Sienese School of painting

The Sienese school may be called the sprightly school of a sprightly people, possessing such fascination from the judicious selection of its colors, and the grateful air of its heads, that foreigners have sometimes been so taken with it, as even to prefer it to the Florentine.

Duccio di Buoninsegna (c 1255 – 1318) an Italian painter, was the founder of the sienese school of painting.

The only fully documented surviving work by him is the Maesta for the high altar of Siena Cathedral which was completed in 1311.

Duccio di Buoninsegna was the leading figures, along with Cimabue and Giotto, the history of early Italian art.

He transformed Byzantine iconographic and decorative formulas, through spatial and volumetric effects derived from his predecessor Cimabue, into a refined, incipiently modern pictorial idiom that influenced generations of local artist.

Duccio’s successors in the Sienese school also produced innovative work, Simone Martini (1285-1344) was a pupil of Duccio and may have assisted him in painting the Maesta.

At the beginning of the sixteenth century, the Sienese school began to assume the modern style; and design, a full tone of coloring and perspective, all attained perfection in a few years.
Sienese School of painting