"The world perhaps contains no example of a genius so universal, so
creative, so incapable of self-contentment, so athirst for the infinite,
so naturally refined, so far in advance of his own and of subsequent
ages. His countenances express incredible sensibility and mental power;
they overflow with unexpressed ideas and emotions. Michael Angelo's
personages alongside of his are simply heroic athletes; Raphael's
virgins are only placid children, whose sleeping souls have not yet
lived." Thus writes Taine of Da Vinci, in his "Travels in Italy."
[Illustration: LEONARDO DA VINCI.]
Mrs. Jameson calls Leonardo da Vinci, in her "Early Italian Painters,"
"_The_ miracle of that age of miracles. Ardent and versatile as youth;
patient and persevering as age; a most profound and original thinker;
the greatest mathematician and most ingenious mechanic of his time;
architect, chemist, engineer, musician, poet, painter!"
Hallam, in his "History of the Literature of Europe," says of the
published extracts from the great volumes of manuscript left by
Leonardo, "These are, according to our common estimate of the age in
which he lived, more like revelations of physical truths vouchsafed to
a single mind, than the superstructure of its reasoning upon any
established basis. The discoveries which made Galileo, Kepler, Castelli,
and other names illustrious--the system of Copernicus--the very theories
of recent geologists, are anticipated by Da Vinci within the compass of
a few pages, not perhaps in the most precise language, or on the most
conclusive reasoning, but so as to strike us with something like the awe
of preternatural knowledge. In an age of so much dogmatism, he first
laid down the grand principle of Bacon, that experiment and observation
must be the guides to just theory in the investigation of nature.
"If any doubt could be harbored, not as to the right of Leonardo da
Vinci to stand as the first name of the fifteenth century, which is
beyond all doubt, but as to his originality in so many discoveries,
which probably no one man, especially in such circumstances, has ever
made, it must be by an hypothesis, not very untenable, that some parts
of physical science had already attained a height which mere books do
not record."
This man, whom Vasari thinks "specially endowed by the hand of God
himself," was born in 1452, at Castello da Vinci, a village in the Val
d'Arno, near Florence. His father, Piero Antonio da Vinci, was a notary
of the republic, a man of considerable property and influence. When he
was twenty-five, he married the first of his four wives, Albiera di
Giovanni Amadori, in 1452, and brought home his illegitimate son,
Leonardo, born the same year, whom she tenderly cared for as her own.
Of Leonardo's mother, Caterina, little is known, save that five years
later she married, presumably in her own circle. Among the twelve other
children who came into the home of the advocate, Leonardo was the
especial pet and pride, probably because he seemed to have been given
all the talents originally intended for the Da Vinci family.
The handsome boy, whose "beauty of person," says Vasari, "was such that
it has never been sufficiently extolled," and with "a grace beyond
expression," cheerful, eager, enthusiastic, and warmhearted, when sent
to school, learned everything with avidity. "In arithmetic he often
confounded the master who taught him, by his reasonings and by the
difficulty of the problems he proposed." He had that omnivorous appetite
for books which Higginson calls the sure indication of genius.
He loved nature intensely. He studied every flower and tree about the
country home; made companions of the river Arno, the changing clouds,
and the snow-capped mountains. Passionately fond of music, he not only
learned to play on the guitar and lute, but invented a lyre of his own,
on which he improvised both the song and the air.
On the margins of his books he sketched such admirable drawings that his
father took them to Andrea Verrochio, a famous Florentine artist, who
was "amazed," and advised that the youth become a painter. Leonardo
entered the studio of Verrochio when he was about eighteen, and at once
became deeply absorbed in his work. He began to make models in clay,
arranging on these soft drapery dipped in plaster, which he drew
carefully in black and white on fine linen; also heads of smiling women
and children out of terra cotta: already he had that divine gift of
painting the "Da Vinci smile," which seems to have been born with him
and to have died with him. He studied perspective, and with his
fellow-students made chemical researches into the improvement of colors.
Verrochio was engaged in painting a picture of St. John baptizing
Christ, for the monks of Vallombrosa, and requested Leonardo to paint an
angel in the left-hand corner, holding some vestments. When the work was
finished, and Verrochio looked upon Leonardo's angel, "a space of
sunlight in the cold, labored old picture," as W. H. Pater says, in his
"Studies in the History of the Renaissance," Verrochio became so
discouraged "because a mere child could do more than himself," that he
would never touch the brush again. This work is now in the Academy of
Fine Arts in Florence.
