th. Cimabue was
buried in S. Maria del Fiore, with this epitaph made for him by one
of the Nini:--

"Credidit ut Clmabos picturae castra tenere
Sic tenuit vivens, nunc tenet astra poli."

I must not omit to say that if the greatness of Giotto, his pupil,
had not obscured the glory of Cimabue, the fame of the latter would
have been more considerable, as Dante points out in his Commedia in
the eleventh canto of the Purgatorio, with an allusion to the
inscription on the tomb, where he says:

"Credette Cimabue nella pintura
Tener lo campo, ed ora ha Giotto il grido
Si che la fama di colui oscura."

A commentator on Dante, who wrote during Giotto's lifetime, about
1334, some ten or twelve years after the poet's death, in his
explanation of these lines, says the following words in speaking of
Cimabue: "Cimabue was a painter of Florence in the time of our
author, a man of unusual eminence and so arrogant and haughty withal,
that if any one pointed out a fault or defect in his work, or if he
discovered any himself, since it frequently happens that an artist
makes mistakes through a defect in the materials which he employs, or
because of some fault in the instrument with which he works, he
immediately destroyed that work, however costly it might be. Giotto
was, and is, the most eminent among the painters of the same city of
Florence, as his works testify, at Rome, Naples, Avignon, Florence,
Padua, and many parts of the world," etc. This commentary is now in
the possession of the Very Rev. Vincenzio Borghini, prior of the
Innocents, a man distinguished for his eminence, piety and learning,
but also for his love for and skill in all the superior arts, so that
he has well deserved his judicious selection by Duke Cosimo to be the
ducal representative in our academy of design.

Returning to Cimabue, Giotto certainly overshadowed his renown, just
as a great light eclipses a much smaller one, and although Cimabue
was, as it were, the first cause of the revival of the art of
painting, yet Giotto, his disciple, moved by a praiseworthy ambition,
and aided by Heaven and by Nature, penetrated deeper in thought, and
threw open the gates of Truth to those who afterwards brought art to
that perfection and grandeur which we see in our own age. In fact the
marvels, miracles, and impossibilities executed at the present time
by those who practise this art, and which are to be seen every day,
have brought things to