As you enter Siena by the wide Camollia gate you will read in Latin “Siena opens her Heart still wider to thee”:—_Cor magis tibi Sena pandit._ Thus Siena avows herself the city of the heart. Where Florence studied and calculated, she mused and dreamed; where Florence was solid, she was volatile. For unrewarding idealisms she had a kind of genius. Long after the other Italian communes had seen it was worst possible business to support the emperor, Siena was faithful to that lost cause. Every few years she changed her form of government, and seldom for the better. Merrymaking and pageantry were universal in old Italy, but Siena alone had a Spendthrift Club (_Brigata Spendereccia_) devoted to continual pleasure, and a poet, Folgore da San Gemignano, to celebrate its gaieties. Siena was ardent in inconstant fashion. Early in the 14th century was found a nude marble Venus so beautiful that it was set up in the great square and thronged with admirers. Then the war with Florence went badly, and at a few words from a pious fanatic, the citizenry smashed up the image and secretly buried the bits on Florentine soil to bring bad luck to the foe. Naturally no bad luck ensued to Florence, but Siena had enjoyed two delightful emotional crises. You will see why Siena never could produce a realistic art, any more than Ireland has produced one. Her eye was not on the object but on her own state of mind. Thus Florence will produce historians, scientists, and politicians, while Siena will produce saints and miracles. Amid this romantic inconstancy, the continuing thread was the cult of the Blessed Virgin. No other city thought so delicately of her, and no other art has represented her so ideally. Had she not saved the city? In 1259 the Florentine Guelfs and their allies marched with overwhelming force to the very gates of Siena. Ruin was imminent and despair abroad, when by a common impulse the populace marched penitently to the Cathedral and before the rude picture of the Queen of Heaven solemnly committed the city into her hands. In ecstacy of renewed faith the inferior army of Siena fell upon the invaders at Montaperti and utterly routed them. In gratitude Siena remained the city of the Virgin. When in 1310 the painter Duccio replaced the rude effigy of the Madonna of Victory with one of the finest Madonnas known to art, Fig. 37, the whole city suspended business and escorted the picture from the studio to the Cathedral with hymns and litanies in honor of their divine patroness.