Online Encyclopedia
Search over 40,000 articles from the original, classic Encyclopedia Britannica, 11th Edition.
LEONARDO DA VINCI (1452–1519)
Online EncyclopediaEncyclopedia Home :: LAP-LEO
del.icio.us it!
|
LEONARDO DA See also:VINCI (1452–1519) , the See also:great See also:Italian painter, sculptor, architect, musician, mechanician, engineer and natural philosopher, was the son of a Florentine lawyer, See also:born out of wedlock by a See also:mother in a humble station, variously described as a See also:peasant and as of See also:gentle See also:birth. The See also:place of his birth was Vinci, a See also:castello or fortified See also: His father showed some of his drawings to an acquaintance, See also:Andrea del Verrocchio, who at once recognized the boy's See also:artistic vocation, and was selected by Ser Piero to be his See also:master. Verrocchio, although hardly one of the great creative or inventive forces in the See also:art of his See also:age at Florence, was a first-See also:rate craftsman alike as See also:goldsmith, sculptor and painter, and particularly distinguished as a teacher. In his studio Leonardo worked for several years (about 1470–1477) in the See also:company of Lorenzo di See also:Credi and other less celebrated pupils. Among his contem» poraries he formed See also:special ties of friendship with the painters Sandro See also:Botticelli and Pietro See also:Perugino. He had soon learnt all that Verrocchio had to See also:teach—more than all, if we are to believe the oft-told See also:tale of the figure, or figures, executed by the See also:pupil in the picture of See also:Christ's See also:Baptism designed by the master for the monks of See also:Vallombrosa. The See also:work in question is now in the See also:Academy at Florence. According to See also:Vasari the See also:angel kneeling on the See also:left, with a drapery over the right See also:arm, was put in by Leonardo, and when Verrocchio saw it his sense of its superiority to his own work caused him to forswear See also:painting for ever after. The latter part of the See also:story is certainly false. The picture, originally painted in See also:tempera, has suffered much from later repaints in oil, rendering exact See also:judgment difficult. The most competent See also:opinion inclines to acknowledge the hand of Leonardo, not only in the See also:face of the angel, but also in parts of the drapery and of the landscape background. The work was probably done in or about 1470, when Leonardo was eighteen years old. By 1472 we find him enrolled in the lists of the painters' gild at Florence. Here he continued to live and work for ten or eleven years longer. Up till 1477 he is still spoken of as a pupil or apprentice of Verrocchio; but in that See also:year he seems to have been taken into special favour by Lorenzo the Magnificent, and to have worked as an See also:independent artist under his patronage until 1482–1483. In 1478 we find him receiving an important See also:commission from the signory, and in 1480 another from the monks of See also:San Donato in Scopeto. Leonardo was not one of those artists of the See also:Renaissance who sought the means of reviving the See also:ancient glories of art mainly in the See also:imitation of ancient See also:models. The antiques of the Medici gardens seem to have had little See also:influence on him beyond that of generally stimulating his See also:passion for perfection. By his own instincts he was an exclusive student of nature. From his earliest days he had flung himself upon that study with an unprecedented ardour of delight and curiosity. In drawing from See also:life he had See also:early found the way to unite precision with freedom and See also:fire—the subtlest accuracy of expressive See also:definition with vital See also:movement and See also:rhythm of See also:line—as no draughtsman had been able to unite them before. He was the first painter to recognize the See also:play of See also:light and shade as among the most significant and attractive of the See also:world's appearances, the earlier See also:schools having with one consent subordinated light and shade to See also:colour and outline. Nor was he a student of the broad, usual, patent appearances only of the world; its fugitive, fantastic, unaccustomed appearances attracted him most of all. See also:Strange shapes of hills and rocks, rare See also:plants and animals, unusual faces and figures of men, questionable See also:smiles and expressions, whether beautiful or See also:grotesque, far-fetched See also:objects and curiosities, were things he loved to See also:pore upon and keep in memory. Neither did he stop at See also:mere appearances of any See also:kind, but, having stamped the See also:image of things upon his See also:brain, went on indefatigably to probe their hidden See also:laws and causes. He soon satisfied himself that the artist who was content to repro-duce the See also:external aspects of things without searching into the hidden workings of nature behind them, was one but See also: The landscape, with its mysterious spiry mountains and winding See also:waters, is very Leonardesque both in this picture and in another contemporary product of theworkshop, or as some think of Leonardo's hand, namely a very highly and coldly finished small " Madonna with a See also:Pink at See also:Munich. The likeness he is recorded to have painted of Ginevra de' Benci used to be traditionally identified with the See also:fine portrait of a matron at the Pitti absurdly known as La Monaca: more lately it has been recognized in a rather dull, expressionless Verrocchiesque portrait of a young woman with a fanciful background of See also:pine-sprays in the See also:Liechtenstein See also:gallery at See also:Vienna. Neither attribution can be counted convincing. Several works of sculpture, including a bas-See also:relief at See also:Pistoia and a small terra-See also:cotta See also:model of a St See also: The preparation in monochrome for this picture, a work of extraordinary See also:power both of See also:design and physiognomical expression, is preserved at the Uffizi, but the painting itself was never carried out, and after Leonardo's failure to fulfil his See also:contract Filippino Lippi had once more to be employed in his place: Of equal or even more intense power, though of narrower See also:scope, is an unfinished monochrome preparation for a St See also:Jerome,, found accidentally at See also:Rome by See also:Cardinal See also:Fesch and now in the Vatican gallery; this also seems to belong to the first Florentine See also:period, but is not mentioned in documents. The tale of completed. work for these twelve or fourteen years (1470-1483 or thereabouts) is thus very scanty. But it must be remembered that Leonardo was already full of :projects in See also:mechanics, See also:hydraulics, See also:architecture, and military and See also:civil See also:engineering, ardently feeling his way in the work of experimental study and observation in every See also:branch of theoretical or applied See also:science in which any beginning had been made in his age, as well as in some in which he was himself the first See also:pioneer. He was full of new ideas concerning both the laws and the applications of See also:mechanical forces. His architectural and engineering projects were of a daring which amazed even the See also:fellow-citizens of See also:Alberti and See also:Brunelleschi. See also:History presents few figures more attractive to the mind's eye than that of Leonardo during this period of his all-capable and dazzling youth. He did not indeed See also:escape calumny,. and was even denounced on a See also:charge of immoral practices, but fully and honourably acquitted. There was nothing about him, as there was afterwards about See also:Michelangelo, dark-tempered, See also:secret or morose; he was open and genial with all men. He has indeed praised the self-sufficing power of solitude " in almost the same phrase as See also:Wordsworth, and from time to time would even in youth seclude himself for a See also:season in See also:complete intellectual absorption, as when he toiled among his bats and wasps and lizards, forgetful of See also:rest and food, and in-sensible to the noisomeness of their corruption. But we have to picture him as anon coming out and gathering about him a tatterdemalion company, and jesting with them until they were in fits of See also:laughter, for the See also:sake of observing their See also:burlesque physiognomies; anon as eagerly frequenting the society of men of science and learning of an older See also:generation like the mathematician Benedetto Aritmetico, the physician, geographer and astronomer See also:Paolo Toscanelli, the famous See also:Greek Aristotelian Giovanni Argiropoulo; or as out-rivalling all the youth of the city now by charm of recitation, now by skill in music and now by feats of strength and See also:horsemanship; or