Cima da Conegliano

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Giovanni Battista Cima, also called Cima da Conegliano (c. 1459–c. 1517) was an Italian renaissance painter.

Biography

Giovanni Battista Cima was born at Conegliano, now part of the province of Treviso in 1459 or 1460. His father, who died in 1484, was a cloth-shearer (cimator), hence the family surname.

In 1488 the young painter was at work at Vicenza; in 1492 he established himself at Venice, but by the summer of 1516 he had returned to his native place. Cima married twice, his first wife, Corona, bore him two sons, the older of whom took Holy orders at Padua. By Joanna, his second wife, he had six children, three being daughters.

His oldest painting inscribed with a date is the Madonna of the Arbour (1489; now in Museum of Vicenza). This picture is done in distemper and savours so much of the style of Bartolomeo Montagna, who lived at Vicenza from 1480, as to make it highly probable that Cima was his pupil. Even in this early production Cima gave evidence of the serious calm, and almost passionless spirit that so eminently characterized him. Later he fell under the spell of the great Giovanni Bellini and became one of his ablest successors, forming a happy, if not indispensable link between this master and Titian.

At first his figures were somewhat crude, but they gradually lost their harshness and gained in grace while still preserving the dignity. In the background of his facile, harmonious compositions the mountains of his country are invested with new importance. Cima was one of the first Italians to assign a place for landscape depiction, and to formulate the laws of atmosphere and of the distribution of light and shade. His Baptism of Christ in the church of S. Giovanni in Bragora (Venice, 1492), gives striking evidence of this. This colouring is rich and right with a certain silvery tone peculiar to Cima, but which in his later works merges into a delicate gold. His conceptions are usually calm and undramatic, and he has painted scarcely any scenes (having depicted religious ones almost exclusively) that are not suggestive of "sante conversazioni". His Incredulity of St. Thomas (National Gallery, London) and his beautiful Nativity (Venice, Santa Maria del Carmine, 1509) are hardly aught else. But most of his paintings represent Madonnas enthroned among the elect, and in these subjects he observes a gently animated symmetry. The groupings of these sainted figures, even though they may not have a definitely pious character, and the impression of unspeakable peace. Such are, among others, the magnificent Madonna Montinini (about 1507) in the Parma Museum; the Madonna with Four Saints (about 1511) in the Berlin Museum, and the smaller Virgin and Child Enthroned with St. John the Baptist and the Magdalen (about 1513) in the Louvre, which was Cima's last bequest as poet and landscape painter.

Selected works

• Madonna with the Orange Tree (c. 1487-88) - Tempera on panel, Gallerie dell' Accademia, Venezia.
• Annunciation (1495) - Tempera and oil on canvas, 136.5 x 107 cm, Hermitage, St. Petersburg.
• St. Helena (1495) - Panel, National Gallery of Art, Washington
• Maria with Child, Mary Magdalene and St. Hieronymus (c. 1495) - Wood, Alte Pinakothek, Munich.
• Madonna of the Orange Tree (c. 1495) - Tempera and oil on panel, 120 x 139 cm, Gallerie dell'Accademia, Venice.
• Madonna and Child Enthroned with St. Peter, St. Romuald, St. Benedict, and St. Paul (c. 1495-1497) - Tempera on panel, Gemäldegalerie, Berlin.
• Madonna and Child (1496-1499) - Oil on canvas, Hermitage, St. Petersburg, Russia.
• Madonna and Child in a Landscape (c. 1496-1499) - Oil on panel, transmitted to canvas, North Carolina Museum of Art, Raleigh.
• The Virgin and Child (1496-1499) - Oil on wood, National Gallery, London.
• The Virgin and Child (1499-1502) - Oil on woode, National Gallery, London.
• Madonna and Child with Saint Jerome and Saint John the Baptist (c. 1500) - Oil on panel, National Art Gallery, Washington, D.C..
• The Virgin and Child with Saints Francis and Anthony of Padua (c. 1500) - Oak panel, The Wallace Collection, London.
• The Incredulity of St. Thomas with St. Magnus Bishop (c. 1505) - Tempera and oil on panel, 215 x 151 cm, Gallerie dell'Accademia, Venice
• Presentation of the Virgin Mary at the Temple (1500) - Oil on wood, Gallery of Dresden, Dresden, Germany.
• St. Sebastian (1500-1502) - Oil on panel, 116.5 x 47 cm, Musée des Beaux Arts, Strasbourg.
• Christ among the Doctors - National Museum in Warsaw, Poland
• St. Peter Martyr with St. Nicholas of Bari, St. Benedict and an Angel Musician (1504) - Oil on panel, 330 x 216 cm, Pinacoteca di Brera, Milan.
• Madonna and Child (c. 1504) - Tempera on wood, 66 x 57 cm, Galleria degli Uffizi, Florence.
• Virgin and Child (1504-1507) - Louvre, Paris.
• Virgin and Child (c. 1505) - Oil on wood, National Gallery, London.
• Madonna Enthroned with the Child (Madonna Montinini) - (c. 1507) Panel, Galleria Nazionale, Parma
• Virgin and Child with Saint Paul and Saint Francis (1508-1530) - Oil on wood, National gallery, London.
• Adoration of the Shepherds (c. 1509-10) - Tempera on panel, Carmini temple, Venice.
• Virgin and child with St. George and St. James (1510-1511) - Musée des Beaux-Arts de Caen, Caen.
• Virgin and Child withs St. John the Baptist and St. Mary Magdalene (1511-1513) - Tempera on panel, 167 x 110 cm, Louvre, Paris.
• Virgin and Child with St. Sebastian, St. Francis, St. John the Baptist, St. Jerome, an Unidentified Female Saint, St. Anthony of Padua and Two Donors (c. 1515) - Oil on panel, Harvard University Art Museum, Massachusetts.
• Virgin with Child and St. Hohn the Baptist and St. Francis - Musée du Petit Palais, Avignon.
• Virgin and Child with Saints and Donors (c. 1515) - Cleveland Museum of Art, Cleveland, Ohio.
• The Deposition - Oil on panel, Pushkin's Art Museum, Moscow.

This article incorporates text from the public-domain Catholic Encyclopedia of 1913.