About this time, according to Vasari, Leonardo made his famous shield
_Rotella del Fico_. "Ser Piero da Vinci, being at his country house, was
there visited by one of the peasants on his estate, who, having cut down
a fig-tree on his farm, had made a shield from part of it with his own
hands, and then brought it to Ser Piero, begging that he would be
pleased to cause the same to be painted for him in Florence. This the
latter very willingly promised to do, the countryman having great skill
in taking birds and in fishing, and being often very serviceable to Ser
Piero in such matters. Having taken the shield with him to Florence,
therefore, without saying anything to Leonardo as to whom it was for, he
desired the latter to paint something upon it.
"Accordingly, he one day took it in hand, but, finding it crooked,
coarse, and badly made, he straightened it at the fire, and, giving it
to a turner, it was brought back to him smooth and delicately rounded,
instead of the rude and shapeless form in which he had received it. He
then covered it with gypsum, and, having prepared it to his liking, he
began to consider what he could paint upon it that might best and most
effectually terrify whomsoever might approach it, producing the same
effect with that formerly attributed to the head of Medusa. For this
purpose, therefore, Leonardo carried to one of his rooms, into which no
one but himself ever entered, a number of lizards, hedgehogs, newts,
serpents, dragon-flies, locusts, bats, glow-worms, and every sort of
strange animal of similar kind on which he could lay his hands; from
this assemblage, variously adapted and joined together, he formed a
hideous and appalling monster, breathing poison and flames, and
surrounded by an atmosphere of fire; this he caused to issue from a
dark and rifted rock, with poison reeking from the cavernous throat,
flames darting from the eyes, and vapors rising from the nostrils in
such sort that the result was indeed a most fearful and monstrous
creature; at this he labored until the odors arising from all those dead
animals filled the room with a mortal fetor, to which the zeal of
Leonardo and the love which he bore to art rendered him insensible or
indifferent.
"When this work, which neither the countryman nor Ser Piero any longer
inquired for, was completed, Leonardo went to his father and told him
that he might send for the shield at his earliest convenience, since, so
far as he was concerned, the work was finished; Ser Piero went
accordingly one morning to the room for the shield, and, having knocked
at the door, Leonardo opened it to him, telling him nevertheless to wait
a little without, and, having returned into the room, he placed the
shield on the easel, and, shading the window so that the light falling
on the painting was somewhat dimmed, he made Ser Piero step within to
look at it. But the latter, not expecting any such thing, drew back,
startled at the first glance, not supposing that to be the shield, or
believing the monster he beheld to be a painting; he therefore turned to
rush out, but Leonardo withheld him, saying,--'The shield will serve the
purpose for which it has been executed; take it, therefore, and carry it
away, for this is the effect it was designed to produce.'
"The work seemed something more than wonderful to Ser Piero, and he
highly commended the fanciful idea of Leonardo; but he afterwards
silently bought from a merchant another shield, whereon there was
painted a heart transfixed with an arrow, and this he gave to the
countryman, who considered himself obliged to him for it to the end of
his life. Some time after, Ser Piero secretly sold the shield painted by
Leonardo to certain merchants for one hundred ducats, and it
subsequently fell into the hands of the Duke of Milan, sold to him by
the same merchants for three hundred ducats."
Leonardo painted also the "Head of Medusa," in the Uffizi Gallery,
twined about with green, hissing serpents.
For the King of Portugal he painted a cartoon for a tapestry
curtain,--"Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden." Of the flowers and
fruits in this picture, Vasari says, "For careful execution and fidelity
to nature, they are such that there is no genius in the world, however
godlike, which could produce similar results with equal truth." This
cartoon is lost.
The "Madonna della Caraffa," celebrated for the exquisite beauty of the
flowers with dew upon them, which stood in a vase by the Virgin, and was
highly prized by Clement VII., has also disappeared. The "Adoration of
the Magi" and a "Neptune in his Chariot drawn by Sea-horses" were among
Da Vinci's works at this time.
He was also studying military engineering, completed a book of designs
for mills and other apparatus working by water, invented machines for
dredging seaports and channels, and urged the making of a canal from
Pisa to Florence, by changing the course of the Arno, a thing
accomplished two hundred years later.
Still he did not neglect his painting. He went about the streets of
Florence looking for picturesque or beautiful faces, which he
transferred to his sketch-book, always carried at his girdle. He
attended the execution of criminals to catch the expression of faces or
contortion of limbs in agony. Yet so tender-hearted was he, that, Vasari
says, "When he passed places where birds were sold, he would frequently
take them from their cages, and, having paid the price demanded for them
by the sellers, would then let them fly into the air, thus restoring to
them the liberty they had lost."