as stopping to buy caged birds in the See also:market that he might set them See also:free and See also:watch them rejoicing in their See also:flight; or again as See also:standing radiant in his See also:rose-coloured cloak and his See also:rich See also:gold See also:hair among the throng of young and old on the piazza, and holding them spell-See also:bound while he expatiated on the great projects in art and mechanics that were teeming in his mind. Unluckily it is to written records and to See also:imagination that we have to See also:trust exclusively for our picture. No portrait of Leonardo as he appeared during this period of his life has come down to us. But his far-reaching schemes and studies brought him no immediate gain, and diverted him from the tasks by which he should have supported himself. For all his shining power and promise he remained poor. Probably also his exclusive belief in experimental methods, and slight regard for mere authority whether in science or art made the intellectual See also:atmosphere of the Medicean circle, with its passionate mixed cult of the classic past and of a See also:Christianity mystically blended and reconciled with See also:Platonism, uncongenial to him. At any rate he was ready to leave Florence when the See also:chance was offered him of fixed service at the See also:court of Ludovico See also:Sforza (il See also:Moro) at See also:Milan. Soon after that See also:prince had firmly established his power as nominal See also:guardian and See also:protector of his See also:nephew Gian Galeazzo but really as usurping ruler of the state, he revived a project previously mooted for the erection of an equestrian See also:monument in See also:honour of the founder of his house's greatness, See also:Francesco Sforza, and consulted Lorenzo dei Medici on the choice of an artist. Lorenzo recommended the young Leonardo, who went to Milan accordingly (at some uncertain date in or about 1483), taking as a See also:gift from Lorenzo and a token of his own skill a silver See also:lute of wondrous sweetness fashioned in the likeness of a See also:horse's head. Hostilities were at the moment imminent between Milan and See also:Venice; it was doubtless on that See also:account that in the See also:letter commending him-self to the See also:duke, and setting forth his own capacities, Leonardo rests his See also:title to patronage chiefly on his attainments and inventions in military engineering. After asserting these in detail under nine different heads, he speaks under a tenth of his proficiency as a civil engineer and architect, and adds lastly a brief See also:paragraph with reference to what he can do in painting and sculpture, undertaking in particular to carry out in a fitting manner the monument to Francesco Sforza. The first definite documentary evidence of Leonardo's employments at Milan See also:dates from 1487. Some biographers have supposed that the See also:interval, or part of it, between 1483 and that date was occupied by travels in the See also:East. The grounds of the supposition are some drafts occurring among his See also:MSS. of a letter addressed to the diodario or diwddar of See also:Syria, See also:lieutenant of the sultan of See also:Babylon (Babylon meaning according to a usage of that time See also:Cairo). In these drafts Leonardo describes in the first person, with sketches, a traveller's strange experiences in See also:Egypt, See also:Cyprus, Constantinople, the Cilician coasts about See also:Mount See also:Taurus and See also:Armenia. He relates the rise and persecution of a See also:prophet and preacher, the See also:catastrophe of a falling See also:mountain and submergence of a great city, followed by a general inundation, and the claim of the prophet to have foretold these disasters; adding See also:physical descriptions of the See also:Euphrates See also:river and the marvellous effects of sunset light on the Taurus range. No contemporary gives the least hint of Leonardo's having travelled in the East; to the places he mentions he gives their classical and not their current See also:Oriental names; the catastrophes he describes are unattested from any other source; he confusesthe Taurus and the See also:Caucasus; some of the phenomena he mentions are repeated from See also:Aristotle and See also:Ptolemy; and there seems little See also:reason to doubt that these passages in his MSS. are merely his drafts of a projected See also:geographical See also:treatise or perhaps See also:romance. He had a passion for See also:geography and travellers' tales, for descriptions of natural wonders and ruined cities, and was himself a practised fictitious narrator and fabulist, as other passages in his MSS. prove. Neither is the See also:gap in the account of his doings after he first went to the court of Milan really so complete as has been represented. Ludovico was vehemently denounced and attacked during the earlier years of his usurpation, especially by the. partisans of his See also:sister-in-law See also:Bona of See also:Savoy, the mother of the rightful duke, young Gian Galeazzo. To repel these attacks he employed the talents of a number of court poets and artists, who in public recitation and See also:pageant, in emblematic picture and banner and See also:device, proclaimed the See also:wisdom and kindness of his guardianship and the wickedness of his assailants. That Leonardo was among the artists thus employed is proved both by notes and projects among his MSS. and by allegoric sketches still extant. Several such sketches are at Christ Church, Oxford: one shows a horned See also:hag or she-fiend urging her hounds to an attack on the state of Milan, and baffled by the Prudence and See also:Justice of Il Moro (all this made clear by easily recognizable emblems). The allusion must almost certainly be to the attempted assassination of Ludovico by agents of the duchess Bona in 1484. Again, it must have been the pestilence decimating Milan in 1484—1485 which gave occasion to the projects submitted by Leonardo to Ludovico for breaking up the city and reconstructing it on improved sanitary principles. To 1485—1486 also appears to belong the inception of his elaborate though unfulfilled architectural plans for beautifying and strengthening the Castello, the great stronghold of the ruling power in the state. Very soon afterwards he must have begun work upon his plans and models, undertaken during an acute phase of the competition which the task had called forth between See also:German and Italian architects, for another momentous enterprise, the completion of Milan See also:cathedral. Extant records of payments made to him in connexion with these architectural plans extend from See also:August 1487 to May 1490: in the upshot none of them was carried out. From the beginning of his See also:residence with Ludovico his See also:combination of unprecedented mechanical ingenuity with See also:apt allegoric invention and courtly charm and eloquence had made him the directing spirit in all court ceremonies and festivities. On the occasion of the marriage of the young duke Gian Galeazzo with See also:Isabella of See also:Aragon in 1487, we find Leonardo devising all the mechanical and spectacular part of a masque of See also:Paradise; and presently afterwards designing a bathing See also:pavilion of unheard-of beauty and ingenuity for the young duchess. Meanwhile he was filling his note-books as busily as ever with the results of his studies in See also:statics and See also:dynamics, in human anatomy, See also:geometry and the phenomena of light and shade. It is probable that from the first he had not forgotten his great task of the Sforza monument, with its attendant researches in equine movement and anatomy, and in the science and art of See also:bronze casting on a great scale. The many existing sketches for the work (of which the chief collection is at See also:Windsor) cannot be distinctly dated. In 1490, the seventh year of his residence at Milan, after some expressions of impatience on the part of his See also:patron, he had all but got his model ready for display on the occasion of the marriage of Ludovico with See also:Beatrice d'See also:Este, but at the last moment was dissatisfied with what he had done and determined to begin all over again. In the same year, 1490, Leonardo enjoyed some months of uninterrupted mathematical and physical research in the See also:libraries and among the learned men of See also:Pavia, whither he had been called to advise on some architectural difficulties concerning the cathedral. Here also the study of an ancient equestrian monument (the so-called Regisole, destroyed in 1796) gave him fresh ideas for his Francesco Sforza. In See also:January 1491 a See also:double Sforza-Este marriage (Ludovico Sfiorza himself with Beatrice d'Este, Alfonso d'Este with See also:Anna Sforza the sister of Gian posterity a great part of its power. At the same time its