Maestà di Santa Maria dei Servi

Around 1280, when this was painted, Italian altar panels still followed the Byzantine manner brought from the East, with gold grounds, long severe faces, and drapery drawn in fine gold lines. Cimabue worked inside that tradition and quietly pushed at it, softening the Virgin's face and letting her weight settle into the throne, a few years before his likely pupil Giotto broke with the style altogether. It was made for this church of the Servite order in Bologna, where it still hangs. Look closely and the surface carries its long life here: old candle burns, and passages repainted by later hands, so that scholars still argue over how much of what you see is Cimabue's own brush and how much his workshop's.