He loved art. He said, "In the silence of the night, recall the ideas of
the things which you have studied. Design in your spirit the contours
and outlines of the figures that you have seen during the day. When the
spirit does not work with the hands, there is no artist.... Do not
allege as an excuse your poverty, which does not permit you to study and
become skilful; the study of art serves for nourishment to the body as
well as the soul.... When all seems easy, it is an unerring sign that
the workman has but scant ability and that the task is above his
comprehension."
Enjoying all athletic exercises; so strong that he could bend a
horseshoe in his hands; exceedingly fond of horses, of which he owned
several,--he still found time to be the life and joy of the brilliant
society of Florence; always leading, always fascinating with his
intelligent conversation and elegant address. And yet the ambitious
Leonardo was not satisfied in Florence. The Medici did not encourage him
as they did Michael Angelo. Possibly they felt that he lacked a steady
and dominant purpose. He finally made up his mind to try his fortune
elsewhere, and wrote the following letter to Lodovico Sforza, Regent of
Milan:--
"MY MOST ILLUSTRIOUS LORD,--Having seen and duly considered the
experiments of all those who repute themselves masters and constructors
of warlike instruments, and that the inventions and operations of the
said instruments are not different from those in common use, I will
endeavor, without derogating from any one else, to make known to your
Excellency certain secrets of my own, and, at an opportune time, I shall
hope to put them into execution, if they seem valuable to you. I briefly
note these things below:--
"1. I have a method of making very light bridges, fit to be carried most
easily, with which to follow the flight of enemies; and others, strong
and secure against fire and battle; easy and commodious to lift up and
to place in position. I have methods also to burn and destroy those of
the enemy.
"2. I know, in case of the siege of a place, how to take away the water
from the ditches, and to make an infinite variety of scaling-ladders and
other instruments pertinent to such an expedition.
* * * * *
"4. I have also kinds of cannon most commodious and easy to carry, with
which to throw inflammable matters, whose smoke causes great fright to
the enemy, with serious injury and confusion.
"5. I have means, by excavations and straight and winding subterranean
ways, to come to any given point without noise, even though it be
necessary to pass under moats and rivers.
* * * * *
"8. When the operations of artillery are impossible, I shall construct
mangonels, balistae, and other engines of marvellous efficacy, and out of
the common use; and, in short, according to the variety of events, I
shall build various and infinite means of offence.
"9. And when it shall happen to be upon the sea, I have means of
preparing many instruments most efficient in attack or defence, and
vessels that shall make resistance to the most powerful bombardment; and
powders and smokes.
"10. In time of peace I believe I can satisfy very well and equal all
others in architecture, in designing public edifices and private houses,
and in conducting water from one place to another. I can carry on works
of sculpture, in marble, bronze, or terra cotta, also in pictures. I can
do what can be done equal to any other, whoever he may be. Also, I
shall undertake the execution of the bronze horse, which will be the
immortal glory and eternal honor of the happy memory of my lord your
father, and of the illustrious honor of Sforza."
The result of this letter was a summons to the court at Milan, where
Lodovico, though dissolute, was proud to surround himself with the most
brilliant men and women of the age. Leonardo took with him a silver
lyre, made in the shape of a horse's head, designed by himself, on which
he played so skilfully that the duke and his court were enchanted.
"Whatever he did," says Vasari, "bore an impress of harmony,
truthfulness, goodness, sweetness, and grace, wherein no other man could
ever equal him." Such a union of gentleness and sincerity with genius!
Who could withstand its influence!
At Milan Leonardo remained for nineteen years, and here some of his most
remarkable works were done.
One of the first pictures painted for the Regent was a portrait of a
favorite, the beautiful Cecilia Gallerani, a gifted woman, skilled in
music and poetry. Leonardo painted for her a picture of the Virgin, for
which she probably was the model. The infant Saviour is represented as
blessing a new-blown Madonna rose, the emblem of St. Cecilia.
The next portrait--it is now in the Louvre--was that of another beauty,
loved by the duke, Lucrezia Crivelli, formerly called La Belle
Feronniere, who was a favorite of Francis I. "The face," says Mr.
Sweetser, "is at once proud and melancholy, with a warm and brilliant
coloring and soft pure lines, the head full of light, and even the
shadows transparent." In honor of both these portraits Latin poems were
written by the poets of the time.
Leonardo also painted two fine portraits of the lawful duke, Gian
Galeazzo Sforza, and his wife, Isabella of Aragon, the latter picture
"beyond all description beautiful and charming," now preserved in the
Ambrosian Library. When these persons were married, Leonardo invented
for the entertainment of the guests at the wedding feast a mechanical
device called "The Paradise," a representation of the heavens and the
revolving planets, which opened as the bride and bridegroom approached,
while a person in imitation of the Deity recited complimentary verses.
