The Jesuit art-historian Lanzi characterised the Sienese school of painters as _lieta scuola fra lieto popolo_, "a blithe school among a blithe people," and added that their principal works were to be found in the churches of the city. Needless to say that the latter remark no longer holds, and we shall do best to begin our consideration of the painters in the well-arranged picture gallery of the _Reale Istituto Provinciale di Belle Arti_. The first great epoch in Sienese painting, as in sculpture, is contemporaneous with the government of the Nine and ends with the outbreak of the pestilence of 1348. The moving spirit of this period, the true founder of the Sienese school, is Duccio di Buoninsegna. Recent researches have shown that he was born shortly before the battle of Montaperti, and that his artistic activity extends from 1278 to 1313.[62] It will be better to speak more fully of his work when we stand before his masterpiece in the Opera del Duomo, that picture which, in Ghiberti's words, "was made right excellently and learnedly, and is a magnificent thing." Bringing the Byzantine manner to its utmost perfection for the purpose of religious illustration, Duccio gave imperishable form to what had been more or less traditional through the previous centuries of Christian art. He is to the Middle Ages what Raphael was to be to the Renaissance. Segna di Tura di Buoninsegna, who was working in the early years of the fourteenth century, was Duccio's pupil, perhaps his nephew; he imitated the manner of his master, but somewhat ineffectually. Simone Martini, on the other hand, followed worthily in Duccio's footsteps; with an exquisite sense of beauty and a love of splendid decorative effects in colour, he is perhaps the most typical master of "soft Siena," doing for her in line and colour what Folgore had done in rhyme. He died in 1344. With him as assistant worked his brother-in-law, Lippo Memmi; "they were gentle masters," wrote Ghiberti, "and their pictures were done with the greatest diligence, right delicately finished." This epoch culminates in the two Lorenzetti--Pietro and his younger brother Ambrogio--both of whom appear to have been among the victims of the pestilence. Ambrogio especially, _famosissimo e singularissimo maestro_, as Ghiberti calls him, _nobilissimo componitore_, is the greatest and most imaginative painter that Siena has produced. In the splendid allegorical frescoes with which he adorned the palace chamber of the _Signori Nove_ and in his glowing altarpieces, in material beauty and spiritual significance, he reaches a height unattained by any other Italian painter of his century--save only the mighty Florentine, Andrea Orcagna.