So the master set out, and the boy Giotto went
with him to Florence to begin his training.

The studio where Cimabue 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