Leonardo now began on the great equestrian statue of the warrior
Francesco Sforza. He studied ancient works of art, especially the
equestrian statue of Marcus Aurelius in Rome, made almost countless
drawings of horses in repose or on the battle-field, many of which are
still preserved at Windsor Castle, studied every movement of live horses
and every muscle of dead ones, and did not complete his clay model for
ten long years. A genius like Da Vinci spends ten years on the model of
an equestrian statue, and yet some artists of the present day, men and
women, paint and mould horses or human beings after a few weeks or
months of study, and expect to win fame!
When the clay model was exhibited in public at the royal wedding of the
sister of Gian Galeazzo to the Emperor Maximilian, the enthusiasm was
very great. All Italy talked of it, and poets and critics extolled it as
beyond the works of Greece or Rome. Unfortunately the ensuing wars
depleted the treasury of Milan, and prevented the work from being cast
in bronze. When the French entered Milan in 1499, it became a target for
the archers. Two years later the Duke of Ferrara asked the use of the
model that a bronze horse with a statue of himself might be made; but
the King of France refused, and the model finally disappeared.
During these years Leonardo founded the Milan Academy. Probably many of
the manuscript volumes which he left were notes of lectures delivered to
the students. He must have spoken to them on botany, optics, mechanics,
astronomy, hydrostatics, anatomy, perspective, proportion, and other
matters. He wrote a book on the anatomy of the horse. "He also," says
Vasari, "filled a book with drawings in red crayons, outlined with the
pen, all copies made with the utmost care from bodies dissected by his
own hand. In this book he set forth the entire structure, arrangement
and disposition of the bones, to which he afterwards added all the
nerves, in their due order, and next supplied the muscles, of which the
first are affixed to the bones, the second give the power of cohesion
or holding firmly, and the third impart the motion."
Leonardo said in his notes, "The painter who has obtained a perfect
knowledge of the nature of the tendons and muscles, and of those parts
which contain the most of them, will know to a certainty, in giving a
particular motion to any part of the body, which and how many of the
muscles give rise and contribute to it; which of them, by swelling,
occasion their shortening, and which of the cartilages they surround. He
will not imitate those who, in all the different attitudes they adopt or
invent, make use of the same muscles in the arms, back, or chest, or any
other parts.... It is necessary that a painter should be a good
anatomist, that in his attitudes and gestures he may be able to design
the naked parts of the human frame, according to the just rules of the
anatomy of the nerves, bones, and muscles; and that, in his different
positions, he may know what particular nerve or muscle is the cause of
such a particular movement, in order that he may make that only marked
and apparent, and not all the rest, as many artists are in the habit of
doing; who, that they may appear great designers, make the naked limbs
stiff and without grace, so that they have more the appearance of a bag
of nuts than the human superficies, or, rather, more like a bundle of
radishes than naked muscles."
Leonardo irrigated the dry plains of Lombardy by utilizing the waters of
the Ticino River, visiting many cities and towns throughout Lombardy
for this purpose, and carefully studying the canals of Egypt under the
Ptolemies. He studied ancient architecture also. In his epitaph,
composed in his lifetime, he calls himself, "The admirer of the
ancients, and their grateful disciple. One thing is lacking to me, their
science of proportion. I have done what I could; may posterity pardon
me."
He designed a palace for Count Giovanni Melzi, at Vaprio, which became a
favorite home for him, especially in the time of war--the residence of
his beloved pupil, Francesco Melzi.
In 1492, after Leonardo had been eleven years at the Court of Milan,
Lodovico, unscrupulous and immoral, married the gentle and saintly
Beatrice d'Este. Leonardo conducted the grand wedding festivities, and
designed and decorated the bride's apartments in the Castello della
Rocca, making a beautiful bath-room in the garden, adorned with colored
marbles and a statue of Diana. While the regent in no wise discontinued
his profligate habits, he yet desired to please his wife, by gratifying
her taste for religious things. As she had shown an especial fondness
for the Dominican church and convent of Santa Maria delle Grazie,
Lodovico ordered them reconstructed and embellished for her. In the
refectory, the artist painted kneeling portraits of Beatrice, her
husband, and their two little children, Maximilian and Francesco; but
they have long since faded.
