DUCCIO DI BONINSEGNA, cinch% d8 bon-en-sin'ya, Italian painter, founder of the Sienese school: b. Siena about 1260; d. about 1320. He was doubtless trained at Byzantium or came into contact with a Byzantine teacher, as his skill in decoration indicates. In 1285 he was at Florence where he contracted to paint an altar-piece of the Madonna for the Santa Maria Novella. In 1298 he served as a mem ber of the official board of the council of Siena. In 1301 he began a 'Majesty' for the chapel of the Public Palace there of which no record remains. His great work is the altar piece of the cathedral in Siena, which when completed was carried in a procession to the cathedral. It shows the Madonna surrounded by saints and angels; on the reverse are 26 pictures of the Passion of Christ. Some of these are now in the galleries of the Berlin Museum, the Benson collection and the Na tional Museum, London. Two other Madonnas at the Siena Academy are also attributed to him; likewise a 'Crucifixion' in the possession of the queen of England, a with Angels, Prophets and Saints' (National Gal lery, London) ; the 'Preaching of St. John the Baptist> and (Saints Peter and Paul' (Rambona Collection, Cologne). Of doubtful authenticity
is the triptych of the (Crucifixion' in the J. P. Morgan collection, New York. It is as an illustrator that Duccio excels. His groupings and arrangement are admirable, his perspective good and his drawing graceful and careful. But, despite his excellent dramatic sense and his imaginative force, he failed to inspire figures with a sense of reality, They lade weight, mass, solidity. Their movements are empty attitudes. There is no breath in the beautiful figures that fill his canvasses. Duccio was not an innovator. He perfected the models and types of the old school. His colors are rich and harmonious and he shows an under standing of the handling of light and shadow. His principal pupil and follower was Simone Martini. Consult Berenson, 'The Central Italian Painters of the Renaissance' (2d ed., London 1909) ; Wulff, 'Repertoriuni fiir Kunst geschichte) (1907) ; Crowe and Cavalcaselle, 'History of Painting in Italy' (ed. by Langton Douglas and S. A. Strong, London 1911).