Only a dozen of his works are known to exist, along with a few frescoes and mosaics in Assisi and Florence. Almost nothing is known about this 13th-century Italian painter, and even the meaning of his nickname, Cimabue (pronounced chee-mah-BOO-eh), remains a mystery.

Who was he really? It's his works, the only witnesses to his genius, that allow us to get to know him better. They reveal the traces of a visionary artist, at the crossroads of Byzantine influences and the beginnings of the Renaissance.