This was painted, say, in 1280, as an altar-piece for the Badia of S.Trinita at Florence.
Next came Giotto, Cimabue's pupil, born about 1267, whom we have met already as an architect, philosopher, and innovator; and in the second picture in this room, from Giotto's brush, we see life really awakening.

The Madonna is vivifying; the Child is nearer childhood; we can believe that here are veins with blood in them.

Moreover, whereas Cimabue's angels brought masonry, these bring flowers.

It is crude, no doubt, but it is enough; the new art, which was to counterfeit and even extend nature, has really begun; the mystery and glory of painting are assured and the door opened for Botticelli.
But much had to happen first, particularly the mastery of the laws of perspective, and it was not (as we have seen) until Ghiberti had got to work on his first doors, and Brunelleschi was studying architecture and Uccello sitting up all night at his desk, that painting as we know it--painting of men and women "in the round"-- could be done, and it was left for a youth who was not born until Giotto had been dead sixty-four years to do this first as a master--one Tommaso di Ser Giovanni Guido da Castel San Giovanni, known as Masaccio, or Big Tom.

The three great names then in the evolution of Italian painting, a subject to which I return in chapter XXV, on the Carmine, are Cimabue, Giotto, Masaccio.
We pass on at the Accademia from Cimabue's pupil Giotto, to Giotto's followers, Taddeo Gaddi and Bernardo Daddi, and Daddi's follower Spinello Aretino, and the long dependent and interdependent line of painters.