The Project Gutenberg EBook of Knights of Art, by Amy Steedman

This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or
re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.net

Title: Knights of Art
Stories of the Italian Painters

Author: Amy Steedman

Posting Date: September 13, 2008 [EBook #529]
Release Date: May, 1996

Language: English

Character set encoding: ASCII

*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK KNIGHTS OF ART ***

Produced by Charles Keller. HTML version by Al Haines.

KNIGHTS OF ART

STORIES OF THE ITALIAN PAINTERS

BY AMY STEEDMAN

AUTHOR OF 'IN GOD'S GARDEN'

TO FRANCESCA

ABOUT THIS BOOK

What would we do without our picture-books, I wonder? Before we knew
how to read, before even we could speak, we had learned to love them.
We shouted with pleasure when we turned the pages and saw the spotted
cow standing in the daisy-sprinkled meadow, the foolish-looking old
sheep with her gambolling lambs, the wise dog with his friendly eyes.
They were all real friends to us.

Then a little later on, when we began to ask for stories about the
pictures, how we loved them more and more. There was the little girl in
the red cloak talking to the great grey wolf with the wicked eyes; the
cottage with the bright pink roses climbing round the lattice-window,
out of which jumped a little maid with golden hair, followed by the
great big bear, the middle-sized bear, and the tiny bear. Truly those
stories were a great joy to us, but we would never have loved them
quite so much if we had not known their pictured faces as well.

Do you ever wonder how all these pictures came to be made? They had a
beginning, just as everything else had, but the beginning goes so far
back that we can scarcely trace it.

Children have not always had picture-books to look at. In the long-ago
days such things were not known. Thousands of years ago, far away in
Assyria, the Assyrian people learned to make pictures and to carve them
out in stone. In Egypt, too, the Egyptians traced pictures upon the
walls of their temples and upon the painted mummy-cases of the dead.
Then the Greeks made still more beautiful statues and pictures in
marble, and called them gods and goddesses, for all this was at a time
when the true God was forgotten.

Afterwards,