Knights of Art: Stories of the Italian Painters — John Shaqi
Knights of Art: Stories of the Italian PaintersSteedman, Amy
General
Knights of Art: Stories of the Italian Painters
Steedman, Amy
Art -- Juvenile literature; Painters -- Italy
Giotto's eyes twinkled as he looked at the funny figure riding beside
him, for the lawyer was very small, and had a crooked back, and rolled
up in the old cloak he looked like a bundle of rags.
'Yes!' he answered quickly, 'any one would certainly believe I was a
great painter, if he could but first persuade himself that thou dost
know thy A B C.'
In all these stories we catch glimpses of the good-natured kindly
painter, with his love of jokes, and his own ready answers, and all the
time we must remember that he was filling the world with beauty, which
it still treasures to-day, helping to sow the seeds of that great tree
of Art which was to blossom so gloriously in later years.
And when he had finished his earthly work it was in his own cathedral,
'St. Mary of the Flowers,' that they laid him to rest, while the people
mourned him as a good friend as well as a great painter. There he lies
in the shadow of his lily tower, whose slender grace and
delicate-tinted marbles keep his memory ever fresh in his beautiful
city of Florence.
FRA ANGELICO
Nearly a hundred years had passed by since Giotto lived and worked in
Florence, and in the same hilly country where he used to tend his sheep
another great painter was born.
Many other artists had come and gone, and had added their golden links
of beauty to the chain of Art which bound these years together. Some
day you will learn to know all their names and what they did. But now
we will only single out, here and there, a few of those names which are
perhaps greater than the rest. Just as on a clear night, when we look
up into the starlit sky, it would bewilder us to try and remember all
the stars, so we learn first to know those that are most easily
recognised--the Plough, or the Great Bear, as they shine with a clear
steady light against the background of a thousand lesser stars.
The name by which this second great painter is known is Fra Angelico,
but that was only the name he earned in later years. His baby name was
Guido, and his home was in a village close to where Giotto was born.
He was not a poor boy, and did not need to work in the fields or tend
the sheep on the hillside. Indeed, he might have soon become rich and
famous, for his wonderful talent for painting would have quickly
brought him honours and wealth if he had gone out into the world. But
instead of this, when he was a young man of twenty he made up his mind
to enter the convent at Fiesole, and to become a monk of the Order of
Saint Dominic.
Every brother, or frate, as he is called, who leaves the world and
enters the life of the convent is given a new name, and his old name is
never used again. So young Guido was called Fra Giovanni, or Brother
John. But it is not by that name that he is known best, but that of Fra
Angelico, or the angelic brother--a name which was given him afterwards
because of his pure and beautiful life, and the heavenly pictures which
he painted.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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