Ugolino’s underlying message of Mary as God’s instrument in the Incarnation resonates most strongly in Ugolino’s third vignette, the Infancy of Jesus, which covers the upper band of the north wall. Here his departure from Sienese compositional conventions is strongest. He completely reimagines each scene and adds a new event. Moreover, Ugolino’s gift for compressing a great deal of narrative into one scene is most apparent in this vignette. Four of the five scenes have a related event happening in the background, and the inscriptions often extend the narrative even further. As Mary’s role shifts from wife to mother, her sense of her mission as guardian to the son of God deepens – as does Joseph’s. Such character development and self-awareness exceed that of most previous narrative cycles.