true history has been investigated and re-established. The intensity of intellectual and See also:manual application which Leonardo threw into the work is proved by the fact that he finished it within four years, in spite of all his other avocations and of those prolonged pauses of concentrated imaginative effort and intense self-See also:critical brooding to which we have See also:direct contemporary See also:witness. He painted the picture on the See also:wall in tempera, not, according to the See also:legend which sprung up within twenty years of its completion, in oil. The tempera vehicle, perhaps including new experimental ingredients, did not long hold firmly to its See also:plaster ground, nor that to the wall. Flaking and scaling set in; hard crusts of See also:mildew formed, dissolved and re-formed with changes of See also:weather over both the loosened parts and those that remained See also:firm. See also:Decade after decade these processes went on, a See also:rain of See also:minute scales and grains falling, according to one witness, continually from the surface, till the picture seemed to be perishing altogether. In the 18th See also:century attempts were first made at restoration. They all proceeded on the false See also:assumption, dating from the early years of the 16th century, that the work had been executed in oil. With oil it was accordingly at one time saturated in hopes of reviving the See also:colours. Other experimenters tried various " secrets," which for the most part meant deleterious glues and varnishes. Fortunately not very much of actual repainting was accomplished except on some parts of the garments. The chief operations were carried on by Bellotti in 1726, by Mazza in 1770, and by Barezzi in 1819 and the following years. None of them arrested, some actually accelerated, the natural agencies of See also:damp and disintegration, decay and mildew. Yet this mere See also:ghost of a picture, this evocation, See also:half vanished as it was, by a great world-genius of a mighty spiritual world-event, remained a thing indescribably impressive. The ghost has now been brought back to much of true life again by the skill of the most scrupulous of all restorers, See also:Cavaliere Cavenaghi, who, acting under the authority of a competent commission, and after long and patient experiment, found it possible to secure to the wall the innumerable blistered, mildewed and half-detached flakes and scales of the See also:original work that yet remained, to clear the surface thus obtained of much of the obliterating accretions due to decay and mishandling, and to bring the whole to unity by touching tenderly in with tempera the spots and spaces actually left See also:bare. A further gain obtained through these operations has been the uncovering, immediately above the See also:main subject, of a beautiful See also:scheme of painted lunettes and vaultings, the lunettes filled by Leonardo's hand with inscribed scutcheons and interlaced See also:plait or See also:knot ornaments (intrecciamenti), the vaultings with stars on a See also:blue ground. The See also:total result, if adequate steps can be taken to counteract the effects of atmospheric See also:change in future, will remain a splendid gain for posterity and a happy refutation of D'See also:Annunzio's despairing poem, the See also:Death of a Masterpiece. Leonardo's " Last Supper," for all its injuries, became from the first, and has ever since remained, for all Christendom the typical See also:representation of the See also:scene. See also:Goethe in his famous See also:criticism has said all that needs to be said of it. The painter has departed from precedent in grouping the disciples, with their Master in the midst, along the far See also:side and the two ends of a long, narrow table, and in leaving the near or service side of the table towards the spectator free. The chamber is seen in a perfectly symmetrical perspective, its See also:rear wall pierced by three See also:plain openings which admit the sense of quiet distance and See also:mystery from the open landscape beyond; by the central of these openings, which is the widest of the three, the head and shoulders of the Saviour are framed in. On His right and left are ranged the disciples in equal See also:numbers. The See also:furniture and accessories of the chamber, very simply conceived, have been rendered with scrupulous exactness and distinctness; yet they leave to the human and dramatic elements the See also:absolute mastery of the scene. The serenity of the See also:holy company has within a moment been broken by the words of their Master, " One of you shall betray Me." In the agitation of their See also:con-sciences and affections, the disciples have started into See also:groups Galeazzo) again called forth his powers as a masque and pageant-master. For the next following years the ever-increasing gaiety and splendour of the Milanese court gave him continual employment in similar kinds, including the See also:composition and recitation of jests, tales, fables and "prophecies" (i.e. moral and social satires and allegories See also:cast in the future tense); among his MSS. occur the drafts of many such, some of them both profound and pungent. Meanwhile he was again at work upon the monument to Francesco Sforza, and this time to See also:practical purpose. When ambassadors from See also:Austria came to Milan towards the See also:close of 1493 to escort the betrothed See also:bride of their See also:emperor See also:Maximilian, Bianca Maria Sforza, away on her nuptial See also:journey, the finished See also:colossal model, 26 ft. high, was at last in its place for all to see in the courtyard of the Castello. Con-temporary accounts attest the magnificence of the work and the See also:enthusiasm it excited, but are not precise enough to enable us to See also:judge to which of the two main groups of extant sketches its design corresponded. One of these groups shows the horse and rider in relatively tranquil See also: Lastly, See also:recent research has proved that it was in 1494 that Leonardo got to work in See also:earnest on what was to prove not only by far his greatest but by far his most expeditiously and steadily executed work in painting. This was the " Last Supper " undertaken for the See also:refectory of the See also:convent church of Sta Maria delle Grazie at Milan on the joint commission (as it would appear) of Ludovico and of the monks themselves. This picture, the world-famous " Cenacolo " of Leonardo, has been the subject of much erroneous legend and much misdirected experiment. Having through centuries undergone cruel injury, from technical imperfections at the outset, from disastrous atmospheric conditions, from vandalism and neglect, and most of all from unskilled repair, its remains have at last (1904—1908) been treated with a mastery of scientific resource and a tenderness of conscientious skill that have revived for ourselves and for or clusters along the table, some standing, some still remaining seated. There are four of these groups, of three disciples each, and See also:Bach group is harmoniously interlinked by some natural connecting action with the next. Leonardo, though no special student of the Greeks, has perfectly carried out the Greek principle of expressive variety in particulars subordinated to general symmetry. He has used all his acquired science of linear and aerial perspective to create an almost complete illusion to the eye, but an illusion that has in it nothing trivial, and in heightening our sense of the material reality of the scene only heightens its profound spiritual impressiveness and gravity. The results of his intensest meditations on the See also:psychology and the human and divine significance of the event (on which he has left some pregnant hints in written words of his own) are perfectly fused with those of his subtlest technical calculations on the rhythmical balancing of groups and arrangement of figures in space. Of See also:authentic preparatory studies for this work there remain but few. There is a sheet at the Louvre of much earlier date than the first See also:idea or commission for this particular picture, containing some nude sketches for the arrangement of the subject; another later and farther advanced, but still probably anterior to the practical commission, at Venice, and a MS. sheet of great See also:interest at the Victoria and Albert Museum, on which the painter has noted in See also:writing the dramatic motives appropriate to the several disciples. At Windsor and Milan are a few finished studies in red See also:chalk for the heads. A highly-reputed series of life-sized chalk drawings of the same heads, of which the greater portion is at See also:Weimar, consists of early copies, and is interesting though having no just claim to originality. Scarcely less doubtful is the celebrated unfinished and injured study of the head of Christ at the Brera, Milan.
