The first great painter among the Sienese was Duccio di Buoninsegna.[151] The completion of his masterpiece—­a picture of the Majesty of the Virgin, executed for the high altar of the Duomo—­marked an epoch in the history of Siena.  Nearly two years had been spent upon it; the painter receiving sixteen soldi a day from the Commune, together with his materials, in exchange for his whole time and skill and labour.  At last, on June 9, 1310, it was carried from Duccio’s workshop to its place in the cathedral.  A procession was formed by the clergy, with the archbishop at their head, followed by the magistrates of the Commune, and the chief men of the Monte de’ Nove.  These great folk crowded round their Lady; after came a multitude of burghers bearing tapers; while the rear was brought up by women and children.  The bells rang and trumpets blew as this new image of the Sovereign Mistress of Siena was borne along the summer-smiling streets of her metropolis to take its throne in her high temple.  Duccio’s altar-piece presented on one face to the spectator a Virgin seated with the infant Christ upon her lap, and receiving the homage of the patron saints of Siena.  On the other, he depicted the principal scenes of the Gospel story and the Passion of our Lord in twenty-eight compartments.  What gives peculiar value to this elaborate work of Sienese art is, that in it Duccio managed to combine the tradition of an early hieratic style of painting with all the charm of brilliant colouring and with dramatic force of presentation only rivalled at that time by Giotto.  Independently of Giotto, he performed at a stroke what Cimabue and his pupil had achieved for the Florentines, and bequeathed to the succeeding painters of Siena a tradition of art beyond which they rarely passed.

Far more than their neighbours at Florence, the Sienese remained fettered by the technical methods and the pietistic formulae of the earliest religious painting.  To make their conventional representations of Madonna’s love and woe and glory burn with all the passion of a fervent spirit, and to testify their worship by the oblation of rich gifts in colouring and gilding massed around her, was their earnest aim.  It followed that, when they attempted subjects on a really large scale, the faults of the miniaturist clung about them.  I need hardly say that Ambrogio and Pietro Lorenzetti form notable exceptions to this general statement.  It may be applied, however, with some truth to Simone Martini, the painter, who during his lifetime enjoyed a celebrity only second to that of Giotto.[152] Like Giotto, Simone exercised his art in many parts of Italy.  Siena, Pisa, Assisi, Orvieto, Naples, and Avignon can still boast of wall and easel pictures from his hand; and though it has been suggested that he took no part in the decoration of the Cappella degli Spagnuoli, the impress of his manner remains at Florence in those noble frescoes of the “Church Militant” and the “Consecration