DUCCIO The painter Duccio di Buoninsegna was born in Siena, 30 miles south of Florence, between 1255 and 1260. His death is dated the end of 1318. As for Giotto and all other artists (and not) of the time, the dates of birth and death do not come from direct records of these dates but from documents of other kind that approximately recall the event. The production of Duccio represents the most numerous complex of paintings on wood in Italian medieval painting. In those times, see Giotto himself, painters were more often commissioned with frescoe work, i.e. mural painting. Duccio was a painter very well-known and respected in his lifetime. One of his most remarkable works, the "Pala" (a picture of large dimensions placed behind the alter) known as "La Maestà" for the cathedral of Siena, cost 3000 golden Florins, a sum never before reached in those times, and was escorted to the site for which it had been commissioned with a solemn celebration in which all citizens of Siena took part! Unlike Giotto, Duccio remained tied to painting of Bizantine characteristics. However, his bizantinism, his remaining anchored to the style and symbolism of representation that was coming to its end, definitely overtaken by Giotto, takes nothing away from Duccio's work. His, infact, was painting of excellent quality, reflecting chromatic preciousness, possessing a serene sense of vast monumentality and a sweet and affectionate lyricism. An extremely refined product in the neo-hellenistic tradition. Unlike Giotto, Duccio articulates his own sign with elegant flexibility, he is attentive to detail and the same mass composition is articulated in a harmonic and controlled unfolding of coherent and sweetly cadenced lines. One can see, for example, the "Deposition", in which the scene, of such dramatic contents, is free from any form of brutality, aiming to give serenely the sense of the happening, rather than give a true representation of the same. Duccio showed an attitude less dynamic and revolutionary than that of Giotto, he was another pole, but of equal quality and coherence.