An Italian tradition since the 16th Century, street painting – using chalk as a medium – is enjoying a renaissance in cities throughout Western Europe and the U.S.A. Called "I Madonnari" because of their practice of reproducing the image of the Madonna, the early Italian street painters were vagabonds who would arrive in small towns and villages and transform the sidewalks and public square into temporary galleries for their ephemeral works of art. With the first rains of the season, their paintings would be gone.

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