Memoirs of the early Italian painters / by Anna Jameson; thoroughly revised and in part rewritten by Estelle M. Hurll.
- Anna Brownell Jameson
- Date:
- 1899
Licence: Public Domain Mark
Credit: Memoirs of the early Italian painters / by Anna Jameson; thoroughly revised and in part rewritten by Estelle M. Hurll. Source: Wellcome Collection.
45/335 page 11
![proud of his high lineage, his skill in his art, and his various acquirements, for he was well studied in all the literature of his age. If a critic found fault with one of his works when in progress, or if he were himself dis- satisfied with it, he would at once destroy it, what- ever pains it might have cost him. From these traits of character, and the bent of his genius, which leaned to the grand and terrible rather than the gentle and graceful, he has been styled the Michael Angelo of his time. It is recorded of him by Vasari that he painted a head of St. Francis after nature, a thing, he says, till then unknown: it could not have been a portrait from life, because St. Francis died in 1225. The ear- liest head after nature which remains to us was painted by Giunta Pisano about 1235, and was the portrait of Frate Elia, a monk of Assisi. Perhaps Vasari means that the San Francesco was the first representation of a sacred personage for which nature had been taken as a model. The portrait of Cimabue inserted in this essay is from the original head, painted on the walls of the chapel degli Spagnu- oli, in the church of Santa Maria Novella, [attributed to] Simone Mernmi of Siena, who was at Florence during the life- time of Cimabue, and must have known him personally. This](https://iiif.wellcomecollection.org/image/b24877888_0045.jp2/full/800%2C/0/default.jpg)
