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Cenni di Pepo (Giovanni) Cimabue (c 1240 in Florence, Italy — c 1302 in Florence, Italy) also known as Bencivieni Di Pepo or in modern Italian, Benvenuto Di Giuseppe was a Florentine painter and creator of mosaics, better known as the artist who discovered Giotto and with him moved towards treating figures as individuals. Cimabue is generally thought of as the last great painter working in the Byzantine tradition. The art of this time showed scenes and styles that appeared relatively flat. Cimabue was a pioneer in the move towards more realism with figures more realistically shaded and more proportional. His works influenced later artists such as Giotto.
Not much is known about his life, and there is little surviving documentation. His life was described in Giorgio Vasari's The Lives of the Most Excellent Painters, Sculptors, and Architects, widely regarded as the first art history book. However, this book was written over 200 years after Cimabue's death, so although it is one of the few records we have of him, its accuracy is unknown. It says: