Ruskin in his later writing stresses the power of the work he considers to be by Cimabue. Cimabue is the head of 'the legendary and imaginative school' and 'the power of Cimabue is in conceiving with new passion what had been cold and dead in religious legend' ( Works, 23.198) The Saint Francis altarpiece in Santa Croce in Florence is 'harder and more rude in drawing', 'more rigid yet with greater power and expression' than either the Ognissanti Madonna or the Rucellai Madonna ( Works, 38.329, and see also Works, 3.644 for the attribution of Duccio's Rucellai Madonna to Cimabue).
Ruskin distinguishes Giotto from Cimabue in that Giotto is 'Dramatic' while Cimabue, like Turner, is 'Contemplative' ( Works, 23.205), and therefore the 'interpreter to mankind of the meaning of the Birth of Christ'( Works, 23.328).
It is for such reasons that Ruskin directly challenged the relativism of Vasari 's account of Cimabue and Giotto. Ruskin made the absolute claim that Cimabue was the greatest of the Florentine painters, and comparable with Tintoretto, said there by Ruskin to be the greatest of the Venetians:
He is the Florentine spirit itself -- the Etrurian lover of religion and mystery returning to its strength as the nation recovers its glory, expressing itself in the genius of one great man as that of Venice in Tintoret. Parallels are never exact in these wide things. The greatest man in Venice comes last; in Florence, first. ( Works, 23.199)
See Ruskin and the Italian School.