Leonardo's-See also:triumph with his " Last Supper " encouraged him in the See also:hope of proceeding now to the casting of the Sforza monument or " Great Horse," the model of which had stood for the last three years the admiration of all beholders, in the See also:Corte Vecchio of the Castello. He had formed a new and close friend-See also:ship with Luca Pacioli of Borgo San Sepolcro, the great mathematician, whose Summa de aritmetica, geometrica, &c., he had eagerly bought at Pavia on its first See also:appearance, and who arrived at the Court of Milan about the moment of the completion of the " Cenacolo." Pacioli was equally amazed and delighted at Leonardo's two great achievements in sculpture and painting, and still more at the genius for mathematical, physical and anatomical research shown in the collections of MS. notes which the master laid before him. The two began working together on the materials for Pacioli's next See also:book, De divina proportion. Leonardo obtained Pacioli's help in calculations and measurements for the great task of casting the bronze horse and man. But he was soon called away by Ludovico to a different under-taking, the completion of the interior decorations, already begun by another hand and interrupted, of certain See also:chambers of the Castello called the Saletta Negra and the See also:Sala Grande dell' Asse, or Sala della Torre. When, in the last decade of the 19th century, works of thorough architectural investigation and repair were undertaken in that See also:building under the superintendence of See also:Professor Luca Beltrami, a devoted See also:foreign student, Dr See also:Paul Miiller-Walde, obtained leave to scrape for traces of Leonardo's handiwork beneath the replastered and See also: But again he could not get leave to complete the task in hand. He was called away on duty as chief military engineer (ingegnere camerale) with the special charge of inspecting and maintaining all the canals and waterways of the duchy. Dangers were accumulating upon Ludovico and the state of Milan. France had become Ludovico's enemy; and See also: In December he left Milan with his friend Luca Pacioli, having first sent some of his modest savings to Florence for investment. His intention was to watch events. They took a turn which made him a stranger to Milan for the next seven years. Ludovico, at the head of an See also:army of Swiss mercenaries, returned victoriously in See also:February 1500, and was welcomed by a See also:population disgusted with the oppression of the invaders. But in See also:April he was once more overthrown by the French in a See also:battle fought at See also:Novara, his Swiss clamouring at the last moment for their overdue pay, and treacherously refusing to fight against a force of their own countrymen led by La Tremouille. Ludovico was taken prisoner and carried to France; the city, which had been strictly spared on the first entry of Louis XII., was entered and sacked; and the model of Leonardo's great statue made a See also:butt (as eye witnesses tell) for Gascon archers. Two years later we find the duke Ercole of See also:Ferrara begging the French See also: He is known to have painted portraits of two of the king's mistresses, See also:Cecilia Gallerani and Lucrezia See also:Crivelli. Cecilia Gallerani used to be identified as a See also:lady with ringlets and a lute, depicted in a portrait at Milan, now rightly assigned to Bartolommeo Veneto. More lately she has by some been conjecturally recognized in a doubtful, though Leonardesque, portrait of a lady with a See also:weasel in the See also:Czartoryski collection at See also:Prague. Lucrezia Crivelli has, with no better reason, been identified with the famous " Belle Ferronniere " (a mere misnomer, caught from the true name of another portrait which used to hang near it) at the Louvre; this last is either a genuine Milanese portrait by Leonardo himself or an extraordinarily fine work of his pupil Boltraffio. Strong claims have also been made on behalf of a fine See also:profile portrait resembling Beatrice d'Este in the Ambrosiana; but this the best See also:judges are agreed in regarding as a work, done in a lucky See also:hour, of Ambrogio de Predis. A portrait of a musician in the same gallery is in like manner contested between the master and the pupil. Mention is made of a " Nativity " painted for and sent to the emperor Maximilian, and also apparently of some picture painted for See also:Matthias See also:Corvinus, king of See also:Hungary; both are lost or at least unidentified. The painters especially recorded as Leonardo's immediate pupils during this part of his life at Milan are the two before mentioned, Giovanni Antonio Boltraflio and Ambrogio Preda or de Predis, with Marco d'Oggionno and Andrea Salai, the last apparently less a fully-trained painter than a studio assistant and See also:personal attendant, devotedly attached and faithful in both capacities. Leonardo's own native Florentine manner had at first been not a little modified by that of the Milanese school as he found it represented in the works of such men as Bra*nantino, See also:Borgognone and Zenale; but his genius had in its turn reacted far more strongly upon the younger members of the school, and exercised, now or later, a transforming and dominating influence not only upon his immediate pupils, but upon men like See also:Luini, Giampetrino, Bazzi, Cesare da Sesto and indeed the whole Lombard school in the early 15th century. Of sculpture done by him during this period we have no remains, only the tragically tantalizing history of the Sforza monument. Of drawings there are very many, including few only for the " Last Supper," many for the Sforza monument, as well as the multitude of sketches, scientific and other, which we find intermingled among the vast See also:body of his See also:miscellaneous MSS., notes and records. In mechanical, scientific and theoretical studies of all kinds it was a period, as these MSS. attest, of extraordinary activity and self-development. At Pavia in 1494 we find him taking up See also:literary and grammatical studies, both in Latin and the See also:vernacular; the former, no doubt, in See also:order the more easily to read those among the ancients who had laboured in the See also:fields that were his own, as See also:Euclid, See also:Galen, See also:Celsus, Ptolemy, See also:Pliny, See also:Vitruvius and, above all, See also:Archimedes; the latter with a growing hope of some See also:day getting into proper See also:form and order the See also:mass of materials he was daily accumulating for See also:treatises on all his manifold subjects of enquiry. He had been much helped by his opportunities of intercourse with the great architects, See also:engineers and mathematicians who frequented the court of Milan—Bramante, Alberghetti, Andrea di Ferrara, Pietro Monti, Fazio Cardano and, above all, Luca Pacioli. The knowledge of Leonardo's position among and familiarity with such men early helped to spread the idea that he had been at the head of a regularly constituted academy of arts and sciences at Milan. The occurrence of thewords "Achademia Leonardi Vinci " on certain engravings, done after his drawings, of geometric " knots " or puzzle-patterns (things for which we have already learned his partiality), helped to give currency to this impression not only in Italy but in the See also:North, To return to the master: when he and Luca Pacioli left Milan in December 1499, their destination was Venice. They made a brief stay at See also:Mantua, where Leonardo was graciously received by the duchess Isabella See also:Gonzaga, the most cultured of the many cultured great ladies of her time, whose portrait he promised to paint on a future day; meantime he made the fine chalk drawing of her now at the Louvre. Arrived at Venice, he seems to have occupied himself chiefly with studies in See also:mathematics and cosmography. In April the See also:friends heard of the second and final overthrow of Ludovico it More, and at that See also:news, giving up all idea of a return to Milan, moved on to Florence, which they found depressed both by See also:internal troubles and by the protraction of the indecisive and inglorious war with See also:Pisa. Here. Leonardo undertook to paint an See also:altar-piece for the Church of the Annunziata, Filippino Lippi, who had already received the commission, courteously retiring from it in his favour. A year passed by, and no progress had been made with the painting. Questions of physical geography and engineering engrossed him as much as ever. He writes to correspondents making enquiries about the tides in the Euxine and See also:Caspian Seas. He reports for the See also:information of the Arte de' Mercanti on the precautions to be taken against a threatening landslip on the hill of S. Salvatore dell' Osservanza. He submits drawings and models for the canalization and See also:control of the waters of the See also:Arno, and propounds, with compulsive eloquence and conviction, a scheme for transporting the See also:Baptistery of St John, the " See also:bel San Giovanni " of See also:Dante, to another part of the city, and elevating it on a stately See also:basement of See also:marble. Meantime the Servite See also:brothers of the Annunziata were growing impatient for the completion of their altar-piece. In April 501 Leonardo had only finished the cartoon, and this all Florence flocked to see and admire. Isabella Gonzaga, who cherished the hope that he might be induced permanently to attach