Famous work · not an exact-location map point

Cimabue's Celebrated Madonna

A procession carrying Cimabue's great altarpiece through the streets of thirteenth-century Florence — an imagined historical scene, tied to a real Florentine street.

Real-world connection

No single real-world viewpoint

A reconstructed 13th-century processional pageant through an imagined medieval Florence; a figure subject, not a topographic view.

Cimabue's Celebrated Madonna — at a glance

Artist: Frederic Leighton (1830–1896)
Year: 1853–1855
Movement: Victorian history painting
Place: An imagined thirteenth-century Florence (Vasari's Borgo Allegri legend)
Viewpoint: A reconstructed medieval street — Florence's medieval fabric and Santa Maria Novella survive; the exact street is invented
Medium: Oil on canvas
Dimensions: c. 222 × 521 cm
Now at: National Gallery, London (Royal Collection, long loan)

Overview

This large early painting by Frederic Leighton — his first major exhibited work, shown at the Royal Academy in 1855 — reconstructs a story told by Vasari: that when the painter Cimabue finished his great Madonna, the people of Florence carried it in joyful procession from his studio to the church of Santa Maria Novella. Leighton shows a long, friezelike procession of Florentines in medieval dress escorting the framed altarpiece through a sunlit street, with the young Giotto walking beside Cimabue and the poet Dante watching from the side. It is oil on canvas, very wide (about 222 by 521 cm), and it is on long loan to the National Gallery, London.

Where was Cimabue's Celebrated Madonna painted?

Scholarship Vasari's account names the Borgo Allegri (‘joyful quarter’) in Florence as taking its name from this celebration — a real street that still exists near Santa Croce. But Leighton's street is a reconstruction: an imagined thirteenth-century Florence of plain stone houses, a wall, a distant campanile and hills, built from research and imagination rather than a survey of a surviving view. Florence's medieval fabric and the church of Santa Maria Novella survive, so the world of the picture is real; the exact street is invented.

ViewpointReal-world connection

Original now atNational Gallery, on public display

What is in the painting?

The procession moves left to right across the whole canvas: musicians, garlanded children, monks, nobles and craftsmen in bright medieval robes, escorting the large gold-ground Madonna altarpiece carried high. Cimabue, laurel-crowned, leads, holding the hand of the boy Giotto; Dante, in dark red, stands apart at the right. A banner, a wall, a low arch; sunlit stone buildings, a bell tower and blue hills behind.

Look closely

The gold-ground altarpiece

Cimabue's large Madonna is carried high at the centre of the procession — the bright focus.

Cimabue and the boy Giotto

The laurel-crowned master leads, holding the hand of his young pupil.

Dante watching

The poet stands apart in dark red at the right, observing the procession pass.

The garlanded children

Children with flowers and musicians head the procession through the sunlit street.

Analysis

Composition and technique

A processional frieze the full width of a very wide canvas, in clear colour and firm Pre-Raphaelite-influenced detail.

Scholarship Leighton spreads the figures in a shallow band parallel to the picture plane, like a classical or early-Renaissance relief, each costume and face carefully worked, the altarpiece the bright centre. The design announces the history of Italian art as a public triumph.

History & provenance

Queen Victoria bought the painting from the 1855 exhibition; it belongs to the Royal Collection and is on long-term loan to the National Gallery, London.

Sources

Royal Collection Trust / National Gallery, London — Frederic Leighton, ‘Cimabue's Celebrated Madonna...’ (1853–55)
Giorgio Vasari, ‘Lives of the Artists’ (1550/1568) — the Cimabue procession and the Borgo Allegri