The _eâ tempestate_ refers to 1311, when Giotto was at Avignon; and when Duccio was employed on the picture that still exists in the opera-house, which was completed in three years, and almost forms an era in the art. It was large enough to have formed a picture for the great altar of the metropolitan church for which it was intended. On the side facing the people he painted large figures of the Virgin, and of various saints; on that fronting the choir he represented scriptural subjects, in many compartments, in which he introduced a vast number of figures a palm in length. Pius II. relates in his Annals of Siena, which were never published, that it cost 2,000 florins; others raise it to 3,000; but not so much on account of the workmanship as the profusion of gold and ultramarine. The style is generally thought to approach the Greek manner; the work, however, is the most copious in figures, and among the best executed productions of that age. Duccio was employed in many parts of Tuscany, and in the church of the Trinity at Florence he painted an Annunciation which, in the opinion of Baldinucci, "leaves no doubt that he was a scholar of Giotto, or of his disciples." But this will not be granted or believed by those who have seen it; for both the colouring and the style are totally dissimilar. Chronology, too, opposes the conclusion; unless we introduce here also a confusion, arising from artists with similar names: Duccio painted from 1282,[262] and died about 1340.[263] The history becomes more complete, when we arrive at the celebrated Simone Memmi, or Simone di Martino,[264] the painter of Laura, and the friend of Petrarca, who has celebrated him in two sonnets that will hand him down to the latest posterity. The poet has also eulogized him in his letters, where he thus speaks: "duos ego novi pictores egregios ... Joctum Florentinum civem, cujus inter modernos fama ingens est, et Simonem Senensem;" which is not, however, comparing him to Giotto, to whom he pays a double compliment, but it is giving Memmi the next rank. In such a convenient place the poet would not, in my opinion, have omitted _Jocti discipulum_, had he been acquainted with such a circumstance: but he appears to have no knowledge of it; and this renders it doubtful whether Simone was the pupil of Giotto at Rome, notwithstanding the assertion of Vasari, who adds that the latter was then engaged in the mosaic of the _Navicella_. The writers of Siena contradict him with good reason; for in 1298 Simone was only fourteen years of age.[265] They reckon him the scholar of their Mino, and certainly he derived much from the large fresco before noticed: but as he retouched it himself we cannot put much faith on the resemblance. His colouring is more vivid than that of the followers of Giotto, and in floridness it seems a prelude to Baroccio. But if he was not the scholar of Giotto, he may have assisted him in some of his works, or, perhaps,