¶ … structure of Cimabue's Madonna. Moreover, this paper seeks to prove the following thesis: Fundamentally, the viewer can treat Cimabue's Madonna as a representation of the hierarchy of divinity over humanity. The image is structured in many respects in a highly traditional format. The Madonna and child occupy center stage of the image's structure. Their centrality is a common thematic element in nearly every single image of the Madonna and child that has ever been created. In this sense, Cimabue's Madonna is somewhat derivative. However, the centrality of the Madonna and child is yet another means of expressing their primacy in the image at large. This helps to remind the viewer that the Virgin Mary and baby Jesus are two of the most important figures from western Catholicism and Christianity which were ever created. By allowing them to occupy the most important place within the frame, Cimabue is reasserting their overall primacy. However, Cimabue makes these two figures even more primal by placing the Madonna and child in an area of the frame where they are suspended above the earthly figures. This placement not only expresses the ethereal quality of divinity but also the primacy of divinity. Cimabue makes sure that the status of the Madonna and child...
There are eight angels total and four on either side of the Madonna and child. The strong presence of the archangels helps to reassert the profound sense of importance and overall divinity that the Madonna and child have. The archangels give the Madonna and child a more heightened sense of status: it is through their presence that the Madonna and child almost seem like a modern-day celebrity that needs to be guarded via the entourage of angels. The strong presence of angels helps to reiterate not only the value and esteem of the Madonna and child, but almost make their importance more accessible to the modern viewer. The presence of the angels gives the overall image a stronger reference point for the spectator. Furthermore, through the details that Cimabue instills the painting with via these archangels, the average viewer is able to recognize the importance of the archangels, and thus the heightened importance of the Madonna and child. For example, the angels portrayed in…
This, however, is not enough to claim that Cimabue's work is as three-dimensional as Giotto's. Giotto, for example, gives his characters more depth and better realism. Giotto's Ognissanti Madonna is a tempera on wood, 325 x 204 cm. In size, which makes it slightly smaller than Cimabue's tempera on panel used on the "high altar of Santa Trinita church in Florence" (Kren, Marx "The Madonna in Majesty"), signifying that its
They are draped in white with gold frills around their neck and arms. Their long wings are white, red, and yellow. Similar to the saints of Cimabue, we see that the angels have halos surrounding their heads. The next area we will explore is the mid-ground of both paintings. In Madonna and Child Enthroned with Angels, the mid-ground consists of the Madonna and child. The child resembles a small man. In
Art Cimabue's late Byzantine painting Madonna and Child Enthroned is on the surface and in many respects similar to Giotto's early Renaissance painting Madonna and Child Enthroned with Saints. In fact, only a generation or two separated these two painters. Cimabue painted his Maesta from 1280 and finished in 1285, whereas Giotto worked between 1305 and 1310 on the Ognissanti Madonna. Within this 40-year time span, great changes were taking place
Botticelli's Birth Of Venus And Duccio's Maesta The representation of women in Western art has changed throughout history, and for much of Western history this representation was oriented around the dominant female figure in contemporary society; that is, Mary, mother of Jesus. However, the gradual shift away from a dominantly monotheistic cultural hegemony seen in the Renaissance and eventually the Enlightenment brought with it new (and the case of this study,
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