himself to the court of Mantua, wrote about this time to ask news of him, and to beg for a painting from him for her study, already adorned with masterpieces by the first hands of Italy, or at least for a " small Madonna, devout and sweet as is natural to him." In reply her correspondent says that the master is wholly taken up with geometry and very impatient of the See also:brush, but at the same time tells her all about his just completed cartoon for the Annunziata. The subject was the Virgin seated in the See also:lap of St See also:Anne, bending forward to hold her See also:child who had half escaped from her embrace to play with a See also:lamb upon the ground. The description answers exactly to the composition of the celebrated picture of the Virgin and St Anne at the Louvre. A cartoon of this composition in the Esterhazy collection at Vienna is held to be only a copy, and the original cartoon must be regarded as lost. But another of kindred though not identical See also:motive has come down to us II and is preserved in the Diploma Gallery at the Royal Academy. In this incomparable work St Anne, pointing upward with her left hand, smiles with an intense look of wondering, questioning, inward sweetness into the face of the Virgin, who in her turn smiles down upon her child as He leans from her lap to give the blessing to the little St John standing beside her. Evidently two different though nearly related designs had been maturing in Leonardo's mind. A rough first See also:sketch for the motive of the Academy cartoon is in the British Museum; one for the motive of the lost cartoon and of the Louvre picture is at Venice. Nc painting by Leonardo from the Academy cartoon exists, but in the Ambrosiana at Milan there is one by Luini, with the figure of St See also:Joseph added. It remains a See also:matter of debate whether the Academy cartoon or that shown by Leonardo at the Annunziata in 1501 was the earlier. The probabilities seem in favour of the Academy cartoon. This, whether done at Milan or at Florence, is in any case a typically perfect and harmonious example of the master's Milanese manner; while in the other composition with the lamb the action and attitude of the Virgin are somewhat strained, and the original relation between her head and her mother's, lovely both in design and expression, is lost. In spite of the universal praise of his cartoon, Leonardo did not persevere with the picture. and the monks of the Annunziata had to give back the commission to Filippino Lippi, at whose death the task was completed by Perugino. It remains uncertain whether a small Madonna with See also:distaff and spindle, which the correspondent of Isabella Gonzaga reports Leonardo as having begun for one Robertet, a favourite of the king of France, was ever finished. He painted one portrait, it is said, at this time, that of Ginevra Benci, a kinswoman, perhaps sister, of a youth Giovanni di Amerigo Benci, who shared his passion for cosmographical studies; and probably began another, the famous " La Gioconda," which was only finished four years afterwards. The gonfalionere See also:Soderini offered him in vain, to do with it what he would, the huge half-spoiled See also:block of marble out of which Michelangelo three years later wrought his " See also:David." Isabella Gonzaga again begged, in an autograph letter, that she might have a painting by his hand, but her See also:request was put off ; he did her, however; one small service by examining and See also:reporting on some jewelled vases, formerly the See also:property of Lorenzo de' Medici, which had been offered her. The importunate expectations of a masterpiece or masterpieces in painting or sculpture, which beset him on all hands in Florence, inclined him to take service again with some princely patron, if possible of a genius commensurate with his own, who would give him scope to carry out engineering schemes on a vast scale. Accordingly he suddenly took service, in the See also:spring of 1502, with Cesare See also:Borgia, duke of See also:Valentinois, then almost within sight of the realization of his huge ambitions, and meanwhile occupied in consolidating his recent conquests in the Romagna. Between May 1502 and March 1503 Leonardo travelled as chief engineer to Duke See also:Caesar over a great part of central Italy. Starting with a visit to See also:Piombino, on the See also:coast opposite See also:Elba, he went by way of See also:Siena to See also:Urbino, where he made drawings and began works; was thence hastily summoned by way of See also:Pesaro and See also:Rimini to See also:Cesena; spent two months between there and Cesenatico, projecting and directing See also:canal and See also:harbour works, and planning the restoration of the palace of See also:Frederic II.; thence hurriedly joined his master, momentarily besieged by enemies at See also:Imola; followed him probably to Sinigaglia and See also:Perugia, through the whirl of storms and surprises, vengeances and treasons, which marked his course that See also:winter, and finally, by way of See also:Chiusi'and Acquapendente, as far as See also:Orvieto and probably to Rome, where Caesar arrived on the 14th of February 1503. The pope's death and Caesar's own downfall were not destined to be long delayed. But Leonardo apparently had already had enough of that service, and was back at Florence in March. He has left dated notes and drawings made at most of the stations we have named, besides a set of six large-scale maps drawn minutely with his own hand, and including nearly the whole territory of the See also:Maremma, See also:Tuscany and See also:Umbria between the See also:Apennines and the Tyrrhene See also:Sea. At Florence he was at last persuaded, on the initiative of Piero Soderini, to undertake for his native city a work of painting as great as that with which he had adorned Milan. This was a battle-piece to decorate one of the walls of the new council-hall in the palace of the signory. He See also:chose an See also:episode in the victory won by the generals of the See also:republic in 1440 over Niccolo See also:Piccinino near a See also:bridge at Anghiari, in the upper valley of the See also:Tiber. To the young Michelangelo was presently entrusted a See also:rival battle-piece to be painted on another wall of the same apartment; he chose, as is well known, a surprise of the Florentine forces in the act of bathing near Pisa. About the same time Leonardo took part in the debate on the proper site for Michelangelo's newly finished colossal " David," and voted in favour of the Loggia dei See also:Lanzi, against a See also:majority which included Michelangelo himself. Neither Leonardo's genius nor his See also:noble manners could soften the See also:rude and taunting temper of the younger man, whose style as an artist, nevertheless, in subjects both of tenderness and terror, underwent at this time a profound modification from Leonardo's example. In one of the sections of his projected Treatise on Painting, Leonardo has detailed at length, and obviously from his own observation, the pictorial aspects of a battle. His choice of subject in this instance was certainly not made from any love of warfare or indifference to its horrors. In his MSS. there occur almost as many trenchant sayings on life and human affairs as on art and natural law; and of war he has disposed in two words as a " bestial frenzy " (pazzia bestialissima). In his design for the Hall of Council he set himself to depict this frenzy at its fiercest. He chose the moment of a terrific struggle for the colours between the opposing sides; hence the work became commonly known as the " Battle of the See also:Standard." Judging by the accounts of those who saw it, and the fragmentary evidences which remain, the tumultuous medley of men and horses, and the expressions of See also:martial fury and despair, must have been conceived and rendered with a mastery not less commanding than had been the looks and gestures of bodeful sorrow and soul's perplexity among the quiet company on the convent wall at Milan. The place assigned to Leonardo for the preparation of his cartoon was the Sala del Papa at See also:Santa Maria Novella. He for once worked steadily and unremittingly at his task. His accounts with the signory enable us to follow its progress step by step. I-Ie had finished the cartoon in less than two years (1504-1505), and when it was exhibited along with that of Michelangelo, the two rival works seemed to all men a new See also:revelation of the powers of art, and served as a model and example of the students of that generation, as the frescoes of See also:Masaccio in the See also:Carmine had served to those of two generations earlier. The young Raphael, whose incomparable See also:instinct for rhythmical design had been trained hitherto on subjects of holy gllietude and rapt contemplation according to the traditions of Umbrian art, learnt from Leonardo's example to apply the same instinct to themes of violent action and strife. From the same example Fra Bartolommeo and a See also:crowd of other Florentine painters of the rising or risen generation took in like manner a new impulse. The master lost no time in proceeding to the execution of his design upon the mural surface; this time he had devised a technical method of which, after a preliminary trial in the Sala del Papa, he regarded the success as certain; the colours, whether tempera or other remains in doubt, were to be laid on a specially prepared ground, and then both colours and ground made secure upon