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34 EARLY CHRISTIAN ART. Chap. II. CHAPTER II. DUCCIO. UGOLINO AND SEGNA. Duccio was the first great painter of the pure Siennese school. His career began after that of Cimabue; earlier than that of Giotto; and he occupies in the annals of his country almost as much space as they hold together in the annals of Florence. He reformed the old manner and created a new one which was long second only to that of Florence, but which clung too firmly to time- honoured forms of composition and old technical methods of execution. His cotemporaries and successors Ugolino, Segna, Simone Martini, the Lorenzetti and Taddeo Bartoli did no more in the fourteenth century than follow 'the wake which marked his track. They hardly improved the system which he had galvanized into life. The Lorenzetti, it is true, assumed and embodied some of the practise of the Florentines, infusing into their grand and admirable works some of the spirit of Giotto. They cleared for a moment the barrier which separated the two great schools of Central Italy. But the effort was momentary, and Taddeo Bartoli, at the close of the four teenth century was as clearly in the beaten path as the second rates of Sienna up to the expansion of his pecu liar genius. Thus confined within a narrow circle, the Siennese re-
