Following the rediscovery of a 750-year-old painting and its recent entry into the Louvre’s collection after a record-breaking auction sale (€24 million), the film traces the footsteps of a little-known artist who played a fundamental role in the history of Western painting: the Tuscan painter Cimabue. Overshadowed by his pupil Giotto, Cimabue eventually fell into obscurity. Yet he led a generation of Italian artists who revolutionized painting in the final years of the 13th century, at a time when Italy was celebrating one of the most charismatic saints of the late Middle Ages: Francis of Assisi.

Breaking away from the tradition of Byzantine icons, these artists invented a new way of depicting bodies, emotions, nature, and the real world. In a climate of unprecedented artistic ferment, Cimabue and his disciples gave birth to naturalistic painting and ushered Western art into a new era. In just thirty years, between Florence, Pisa, Siena, Arezzo, and Assisi, they laid the groundwork for the great Italian Renaissance that would unfold two centuries later with Leonardo da Vinci, Michelangelo, and Raphael.