Duccio's most famous work is the huge altar-piece, [65] the Maestà, painted on the panels of the reredos for the cathedral, to-day in the Opera del Duomo of Siena, which, being completed in 1311, was carried through the streets to be placed in the cathedral on the 9th of the June of that year in solemn procession, to the ringing of bells, the city making public holiday, all shops and offices closed, and the people turning out in gala dress. And it is likely enough that this event was stolen by Florentine Vasari to fix upon Florence the credit of the Rucellai Madonna, and, for the same reason, the Florentine probably filched the credit of Duccio, in order to put the picture upon his fellow-townsman Cimabue. It is at least strange that there is no record of so great an event in the Florentine chronicles of the day-no hint of so important an event amidst the archives that record far lesser things ; still more strange that the procession is repeated detail by detail in Vasari's stolen story.

After Duccio, Siena brought forth several painters of consequence, of whom his two pupils, Simone Martini, Segna di Buonaventura, the Lorenzetti, and Taddeo di Bartolo are the most famous.

SIMONE MARTINI, born at Siena in 1283, and dying at Avignon in 1344, is best known by his Maestà fresco in the Council Room of the Communal Palace of Siena, and by the equestrian portrait of Guidoriccio da Fogliano. We know from Petrarch that he painted Laura. His fame was wide in his day ; and Siena, Pisa, Assisi, Orvieto, Naples, and Avignon hold his work.

Simone Martini was long confused with his wife's brother LIPPO MEMMI (dying about 1357), his follower and assistant, who was also the pupil of Duccio.

Of the two brothers, PIETRO and AMBROGIO LORENZETTI, [66] the last of the Sienese painters of its golden early period, little is known-when they were born or when died-and the influence of Florence is strong upon their artistry. Both wrought their art in Pisa as well as in Florence and Siena. The elder brother Pietro's name is first known in 1335 ; he painted many frescoes, but most have vanished, except in the lower church of S. Francesco at Assisi. Several easel pictures remain. The younger brother, Ambrogio, comes down to us with his masterpiece of the allegorical frescoes of Good and Bad Government in the Hall of Peace at the Palazzo Pubblico of Siena, begun in 1337, and completed a couple of years after.

Of TADDEO DI BARTOLO (about 1362 to 1422) his most famed painting is the fresco of the Apostles visiting the Virgin in the church of S. Francesco at Pisa, remarkable for its poetic conception of loving adoration, and its movement of floating figures.

There is something astounding-if aught can astound in Italy of the Renaissance-that Siena, notorious for its vanity, its constant family brawls, its delicate living, should have uttered through its art a passionate piety, a constant religious fervour, were it not that the people were impressionable, highly emotional, quickly roused to passion whether of hate or love, whether fierce pietistic ardour or factional violence.

Siena was to be a bitter rival to Florence; but to fade away before the rapidly increasing greatness of that city. And as with the beautiful old city, so with her workers, who never came to the same splendour as the genius of Florence. But though they fell short of the power of the great Florentines, the rare poetic fervour of the works of genius that her sons brought forth outshines the achievement of Florence in tenderness, exquisiteness, [67] and a sense of elegance and a feeling for human beauty. They had the decorative vision and instinct for splendour. And sensitive art, founded on the habit of narrative illustration, which had grown out of the biblical habit of the mediæval church, was theirs always in abundance. But they never won to the Florentine grip on the human figure. They had always a feeling for colour that was alien to and lacking in Florence. Her sons essayed to utter the greater emotions without disciplining their hand's skill to the perfecting of their craftsmanship, and winning to command of form ; and the school early fell into decay, more concerned with violence of feeling and sentimentality than with their power to utter their emotions, so that by 1400 the genius of Siena had shot its bolt, and had naught more to utter.

Siena, although a Tuscan city like Florence, showed from the first an art quite different from that of her great rival. Her sense of colour and her pietistic fervour were alien to Florence. And the two cities wrought side by side a strangely different art, which had as strange influences.