A little earlier than the year 1225, when Florence called in strangers to adorn the Baptistery with mosaics in the Greek style, Guido of Siena signed and dated 1221 the most famous of his madonnas. Unhappily the enthroned Virgin of the Palazzo Pubblico was repainted some fifty years later, a fact which has led many critics unnecessarily to doubt the date.[15] But from half a dozen other pictures by Guido we may learn that he was a diligent and rather heavy-handed imitator of the current Greek formulas, Figure 34. At the battle of Montaperti the Sienese captured an excellent Florentine painter, Coppo di Marcovaldo, and in 1261 he painted the admirable madonna which is still in the church of the Servi. It shows a sensitive use of the Byzantine conventions. There is pensiveness and almost shyness in the face and posture of the Virgin, and loving intentness in that of the Child. Their relation is to each other and not as in earlier madonnas to the devout public. These intimate qualities have been ascribed, I think wrongly, to restoration. But they appear even more emphatically in the entirely unrestored Madonna, Figure 3, in the collection of Mr. Otto Kahn, which I think may be a Coppo[16], and is in any case of similar date and feeling. The same process of sweetening the old style while accepting it, is shown in the famous altar-piece of St. Peter in the Academy at Siena, Figure 35. The gaunt figure of the Saint is completely traditional, the little stories of the Annunciation and Nativity at the side show a new vivacity and a new grace. Siena met the innovating painter more than half way, for the indignant citizens soon marred with their knives the crucifiers of the head of the Christian Church. The date of the panel will not be far from 1275, and already the painter of genius who was to create the sweet, new style was learning his trade. [Illustration: FIG. 36. Duccio Purcellai Madonna.—_Santa Maria Novella, Florence._ ]