making the sky blue as it really was, they made it
a chequered pattern of gold. After a time it seemed
as if the art of making pictures was going to die out
altogether.

Then came the time which is called `The Renaissance,'
a word which means being born again, or a
new awakening, when men began to draw real
pictures of real things and fill the world with images
of beauty.

Now it is the stories of the men of that time, who
put new life into Art, that I am going to tell you--
men who learned, step by step, to paint the most
beautiful pictures that the world possesses.

In telling these stories I have been helped by an
old book called The Lives of the Painters, by
Giorgio Vasari, who was himself a painter. He
took great delight in gathering together all the
stories about these artists and writing them down
with loving care, so that he shows us real living
men, and not merely great names by which the
famous pictures are known.

It did not make much difference to us when we
were little children whether our pictures were good
or bad, as long as the colours were bright and we
knew what they meant. But as we grow older and
wiser our eyes grow wiser too, and we learn to know