Short answers, pulled from the story.
Cimabue, born Giovanni around 1240 in Florence and died in 1302, was an Italian painter and mosaic designer widely regarded as one of the first major Italian painters to break from the Italo-Byzantine style. His works showed more lifelike figural proportions and more sophisticated shading than medieval conventions allowed, placing him at the beginning of the transition toward the Italian Proto-Renaissance.
Art historian Pietro Toesca attributed the Crucifixion in the church of San Domenico in Arezzo to Cimabue, dating it to around 1270. This makes it the earliest known attributed work that departs from the Byzantine style.
Giorgio Vasari claimed in his Lives that Cimabue discovered the young Giotto around 1277 near Vespignano and took him as a pupil, but many scholars today discount this claim, citing earlier sources that suggest otherwise. The accuracy of Vasari's account of Cimabue's career is generally considered uncertain.
In Canto XI of the Purgatorio, the soul of Oderisi uses Cimabue as an example of how quickly earthly fame passes, noting that Giotto's rise has dimmed Cimabue's glory. Dante used Cimabue to represent the fleeting nature of reputation, placed in a section of Purgatory where souls repent for the sin of pride.
Cimabue translates as "ox-head" in one reading, and in another as "one who crushes the views of others," derived from the Italian verb cimare, meaning to top, to shear, or to blunt. The second meaning was connected by contemporaries to his known haughtiness and contempt for criticism.
The Mocking of Christ was sold on the 27th of October 2019 for 24 million euros, a price the auctioneers described as a new world record for a medieval painting. The picture had been found in the kitchen of a house in northern France, with its owner unaware of its value.