A Florentine painter, and founder of the Florentine school, which ranked among its members such artists as Michael Angelo, Raphael, and Leonardo da Vinci; was the first to leave the stiff traditional Byzantine forms of art and copy from nature and the living model, though it was only with the advent of his great disciple Giotto that art found beauty in reality, and Florence was made to see the divine significance of lowly human worth, at sight of which, says Ruskin, "all Italy threw up its cap"; his "Madonna," in the Church of Santa Maria, has been long regarded as a marvel of art, and of all the "Mater Dolorosas" of Christianity, Ruskin does not hesitate to pronounce his at Assisi the noblest; "he was the first," says Ruskin, "of the Florentines, first of European men, to see the face of her who was blessed among women, and with his following hand to make visible the Magnificat of his heart" (1240-1302).