the wall by the application of See also:heat. When the central group was done the heat was applied, but it was found to take effect. unequally; the colours in the upper part ran or scaled from the wall, and the result was a failure more or less complete. The unfinished and decayed painting remained for some fifty years on the wall, but after 156o was covered over with new frescoes by Vasari. The cartoon did not last so long. After doing its work as the most inspiring of all examples for students it seems to have been cut up. When Leonardo left Italy for good in 1516 he is recorded to have left " the greater part of it " in See also:deposit at the See also:hospital of S. Maria Nuova, where he was accustomed also to deposit his moneys, and whence it seems before long to have disappeared. Our only existing memorials of the great work are a number of small pen-studies of fighting men and horses, three splendid studies in red chalk at See also:Budapest for heads in the See also:principal group, one head at Oxford copied by a contemporary of the See also:size of the original cartoon (above life); a tiny sketch, also at Oxford, by Raphael after the principal group; an engraving done by Zacchia of See also:Lucca in 1558 not after the original but after a copy; a 16th-century Flemish drawing of the principal group, and another, splendidly spirited, by See also:Rubens, both copies of copies; with See also:Edelinck's fine engraving after the Rubens drawing. During these years, 1503-1506, Leonardo also resumed (if it is true that he had already begun it before his travels with Cesare Borgia) the portrait of Madonna Lisa, the Neapolitan wife of Zanobi del Giocondo, and finished it to the last See also:pitch of his powers. In this lady he had found a sitter whose face and smile possessed in a singular degree the haunting, enigmatic charm in which he delighted. He worked, it is said, at her portrait during some portion of four successive years, causing music to be played during the sittings that the rapt expression might not fade from off her countenance. The picture was bought afterwards by Francis I. for four thousand gold florins, and is now one of the glories of the Louvre. The richness of colouring on which Vasari expatiates has indeed flown, partly from injury, partly because in striving for effects of light and shade the painter was accustomed to model his figures on a dark ground, and in this as in his other oil-pictures the ground has to a large extent come through. Nevertheless, in its dimmed and blackened state, the portrait casts an irresistible spell alike by subtlety of expression, by refinement and precision of drawing, and by the romantic invention of its background. It has been the theme of endless critical rhapsodies, among which that of See also:Pater is perhaps the most imaginative as it is the best known. In the spring of 1506 Leonardo, moved perhaps by chagrin at the failure of his work in the Hall of Council, accepted a pressing invitation to Milan, from Charles d'See also:Amboise, Marechal de Chaumont, the lieutenant of the French king in See also:Lombardy. The leave of absence granted to him by the signory on the request of the French See also:viceroy was for three months only. The period was several times extended, at first grudgingly, Soderini complaining that Leonardo had treated the republic See also:ill in the matter of the battle picture; whereupon the painter honourably offered to refund the money paid, an offer which the signory as honourably refused. Louis XII. sent messages urgently desiring that Leonardo should await his own arrival in Milan, having seen a small Madonna by him in France (probably that painted for Robertet) and hoping to obtain from him works of the same class and perhaps a portrait. The king arrived in May 1507, and soon afterwards Leonardo's services were formally and amicably transferred from the signory of Florence to Louis, who gave him the title of painter and engineer in See also:ordinary. In September of the same year troublesome private affairs called him to Florence. His father had died in 1504, apparently intestate. After his death Leonardo experienced unkindness from his seven half-brothers, Ser Piero's legitimate sons. They were all much younger than himself. One of them, who followed his father's profession, made himself the See also:champion of the others in disputing Leonardo's claim to his See also:share, first in the paternal See also:inheritance, and then in that which had been left to be divided between the brothers and sisters by an See also:uncle. The litigation that ensued dragged on for several years, and forced upon Leonardo frequent visits to Florence and interruptions of his work at Milan, in spite of pressing letters to the authorities of the republic from Charles d'Amboise, from the French king himself, and from others of his powerful friends and patrons, begging that the proceedings might be accelerated. There are traces of work done during these intervals of compulsory residence at Florence. A sheet of sketches drawn there in 1508 shows the beginning of a Madonna now lost except in the form of copies, one of which (known as the " Madonna Litta ") is at St See also:Petersburg, another in the Poldi-Pezzoli Museumat Milan. A letter from Leonardo to Charles d'Amboise in 1.511, announcing the end of his law troubles, speaks of two Madonnas of different sizes that he means to bring with him to Milan. One was no doubt that just mentioned; can the other have been the Louvre " Virgin with St Anne and St John," now at last completed from the cartoon exhibited in 1501? Meantime the master's main See also:home and business were at Milan. Few works of painting and none of sculpture (unless the unfulfilled commission for the Trivulzio monument belongs to this time) are recorded as occupying him during the seven years of his second residence in that city (1506-1513). He had attached to himself a new and devoted young friend and pupil of noble birth, Francesco Melzi. At the See also:villa of the Melzi family at Vaprio, where Leonardo was a frequent visitor, a colossal Madonna on one of the walls is traditionally ascribed to him, but is rather the work of See also:Sodoma or of Melzi himself working under the master's eye. Another painter in the service of the French king, Jehan Perreal or Jehan de See also:Paris, visited Milan, and consultations on technical points were held between him and Leonardo. But Leonardo's chief practical employments were evidently on the continuation of his great See also:hydraulic and irrigation works in Lombardy. His old trivial See also:office of pageant-master and inventor of scientific toys was revived on the occasion of Louis XII.'s triumphal entry after the victory of Agnadello in 1509, and gave intense delight to the French retinue of the king. He was consulted on the construction of new See also:choir-stalls for the cathedral. He laboured in the natural sciences as ardently as ever, especially at anatomy in company with the famous professor of Pavia, See also:Marcantonio della Torre. To about this time, when he was approaching his sixtieth year, may belong the noble portrait-drawing of himself in red chalk at See also:Turin. He looks too old for his years, but quite unbroken; the character of a See also:veteran See also:sage has fully imprinted itself on his countenance; the features are See also:grand, clear and deeply lined, the mouth firmly set and almost stern, the eyes strong and See also:intent beneath their bushy eyebrows, the hair flows untrimmed over his shoulders and commingles with a majestic See also:beard. Returning to Milan with his law-suits ended in 1511, Leonardo might have looked forward to an old age of contented labour, the chief task of which, had he had his will, would undoubtedly have been to put in order the vast mass of observations and speculations accumulated in his note-books, and to prepare some of them for publication. But as his See also:star seemed rising that of his royal protector declined. The hold of the French on Lombardy was rudely shaken by hostile political powers, then confirmed again for a while by the victories of Gaston de See also:Foix, and finally destroyed by the battle in which that See also:hero fell under the walls of See also:Ravenna. In See also:June 1512 a See also:coalition between See also:Spain, Venice and the pope re-established the Sforza See also:dynasty in power at Milan in the person of Ludovico's son Massimiliano. This prince must have been See also:familiar with Leonardo as a child, but perhaps resented the ready See also:transfer of his See also:allegiance to the French, and at any rate gave him no employment. Within a few months the ageing master uprooted himself from Milan, and moved with his chattels and retinue of pupils to Rome, into the service of the house that first befriended him, the Medici. The vast enterprises of Pope See also:Julius II. had already made Rome the chief seat and centre of Italian art. The See also:accession of Giulio de' Medici in 1513 under the title of See also:Leo X. raised on all hands hopes of still ampler and more sympathetic patron-age. Leonardo's special friend at the papal court was the pope's youngest See also:brother, Giuliano de' Medici, a youth who combined dissipated habits with thoughtful culture and a genuine interest in arts and sciences. By his influence Leonardo and his See also:train were accommodated with apartments in the See also:Belvedere of the Vatican. But the conditions of the time and place proved adverse. The young