avatar for user Steven Zucker
      Hi FGM,
      Thanks for asking. Terms are key here. Linear perspective was not understood when Cimabue was painting and thus, at that moment in our conversation, we switch to the term "view point" rather than refer to the more exacting points employed with linear perspective. Cimabue was, I suspect, comfortable with concurrent views even though to our modern eyes they appear contradictory because the expectation did not yet exist that painting should hold to particular conventions that we have since accepted as accurately reflecting the space we see everyday. But perhaps more important is the conflict the artist is triggering by creating even a limited degree of volume and mass in his figures and by this action, inviting us to expect a degree of naturalism to the forms that surround the figures even though this is a heavenly space.
      (11 votes)
  • blobby green style avatar for user Ramadan Hasani
    At , he mentions there has been pressure from the byzantium empire, by Islam.
    I thought the main religion of the byzantines was Christianity, and besides ; Islam doesn't allow animate objects to be made.

    So i'm a bit confused here.
    (4 votes)
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    • leaf green style avatar for user FinallyGoodAtMath
      The Byzantines were Christian and had set traditions about religious iconography. At the time this was made, the Byzantine Empire was on the verge of collapse because of incursions by Islamic empires, specifically the Ottoman Empire. So as Constantinople declined in power, it's artists fled to Europe and there was less influence to follow Byzantine artistic style. At , he is referring to the muslim invasion of Byzantium.
      (7 votes)
  • hopper cool style avatar for user pieter
    Why are ther light round things around the heads of the angels
    (3 votes)
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  • piceratops ultimate style avatar for user Andrew.Graves62
    Amazing. Does anyone else feel that by getting these two paintings to talk to each other we get a better understanding of each, the passage of time, and BOTH moments in art history?
    (4 votes)
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    • blobby green style avatar for user jbjr18
      Yes sometimes. How do you get two painted pictures to talk to each other. That's true and depending on the painter or the sculpture if he or she sculpted them to look at each other. Then we may think that their talking to each other when their really just statues facing each other. How impossible would that be if the statues could talk among themselves
      (3 votes)
  • leafers tree style avatar for user Amalia Wagner
    Why was the technique of linear perspective lost? Didn't artists like Cimabue have access to any of the ancient Greek and Roman paintings the used this technique?
    (2 votes)
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    • duskpin ultimate style avatar for user Миленa
      Linear perspective was not known to the Greeks and Romans. Perhaps they could mimic what 3D space looked like, but follow the lines of their wall paintings and you will see that there are multiple vanishing points. I'm reading a really interesting book called Florence and Baghdad: Renaissance Art and Arab Science, which argues that linear perspective developed based on optical and perspective theories discovered by Arab scientists such as Alhazen. The Arabs were the first to develop a truly geometric theory of perspective and seeing. This science came to the west and allowed artists, who were interested in making art based on how humans see, to accurately depict three dimensions.

      Also -- just like Roman wall painting, Cimabue does attempt to give us a 3D space. However, the image is flattened by that gold background, so it isn't as apparent.
      (4 votes)
  • marcimus purple style avatar for user Regina
    how did they get so detailed
    (2 votes)
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  • aqualine ultimate style avatar for user Tais Price
    I notice that both baby's had their pointer and middle finger up on but slightly bent on the same hand and their hands were facing different directions . is that some kind of symbol or meaning?
    (1 vote)
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  • aqualine ultimate style avatar for user Amber
    Why is gold so popular in these paintings?
    (1 vote)
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  • aqualine sapling style avatar for user Jenn
    At Beth Harris says they glued the gold onto the wood. How would they make the gold saty all this time?
    (1 vote)
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Video transcript

