The year 1240 witnessed the birth of Cimabue: as a young man, he became enamoured of art by watching the labours of the Greek painters who had been summoned to Florence to decorate the chapel of the Gondi. It was purposed to make him a _savant_ and a lawyer; but he succeeded in abandoning the pen in favour of the pencil, and, from the lessons of the timid Byzantines, he soon became a master whose every thought was henceforth devoted to the emancipation of an art that he found condemned to a kind of immobility. Thanks to him, the expression of faces, which up to that time had been entirely conventional in character, was animated by a truer sentiment; the lines of drawing, which had been hard and stiff, were broken up into well-ordered grace; the colouring, hitherto dull and gloomy, assumed soft brilliancy and harmonious relief. It is said that Cimabue’s _chef-d’œuvre_, the “Madonna” which is still to be seen in the Church of Santa-Maria-Novella, was carried in procession by the crowd to the place which it now occupies; the painter was received with shouts, and, it is added, the joy of the people at the sight of the picture was so great that the part of the city wherein Cimabue’s studio was situated received, after this event, the name of _Borgo Allegro_ (the Joyous Town). One day when Cimabue was in the country, he noticed a young shepherd-boy who was amusing himself by sketching on a rock the sheep he tended. The painter took charge of the boy; he became his favourite pupil, and was the celebrated Giotto, who happily persevered in the reform commenced by Cimabue. Giotto, the first among the artists of his time, ventured to paint portraits, and succeeded well in them. To him we owe our acquaintance with the real features of his friend Dante; and we still admire, at least as manifestations of an adventurous genius, the paintings he left in the Church of Santa Clara at Naples, in the Cathedral of Assisi, and especially in the Campo Santo at Pisa, where he painted in fresco the history of Job.