This school of painting, one of the earliest in the history of art in
Italy and probably the earliest with which the ordinary student of
art in Italy will concern himself, was affected throughout the whole
range of its history by the influence of the miniaturists. It was
characterised by naïveté, and in the hands of its earliest painter,
Duccio di Buoninsegna (1255-1319), strove to realise an effect of
hieratic sumptuousness, its precision and grace being that of “a
sanctuary swept and garnished.”
The Louvre possesses no picture by Duccio, who derived his technique
from the Byzantine miniaturists, although he modified their methods.
Standing between the old world and the new, Duccio occupied an
important position at the head of the school of Siena, which in the
early years of the fourteenth century set a noble example to the other
towns and incipient schools of Tuscany. Passing reference may here be
made to the artistic aims and religious aspirations of the cities of
Rome, Pisa, and Arezzo, but it is Siena which stands out pre-eminently
at this early date as interpreting scenes of quiet rapture and sacred
peace, its own social life being bound up in “chivalry, the meat of
the eye,” and “piety, the wine of the soul.” Both Duccio, who was
first employed by the Government of his native city as early as 1278,
and Cimabue, his senior by fifteen years (if we are to accept the
much contested records), have alike been hailed as the author of the
_Rucellai Madonna_ which still hangs in the Church of S. Maria Novella
in Florence. This picture was a generation ago almost unanimously
accepted by responsible critics as the work of the Florentine painter,
and those who still advocate the claims of “Florentinism” are loath to
destroy their cherished illusions. It is not our duty here to bring
forward the arguments in favour of its later ascription to Duccio, who,
we are led to believe, painted it early in his career, before he had
learnt to free himself from the stiff gestures and Byzantine types of
a former tradition. Duccio, it must be conceded, never quite succeeded
in giving to his compositions that sense of life, character, and design
which we find in the works of Giotto, his junior by some twenty years,
who was the first artist to accomplish vast schemes of monumental
decoration. Duccio, however, was the bearer of that torch which was
to kindle the flame of religious art both in Siena and Florence.
Nevertheless, Sienese painting was destined, almost from the moment of
its birth, to show signs of dwindling into a school of trite copyists
and shallow quietists. Early in the fourteenth century the lofty ideals
manifested by emotional Siena spread to scientific Florence, and by
the beginning of the fifteenth century the city on the Arno gave
unmistakable signs of becoming the leading art centre in Tuscany.