Voiceover: So we were going to do a comparison of two great Proto-Renaissance masters, Cimabue and Giotto and compare them by looking at two paintings of the Madonna Enthroned so exactly the same subject. Voiceover: These are both in the Uffizi in Florence, but originally, of course, they were altar paintings, panels which are very large. In fact, the Cimabue is - Voiceover: More than 12 feet. Voiceover: Yeah, it's 12 feet tall, it's huge, and that was so that it could be seen the full distance of the church nave. Voiceover: And the Giotto too is more than 10 feet high. Voiceover: The Cimabue is a little earlier and Cimbue is the very first artist that Vasari talks about at the very beginning of this incredible tradition of Italian painting. Voiceover: So Cimbue is really seen to make the first step away from a medieval style toward a more human focused Renaissance style. Voiceover: Yeah, and there's a lot of controversy and interest in terms of why the Renaissance has its roots at this particular moment in this particular place. I mean, why in Florence and why right here at the end of the 13th century? And one of the theories that's been put forward is pressure that was being felt in the Byzantine Empire to the east by Islam and some of the artists perhaps fleeing the great traditions of the east and coming to Italy and perhaps prompting it to think beyond the traditions of the medieval. Voiceover: The first thing to say is that this is just a really standard subject that we see all the time, Mary, the mother of Christ, holding the Christ child, surrounded by angels, and/or saints and prophets, lots and lots of gold. These are tempera paintings on wooden panels. Voiceover: It's egg tempera and it's using minerals that are suspended in that egg media. It's good for little lines. It doesn't blend well, it dries quickly, and so there's a really linear aspect to this painting which may in some respects result from the tempera. This is gold that's been flattened out. Voiceover: Pounded very thin. Voiceover: It's a very- thin gold leaf and, in fact, even tooled, that is to say patterns have been pounded in to make it even more interesting. Voiceover: And it's been glued onto the wooden panel. Voiceover: It's been burnished and sometimes there's a kind of clay layer underneath which you can sometimes see a little reddish, but the gold itself is really meant as this ornamental reflective material that had a symbolic quality in that it was meant to reflect the light of heaven. Voiceover: Neither of these are set in any kind of earthly realm. The flat gold background indicates a kind of divine, heavenly space for these figures to occupy. Voiceover: And that makes sense when you think of the Cimbue because the Madonna, for instance, she's so - I guess maybe because she's defined by line, if she stood up, she would be so tall. Voiceover: She would be very elongated and her drapery is defined by line primarly and not as much by modeling from light to dark although a little bit. Voiceover: There are some distinct medieval or Byzantine elements that are still visible here. Her fingers are very long, her mouth is very small, the nose is very long, a kind of symbolism of the body, not a representation of a real person so much as a representation of a kind of ideal heavenly form. Voiceover: The angels are all stacked kind of - Voiceover: It's a good thing - they have wings, isn't it? Because what are they standing on? Voiceover: I don't know, but we do begin to get some sense of the beginnings of an illusion of space in Cimabue. Voiceover: She's got a little modeling under her chin and you're right, the throne on which she sits does sort of receive - except here's the funny thing. When you look at the throne carefully, it looks as if we're looking across at the Virgin Mary but we're looking down at the seat on which she's seated and in some ways we're also looking up at her. There's not a single perspective or point in which the viewer is situated. Voiceover: We have sort of multiple viewpoints and that's something that, of course, will disappear more than a century later when we get to Brunelleschi and the early Renaissance. Voiceover: But I'm not comfortable with the idea that Cimabue couldn't do it. Voiceover: No. Voiceover: So what about the four figures underneath? Voiceover: It's interesting that they're behind there to show some illusion of space. Voiceover: And it kind of frames them as well. Voiceover: It does and they're adorable down there, those prophets. You can always tell the prophets 'cause they're holding scrolls. Voiceover: Okay, so these are Old Testament prophets. Voiceover: Right, who would have predicted the coming of a Messiah, of a Christ. Voiceover: And here in the Catholic tradition, of course, that would have been understood as Christ, as you said. Voiceover: Let's look over now at the Giotto because things have really changed. The Madonna just looks so massive, and bulky, and look at how her hips and her thighs - Voiceover: And her knee - Voiceover: Yep. Voiceover: Her breasts and her knees. Voiceover: And look at how differently the drapery is indicated. Instead of by these tiny lines, right, we now have real modeling from light to dark to indicate her knees and her lap, and even how the drapery pulls across her chest and her breasts. Voiceover: Looking back at the Cimabue now, the Madonna looks so thin, almost as if she's a paper cutout, and the Giotto looks so substantial, so solid. It's also interesting if you compare the angels because in the Cimabue, in the earlier painting, the angels are stacked up, they don't sort of respond to gravity, and they're also all very similar. They're sort of an idealized face. But if you look at the angels in the Giotto rendering from a few decades later, actually what's really interesting is Giotto was willing to put the angels in back of each other, even obscuring their faces. Voiceover: And the way that they sort of seem to go back behind the throne, he's peeking his head through in the back there. Voiceover: And yeah, the prophets aren't in some sort of impossible basement now. Voiceover: And look at how much more modeling is in her face and in her neck. Voiceover: There's one aspect of the painting by Giotto that I think is really significant and really interesting. In the Giotto, there's a very particular single point that the viewer is looking at this from. If you look, for instance, at the steps moving up to the Virgin, you're looking down at the top of the step clearly so you know your eye is above that. But you're also looking up at the ceiling of the throne so you're somewhere in between and, in fact, you're looking down at the seat, but you'll notice that just where the prophets' chins are, that's where everything sort of is exactly horizontal so that's the line at our height and that makes sense because that would put us just below Christ, a nice humble position. There's a kind of left-right axis too which is to say that I think we can see a little bit more of the right window so I think we're facing Christ. Voiceover: This begins to situate the viewer. Voiceover: This is not linear perspective. Voiceover: It's kind of a more awareness of the human presence in front of the painting. Voiceover: I think that's exactly right. Voiceover: You know, one of the things that I like to think about is how similar these two images are despite their differences and the ways in which the understanding of originality was so entirely different than in our own culture. Voiceover: Right, so this is not so much derivative in a negative sense as we might think. Voiceover: In fact, there was a real tradition of the ways that you represent these figures because these are holy figures. Voiceover: That makes sense and also this is very universal. This is something that then says it transcends time, it transcends space. Voiceover: Right, but even within that, Giotto is still creating this new image because obviously things are beginning to change in the early 1300s. Voiceover: But he must be responding to cultural changes. That is, putting an emphasis on the here and now. Voiceover: And on the human, right. Voiceover: In a way that will, of course, blossom into the Renaissance. Voiceover: Exactly.