Italian Renaissance Painters: is drawn from a larger collection of stories by Amy Steedman called The Knights of Art, which itself is based on an earlier work by Giorgio Vasari titled The Lives of the Painters.
Each story, which has been edited for the classroom, includes interesting anecdotes that bring these Renaissance artists to life. For instance, according to one story, the Italian painter Lippo Lippi was once captured by pirates while sailing at sea, set to work as a slave before one da