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But Domenico could not promise that lord that he would go to serve him at that time, although he engaged himself for another time, for in those days he had set his hand to finishing a part of the marble pavement in the Duomo, which Duccio, the painter of Siena, had formerly begun in a new manner of work.
The first great painter among the Sienese was Duccio di Buoninsegna. 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.
Giotto's art is definitely inferior to the very finest Byzantine of the eleventh and twelfth centuries, and Giotto is the crest of a new movement destined and doomed inevitably to sink to depths undreamed of by Duccio. All that was spiritual in Greek civilisation was sick before the sack of Corinth, and all that was alive in Greek art had died many years earlier.
After describing Cimabue's activities at Pisa and Assisi with equal circumstance, Vasari passes to the famous Rucellai Madonna, now supposed to be by the hand of Duccio of Siena.
The churches and palaces of Lombardy are peculiarly rich in this kind of decoration. The façade of the Oratory of S. Bernardino at Perugia, designed and executed by Agostino di Duccio, is a masterpiece of rare beauty in this style. Not to mention the Renaissance mosaics of S. Mark's at Venice, the cupola of S. Maria del Popolo at Rome, executed in mosaic by Raphael, deserves special mention.
The hand of man can do no more; it is the most beautiful of all religious paintings, subtle and full of grace. Simone was the greatest follower of Duccio. Born in 1284, in 1324 he married Vanna di Memmo, and his brother, Lippo Memmi, sometimes assisted him in his work.
For in taking Melchior Broederlam as a starting-point we are only going as far back with the exception of certain rude wall paintings as the earliest examples take us; and having seen how in Italy the whole history of the art is traceable to Cimabue, Duccio, and Giotto, through the Byzantines, at least a century before Broederlam comes under our notice, we might naturally conclude that it was from Italy that it spread to Cologne, and from Cologne to the Netherlands.
The real culprit was Agostino di Antonio di Duccio, or Guccio, who had succeeded with another colossal statue for the Duomo.
All these works, although they are in these days much less than passable, were then much extolled, according to the standard of knowledge of these men. But returning to our Duccio, his works date about the year of our salvation 1350.
But the long restraint had impaired the power of all who were subjected to it; and as in the works of Giotto, so in the rarer works of Duccio, one often finds an effort after truth of expression, which is almost pathetic in its character, from its revealing the inefficiency of the hand to carry out the thought, and the resolute will striving half in vain to overcome the impediments of bad teaching and imperfect knowledge of the materials and limits of painting.
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