Of Duccio di Buoninsegna, the father of the Sienese school, and everything considered its greatest master, we have numerous records,[17] and by no means all to his credit. He must have had the artistic temperament in a degree then unusual. The court records show half a dozen fines against him, and he was not scrupulous about paying his debts. One forgets these foibles before those Madonnas which are a consummate expression of taste and those narratives which are a triumph of tact and ingenuity. Duccio’s mind does not grasp the harsher and more heroic emotions, but within the realm of the tender and pathetic he is supreme. His elegance appears in his first important work, the famous Rucellai Madonna, Figure 36, in Santa Maria Novella at Florence, which tradition erroneously ascribes to Cimabue. It is presumably the great panel which Duccio contracted to paint in 1285.[18] He was probably young and unconsidered, for he took all the risks, agreeing that the picture might be rejected at the will of the patrons. The Society of Saint Mary the Virgin would have been foolish indeed to reject the most gracious Madonna the world had then seen. Characteristic of Duccio are the swaying curves of the contours and especially of the draperies, the thin, delicately folded robes of the Child and the attendant angels and the sensitively drawn bare feet. Working in Florence and doubtless impressed by Cimabue, Duccio has retained in this early work a certain austerity which gives way in his later work to a more feminine sweetness. For that very reason the Rucellai Madonna is perhaps the greatest Madonna of the century, since without loss of the stately Byzantine qualities, she gains the new attributes of grace. It was no wonder that when the name of Duccio had faded out of the Florentine memory, Florence ascribed this noble Madonna to the venerated founder of her native school, Cimabue. Recent criticism has righted the unconscious wrong thus done to Siena. [Illustration: FIG. 37. Duccio. Madonna in Majesty.—_Opera del Duomo, Siena._ ]