In those days, as already remarked, the high altar stood under the cupola, and the picture was painted on both sides. They have been separated and otherwise mutilated; several smaller scenes have disappeared, and the whole has suffered from neglect and from restoration; but still, rich with gold and the bright colours that the sumptuous Sienese loved, it remains a supreme manifestation of the soul of mediaeval faith. In the great central panel is the vision of the immaculate Virgin Mother--Queen of Heaven and Earth--with her Divine Babe, "a beauty that was joy in the eyes of all the other saints," as Dante has it; while Angels, "each distinct in splendour and in art," their brows decked with such jewels as the seer of Patmos saw in the New Jerusalem of his revelation, cluster round her throne, bearing the mystical wands that end in the symbol of the Blessed Trinity. The Prince of the Apostles, the two Johns, the virgin martyrs Agnes and Catherine, stand in contemplation, while at their [Illustration: _The Crucifixion._ _by Duccio di Buoninsegna._] Queen's feet kneel Siena's sainted patrons: Crescentius and Victor, Savinus and Ansanus. And their prayer is the painter's own, that he has inscribed upon the base of the throne: "Holy Mother of God, be Thou the cause of rest to Siena, be life to Duccio because he has painted Thee thus." The original back of this panel represents the Passion of Christ in twenty-six scenes, from the entry into Jerusalem to the _Noli me tangere_ and the appearing to the two on the way to Emmaus. There are, further, eighteen separate scenes of different shapes and sizes, originally forming part of the whole (including the _gradino_, back and front), of different episodes from the lives of Christ and the Madonna. No more perfect illustration of these sacred histories, from the point of view of mediaeval tradition, has ever been painted. Duccio anticipates Raphael, in that side of his achievement in which the great master of Urbino, by the illustration that (with his followers) he supplied to religious history and legend, "has given an Hellenic garb to the Hebraic universe."[98] But he is almost untouched by the new spirit that was manifesting itself in Giotto's panels and frescoes. "Duccio," says Mr Berenson, "properly regarded, is the last of the great artists of antiquity, in contrast to Giotto, who was the first of the moderns."[99]