This week, a long-lost painting is making its public debut alongside a newly restored masterwork—both by the pioneering 13th-century artist Cimabue. Together, the paintings shine a brand-new light on the much-discussed forerunner of Italian art as we know it today.
A New Look at Cimabue: At the Origins of Italian Painting opens at the Louvre Museum in Paris on Wednesday, January 22. The exhibition runs through May 12, 2025.
Louvre Exhibition Is First to Focus on the “Father of Western Painting”
Born in Florence in 1240, Giovanni Cimabue was among the first forefathers of Italian Renaissance art. As a painter and mosaic designer, he introduced a new focus on naturalism to Western painting. Cimabue’s innovative attempts at three-dimensional space, voluminous figures, natural postures, and expressive faces helped Tuscany begin to break free from the dominant Italo-Byzantine style of medieval art.
A New Look at Cimabue: At the Origins of Italian Painting is the first exhibition at the Louvre Museum dedicated to the artist. According to the Louvre, the exhibition is “the product of two ‘Cimabue-centric’ events of great importance for the museum: the restoration of the Maestà and the acquisition of a heretofore-unseen Cimabue panel, rediscovered in France in 2019 and listed as a French National Treasure: Christ Mocked.”
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Restorations Reveal New Insights Into Cimabue’s Maésta
Cimabue painted the Maestá in the late 13th century. The painting, originally displayed in the church of San Francesco in Pisa, depicts the Virgin Mary and the Christ Child on a throne encircled by angels. Maestá is significant because it canonized a new visual representation of the Madonna and Child. The painting directly informed subsequent generations of leading Italian artists—including Duccio, whose Rucellai Maestà is considered a masterwork of 14th-century Sienese painting, and Giotto, a key figure in the Early Italian Renaissance.
The Louvre’s recent restoration of Cimabue’s Maestá offered fascinating new insights into Cimabue’s creative process. A masterfully subtle variety of colors was made visible. Additionally, details that were previously obscured by overpainting, including Eastern references, were revealed. According to the Louvre, “innovations appearing in this painting have led certain art historians to consider it ‘the founding act of Western painting.'”
Long-Lost Cimabue Found Hanging in Paris Kitchen
Another hyped-up highlight of A New Look at Cimabue is a small—and never-before-seen—panel painting. Christ Mocked, which dates back to the 1280s, is one of three known panels from Cimabue’s Diptych of Devotion. The diptych depicted scenes from the life and passion of Jesus Christ. It is thought to have been split up for sale in the 19th century.
Centuries after its creation, Christ Mocked was found hanging in the kitchen of an elderly woman in northern France. It sold at auction for €24 million in 2019—setting a new record for a pre-16th-century artwork. The Louvre acquired and began restoring the painting in 2023 following an export ban.
