ue worked was not at all like those artists'
rooms which we now call studios. It was much more like a workshop, and
the boys who went there to learn how to draw and paint were taught
first how to grind and prepare the colours and then to mix them. They
were not allowed to touch a brush or pencil for a long time, but only
to watch their master at work, and learn all that they could from what
they saw him do.

So there the boy Giotto worked and watched, but when his turn came to
use the brush, to the amazement of all, his pictures were quite unlike
anything which had ever been painted before in the workshop. Instead of
copying the stiff, unreal figures, he drew real people, real animals,
and all the things which he had learned to know so well on the grey
hillside, when he watched his father's sheep. Other artists had painted
the Madonna and Infant Christ, but Giotto painted a mother and a baby.

And before long this worked such a wonderful change that it seemed
indeed as if the art of making pictures had been born again. To us his
work still looks stiff and strange, but in it was the beginning of all
the beautiful pictures that belong to us now.

Giotto did not only paint pictures, he worked in marble as well.
To-day, if you walk through Florence, the City of Flowers, you will
still see its fairest flower of all, the tall white campanile or
bell-tower, 'Giotto's tower' as it is called. There it stands in all
its grace and loveliness like a tall white lily against the blue sky,
pointing ever upward, in the grand old faith of the shepherd-boy. Day
after day it calls to prayer and to good works, as it has done all
these hundreds of years since Giotto designed and helped to build it.

Some people call his pictures stiff and ugly, for not every one has
wise eyes to see their beauty, but the loveliness of this tower can
easily be seen by all. 'There the white doves circle round and round,
and rest in the sheltering niches of the delicately carved arches;
there at the call of its bell the black-robed Brothers of Pity hurry
past to their works of mercy. There too the little children play, and
sometimes stop to stare at the marble pictures, set in the first story
of the tower, low enough to be seen from the street. Their special
favourite is perhaps the picture of the shepherd sitting under his
tent, with the sheep in front, and with the funniest little dog keeping
watch at the side.

Giotto always had a great love for animal