generation held the See also: The only engineering works we hear of at this time are some on the harbour and defences of Civita Vecchia. On the whole the master in these Roman days found himself slighted for the first and only time in his life. He was, moreover, plagued by insubordination and malignity on the part of two German assistant craftsmen lodged in his apartments. Charges of impiety and body-snatching laid by these men in connexion• with his anatomical studies caused the favour of the pope to be for a time withdrawn. After a stay of less than two years, Leonardo left Rome under the following circumstances. Louis XiI. of France had died in the last days of 1514. His young and brilliant successor, Francis I., surprised See also:Europe by making a sudden dash at the head of an army across the See also:Alps to vindicate his rights in Italy. After much hesitation Leo X. in the summer of 1515 ordered Giuliano de' Medici, as gonfalonier of the Church, to See also:lead a papal force into the See also:Emilia and watch the movements of the invader. Leonardo accompanied his protector on the march, and remained with the headquarters of the papal army at See also:Piacenza when Giuliano fell ill and retired to Florence. After the battle of Marignano it was arranged that Francis and the pope should meet in December at See also:Bologna. The pope, travelling by way of Florence and discussing there the great new scheme of the Laurentian library, entertained the idea of giving the commission to Leonardo; but Michelangelo came in hot haste from Rome and succeeded in securing it for himself. As the time for the See also:meeting of the potentatesat Bologna drew near, Leonardo proceeded thither from Piacenza, and in due course was presented to the king. Between the brilliant young sovereign and the grand old sage an immediate and strong sympathy sprang up; Leonardo accompanied Francis. on his homeward march as far as Milan, and there determined to accept the royal invitation to France, where a new home was offered him with every assurance of honour and regard. The remaining two and a half years of Leonardo's life were spent at the See also:Castle of Cloux near Amboise, which was assigned, with a handsome See also:pension, to his use. The court came often to Amboise, and the king delighted in his company, declaring his knowledge both of the fine arts and of See also:philosophy to be beyond those of all mortal men. In the spring of 1518 Leonardo had occasion to exercise his old talents as a festival-master when the dauphin was christened and a Medici-See also:Bourbon marriage celebrated. He drew the designs for a new palace at Amboise, and was much engaged with the project of a great canal to connect the See also:Loire and See also:Saone. An ingenious See also:attempt has been made to prove, in the absence of records, that the famous See also:spiral See also:staircase at See also:Blois was also of his designing. Among his visitors was a fellow-countryman, Cardinal Louis of Aragon, whose secretary has left an account of the day. Leonardo, it seems, was suffering from some form of slight See also:paralysis which impaired his power of hand. But he showed the cardinal three pictures, the portrait of a Florentine lady done for Giuliano de' Medici (the Gioconda ?), the Virgin in the lap of St Anne (the Louvre picture; finished at Florence or Milan 1507-1513?), and a youthful John the Baptist. The last, which may have been done since he settled in France, is the darkened and partly repainted, but still powerful and haunting half-length figure in the Louvre, with the smile of inward ravishment and the prophetic See also:finger beckoning skyward like that of St Anne in the Academy cartoon. Of the " See also:Pomona " mentioned by Lomazzo as a work of the Amboise time his visitor says nothing, nor yet of the Louvre Bacchus," which tradition ascribes to Leonardo, but which is clearly pupil's work. Besides pictures, the master seems also to have shown and explained to his visitors some of his vast See also:store of notes and observations on anatomy and physics. He kept hoping to get some order among his papers, the See also:accumulation of more than See also:forty years, and perhaps to give the world some portion of the studies they contained. But his strength was nearly exhausted. On See also:Easter Eve 1519, feeling that the end was near, he made his will. It made See also:provision, as became a great servant of the most Christian king, for masses to be said and candles to be offered in three different churches of Amboise, first among them that of St Florentin, where he desired to be buried, as well as for sixty poor men to serve as See also:torch-bearers at his funeral. Vasari babbles of a death-See also:bed See also:conversion and repentance. But Leonardo had never been either a friend or an enemy of the Church. Sometimes, indeed, he denounces fiercely enough the arts and pretensions of priests; but no one has embodied with such profound spiritual insight some of the most vital moments of the Christian story. His insatiable researches into natural fact brought upon him among the vulgar some. suspicion of practising those magic arts which of all things he scouted and despised. The See also:bent of his mind was all towards the teachings of experience and against those of authority, and laws of nature certainly occupied far more of his thoughts than dogmas of See also:religion; but when he mentions these it is with respect as throwing light on the truth of things from a side which was not his own. His conformity at the end had in it nothing contradictory of his past. He received the sacraments of the Church and died on the and of May 1519. King Francis, then at his court of St Germain-en-Laye, is said to have wept for the loss of such a servant; that he was present beside the death-bed and held the dying painter in his arms is a familiar but an untrue tale. After a temporary sepulture elsewhere his remains were trans-ported on the See also:lath of August to the See also:cloister of St Florentin according to his wish. He left all his MSS. and apparently all the contents of his studio, with other gifts, to the devoted Melzi, whom he named executor; to Salai and to his servant Battista Villanis a half each of his vineyard outside Milan; gifts of money and clothes to his maid Maturina; one of money to the poor of the hospital in Amboise; and to his unbrotherly half-brothers a sdm of four See also:hundred ducats lying to his See also:credit at Florence. History tells of no man gifted in the same degree as Leonardo was at once for art and science. In art he was an inheritor and perfecter, born in a day of great and many-sided endeavours on which he put the See also:crown, surpassing both predecessors and contemporaries. In science, on the other hand, he was a pioneer, working wholly for the future, and in great part alone. That the two stupendous gifts should in some degree neutralize each other was inevitable. No imaginable strength of any single man would have sufficed to carry out a hundredth part of what Leonardo essayed. The mere attempt to conquer the See also:kingdom of light and shade for the art of painting was destined to tax the skill of generations, and is perhaps not wholly and finally accomplished yet. Leonardo sought to achieve that See also:conquest and at the same time to carry the old Florentine excellences of linear drawing and psychological expression to a perfection of which, other mea had not dreamed. The result, though marvellous in quality, is in quantity lamentably meagre. Knowing and doing allured him equally, and in art, which consists in doing, his efforts were often paralysed by his strained See also:desire to know. The thirst for know-ledge had first been aroused in him by the desire of perfecting the images of beauty and power which it was his business to create. Thence there grew upon him the passion of knowledge for its own sake. In the splendid See also:balance of his nature the Virgilian longing, rerum cognoscere causas, could never indeed wholly silence the See also:call to exercise his active powers. But the powers he cared most to exercise ceased by degree to be those of imaginative creation, and came to be those of turning to practical human use'the mastery which his studies had taught him over the forces of nature. In science he was the first among See also:modern men to set himself most of those problems which unnumbered searchers of later' generations have laboured severally or in See also:concert to solve. Florence had had other sons of. comprehensive genius artistic and mechanical, See also:Leon Battista Alberti perhaps the chief. But the more the range and character of Leonardo's studies becomes ascertained the more his greatness dwarfs them all. A hundred years before See also: As a moral being we are less able to discern what he was like. The man who carried in his brain so many images of subtle beauty, as well as so much of the hidden science of the future, must have lived spiritually, in the main, alone. Of things communicable he was at the same time, as we have said, communicative—a genial See also:companion, a generous and loyal friend, ready and eloquent of discourse, impressing all with whom he was brought in contact by the power and the charm of genius, and inspiring fervent devotion and See also:attachment in friends and pupils. We see him living on terms of See also:constant See also:affection with his father, and in disputes with his brothers not the aggressor but the sufferer from aggression. We see him