Meditate with Cenni di Pepo, known as Cimabue (1240

A resurrection before time. Appeared on the art market in 2019, this small old painting had so far adorned the walls of a private house around Compiègne (Oise). But this icon, long anonymous, was not a painting like any other since it is a lost work of the painter Florentin Cimabue. The painting is, in fact, the third panel of a series of eight which made up a liturgical diptych evoking the episodes of the passion of Christ. This rediscovery is important, because the work of the artist testifies to the rocking which he accompanied, during the 13th century, to go from the ancient world of sacred Byzantine painting to a freer expression, already announcing the naturalist audacity of the Italian Renaissance. If the representation of Christ, in the center, still takes up the traditional codes of the icon – golden background, reverse perspective -, the violence of the scene thus portrayed is already taking us elsewhere. Because the time is serious: blindfolded, the Nazarer is delivered to a crowd that turns against him. “Do the prophet,” said some.

“Say who hit you,” scream others. The bodies stretched, muscular, in action emerge, as if to break convenience. The twenty characters, some armed long swords, crowd around Christ, crushing perspective, creating the confusion of feelings. Hands down, Christ lets himself be done. For him too, a world collapses. Nothing holds. If not the inner freedom of a given love despite everything to save this humanity that is lost.