Knights of Art - Stories of the Italian Painters

What if you could sit beside Leonardo da Vinci as he painted the Mona Lisa? What if you could watch a young Michelangelo literally scratching his first drawings onto church walls? This enchanting book introduces children to the great Italian painters not as distant masters frozen in galleries, but as vivid, sometimes eccentric, always fascinating human beings. Through anecdote and story, Amy Steedman brings the Renaissance alive: the fierce rivalries between artists, the powerful patrons who funded their work, the years of patient labor hidden behind every masterpiece. Here is where children discover that the creators of the world's most beloved art were once apprentices scrubbing floors, teenagers competing for commissions, and grown men who wept when their greatest works were chipped away by jealous rivals. For any child who has ever stared at a painting and wondered about the person who made it, these stories are the key to a world of creativity, stubbornness, and wonder.