full of tenderness to animals, a virtue not See also:common in Italy in spite of the example of St Francis; open-handed in giving, not eager in getting—" poor,", he says, " is the man of many wants "; not prone to resentment-'-" the best shield against injustice is to double the cloak of long-suffering "; zealous in labour above all men— " as a day well spent gives joyful. See also:sleep, so does a life well spent give joyful death." With these instincts and See also:maxims, and with his strength, granting it almost more than human, spent ever See also:tunnel-See also:ling in abstruse mines of knowledge, his moral experience is not likely to have been deeply troubled. In religion, he regarded the faith of his age and country at least with imaginative sympathy and intellectual acquiescence, if no more. On the political storms which shook his country and drove him from one employment to another, he seems to have looked not with the passionateparticipation of a Dante or a Michelangelo but rather with the serene detachment of a Goethe. In matters of the See also:heart, if any consoling or any disturbing passion played a great part in his life, we do not know it; we know only (apart from a few passing shadows cast by calumny and envy) of affectionate and dignified relations with friends, patrons and pupils, of public and private regard mixed in the days of his youth with dazzled admiration, and in those of his age with something of reverential See also:awe. The Drawings of Leonardo.-These are among the greatest treasures ever given to the world by the human spirit expressing itself in pen and See also:pencil. Apart from the many hundreds of illustrative pen-sketches scattered through his autobiographic and scientific MSS., the principal collection is at Windsor Castle (partly derived from' the See also:Arundel collection) ; others of importance are in the British Musepm; at Christ Church, Oxford; in the Louvre, at See also:Chantilly, in the Uffizi, the Venice Academy, the Royal Library at Turin, the Museum of Budapest, and in the collections of M. See also:Bonnat, Mrs See also:Mond, and See also:Captain Holford. Leonardo's chief implements were pen; silver-point, and red and See also:black chalk (red chalk especially). In silvers point there are many beautiful drawings of his earlier time, and some of his later,• but of the charming heads of women and young men in this material attributed to him in various collections, comparatively few are his own work, the majority being drawings in his spirit by his pupils Ambrogio Preda or Boltraffio. Leonardo appears to have been left-handed. There is some doubt on the point; but a contemporary and intimate friend, Luca Pacioli, speaks of his ineffable left hand "; all the best of his drawings are shaded downward from left to right, which would be the readiest way for a left-handed man; and his habitual See also:eccentric practice of writing from right to left is much more likely to have been due to natural left-handedness than to any "desire of mystery or concealment. A full critical discussion and See also:catalogue of the extant drawings of Leonardo are to be found in Berenson's Drawings of the Florentine Painters. The Writings of Leonardo —'The only printed book bearing Leonardo's name until the recent issues of transcripts from his MSS. was the celebrated Treatise on Painting (Trattato della pittura, Traite de la peinture). This consists of brief didactic chapters, or more properly paragraphs, of practical direction or critical remark on all the branches and conditions of a painter's practice. The original MS. draft of Leonardo has been lost, though a great number of notes for it are scattered through the various extant volumes of his MSS. The work has been printed in two different forms; one of these is an abridged version consisting of 365 sections; the first edition of it was published in Paris in 1551, 'by Raphael Dufresne, from a MS. which he found in the See also:Barberini library; the last, translated into See also:English by J. F. See also:Rigaud, in London, 1877. The other is a more extended version, in 912 sections, divided into eight books; this was printed In 1817 by Guglielmo Manzi at Rome, from two MSS. which he had discovered in the Vatican library; a German See also:translation from the same MS. has been edited by G. H. See also:Ludwig in Eitelberger's series of Quellenschriften See also:fur Kunstgeschichte (Vienna, x882; See also:Stuttgart, 1885). On the history of the book in general see Max See also:Jordan, Das Malerbuch See also:des Leonardo da Vinci (See also:Leipzig, 1873). The unknown compilers of the Vatican MSS. must have had before them much more of Leonardo's original See also:text than is now extant. Only about a See also:quarter of the total number of paragraphs are identical with passages to be found in the matter's existing ' autograph note-books. It is indeed doubtful whether Leonardo himself ever completed the MS. treatise (or treatises) on painting and kindred subjects mentioned by Fra Luca Pacioli and by Vasari, and probable that the form and order, and perhaps some of the substance, of the Trattato as we have it was due to compilers and not to the master himself.
In recent years a whole body of scholars and editors have been engaged in giving to the world the texts of Leonardo's existing MSS. The history of these is too complicated to be told here in any detail. Francesco Melzi (d. 1570) kept the greater part of his master's See also:bequest together as a sacred trust as long as he lived, though even in his time some MSS. on the art of painting , seem, to have passed into other hands. But his descendants suffered the , treasure to be recklessly dispersed. The chief agents in their dispersal were the See also:Doctor See also:Orazio Melzi who possessed them in the last quarter of the 16th century; the members of a Milanese family, called Mazzenta, into whose hands they passed in Orazio Melzi's lifetime; and the sculptor Pompeo Leoni, who at one time entertained the design of procuring their presentation to See also: In the meantime the See also:earl of Arundel had made a vain attempt to See also:purchase one of these volumes (the Codice Atlantico?) at a great See also:price for the king of See also:England. Some stray parts of the collection, including the MSS. now at Windsor, did evidently come iritoLord Arundel's See also:possession, and the history of some other parts can be followed; while much, it is evident, was lost for good. In 1796 See also:Napoleon swept away to Paris, along with the other art treasures of Italy, the whole of the Leonardo MSS. at the Ambrosiana: only the Codice Atlantico was afterwards restored, the other volumes remaining the property of the Institut de France. These also have had their adventures, two of them having been stolen by Count Libri and passed temporarily into the collection of See also:Lord See also:Ashburnham, whence they were in recent years made over again to the See also:Institute. The first important step towards a better knowledge of the MSS. was made by the beginning, in 188o, of the great series of publications from the MSS. of the Institut de France undertaken by C. Ravaisson-See also:Mollien; the next by the publication in 1883 of Dr J. P. See also:Richter's Literary Works of Leonardo da Vinci (see Bibliography) : this work included, besides a history and See also:analytical See also:index of the MSS., facsimiles of a number of selected pages containing matter of auto-See also:biographical, artistic, or literary interest, with transcripts and See also:translations of their MS. contexts. Since then much progress has been made in the publication of the complete MSS., scientific and other, whether with adequate critical apparatus or in the form of mere facsimile without transliteration or comment. A brief statement follows of the present See also:distribution of the several MSS. and of the form in which they are severally published : England.—Windsor: Nine MSS., chiefly on anatomy, published entire in See also:simple facsimile by Rouveyre (Paris, 1901 partially, with transliterations and introduction by Piumati and Sab'achnikoff (Paris, 1898, See also:foil.); British Museum: one MS., miscellaneous, unpublished; Victoria and Albert Museum: ten note-books bound in 3 vols. ; facsimile by Rouveyre, Holkham (collection of Lord See also:Leicester), r vol., on hydraulics and the action of water; published in facsimile with transliteration and notes by Gerolamo See also:Calvi. France.—Institut de France:. seventeen MSS., all published with transliteration and notes by C. Ravaisson-Mollien (6 vols., Paris, I88o–1891). Italy.—Milan, Ambrosiana: the Codice Atlantico, the huge See also:miscellany, of vital importance for the study of the master, ut together by Pompeo Leoni; published in facsimile, with transliteration, by the Accademia dei Lincei (1894, foll.) ; Milan: collection of Count Trivulzio; 1 vol., miscellaneous; published and edited by L. Beltrami (1892); Rome: collection of Count Marszolini; Treatise on the Flight of Birds, published and edited by Piumati and Sabachnikoff (Paris, 1492). Additional information and CommentsThere are no comments yet for this article.
» Add information or comments to this article.
Please link directly to this article:
Highlight the code below, right click, and select "copy." Then paste it into your website, email, or other HTML. Site content, images, and layout Copyright © 2006 - Net Industries, worldwide. |
|
|
[back] LEON, or LEON DE LAS ALDAMAS |
[next] LEONARDO DA VINCI, 159 |