About the year 1496, Leonardo began his immortal work in the refectory,
The "Last Supper." Here, where daily the sweet and broken-hearted wife
came to remain for hours in meditation and prayer before the tomb of the
Duchess Bianca, from which she sometimes had to be removed by force,
Leonardo came daily to his masterpiece. Sometimes he would go to his
work at daybreak, and never think of descending from his scaffolding to
eat or drink till night, so completely absorbed was he in his work. "At
other times," says Bandello, "he would remain three or four days without
touching it, only coming for an hour or two, and remaining with crossed
arms contemplating his figures, as if criticising them himself. I have
also seen him at midday, when the sun in the zenith causes all the
streets of Milan to be deserted, set out in all haste from the citadel,
where he was modelling his colossal horse, and, without seeking the
shade, take the shortest road to the convent, where he would add a few
strokes to one of his heads, and then return immediately."
Leonardo made a cartoon of the whole picture, and separate studies of
each figure. Ten of these are now in the Hermitage in St. Petersburg.
He was long absorbed in his head of Christ. He used to say that his hand
trembled whenever he attempted to paint it. At last, in despair, he
asked counsel of a friend, Bernardo Zenale, who comforted him by saying,
"Oh, Leonardo, the error into which thou hast fallen is one from which
only the Divine Being himself can deliver thee; for it is not in thy
power nor in that of any one else to give greater divinity and beauty to
any figures than thou hast done to these of James the Greater and the
Less; therefore, be of good cheer, and leave the Christ imperfect, for
thou wilt never be able to accomplish the Christ after such apostles."
Leonardo finished the work in about three years. Beatrice, as might have
been expected from such an ill-assorted union, died of sorrow in five
years after her marriage. Lodovico, as has been often the case before
and since in the world's history, realized too late the wrong he had
done, and now strove to remedy it by causing a hundred masses a day to
be said for her soul, shutting himself up in remorse for two weeks in a
chamber hung with black, only coming forth to do penance at the
sanctuaries where his lovely and neglected wife had worshipped. He now
wished to make her last resting-place, Santa Maria delle Grazie, as
beautiful as possible, and hastened Leonardo at his work on the "Last
Supper" that he might see it completed, meantime raising a magnificent
tomb to the memory of his neglected Beatrice.
The prior of the convent could not understand why Leonardo should
meditate over his work, and, likewise in haste to have the picture
finished, complained to Lodovico, who courteously entreated the artist
to go on as rapidly as possible. Vasari says, "Leonardo, knowing the
prince to be intelligent and judicious, determined to explain himself
fully on the subject with him, although he had never chosen to do so
with the prior. He therefore discoursed with him at some length
respecting art, and made it perfectly manifest to his comprehension that
men of genius are sometimes producing most when they seem to be laboring
least, their minds being occupied in the elucidation of their ideas, and
in the completion of those conceptions to which they afterwards give
form and expression with the hand. He further informed the duke that
there were still wanting to him two heads, one of which, that of the
Saviour, he could not hope to find on earth....
"The second head still wanting was that of Judas, which also caused him
some anxiety, since he did not think it possible to imagine a form of
feature that should properly render the countenance of a man who, after
so many benefits received from his Master, had possessed a heart so
depraved as to be capable of betraying his Lord, and the Creator of the
world; with regard to that second, however, he would make search, and
after all--if he could find no better--he need never be at any great
loss, for there would always be the head of that troublesome and
impertinent prior. This made the duke laugh with all his heart; he
declared Leonardo to be completely in the right: and the poor prior,
utterly confounded, went away to drive on the digging in his garden, and
left Leonardo in peace."
The "Last Supper" was painted in oils instead of fresco, and soon began
to fade. In 1515, when Francis I. was in Milan, he was so impressed with
the picture that he determined to carry it back to France, and tried to
find architects who could secure it from injury by defences of wood and
iron so that it could be transported, but none could be found able to do
it, and the project was abandoned. The painting was soon damaged by the
refectory lying for some time under water. Later one of the monks made a
doorway through it, cutting off the feet of Christ. In 1726 an artist
named Belotti restored(?) it, leaving nothing untouched but the sky. His
work proved unsatisfactory, and Mazza repainted everything except the
heads of Matthew, Thaddeus, and Simon. The indignant people soon
compelled him to cease, and the prior who had permitted it was banished
from the convent.
In 1796, when Napoleon entered Italy, the troops used the refectory as a
stable. Three or four years later, it again lay under water for two
weeks. At present, one is able to perceive only the general design as
the work of Leonardo. Excellent copies were made by Da Vinci's pupils,
so that the great picture has found its way into thousands of homes.
The Saviour and his apostles are seated at a long table, in a stately
hall. On the left is Bartholomew; next, James the Less; then Andrew,
Peter, Judas holding the money-bag, John, with Christ in the centre,
Thomas on his right hand, then James the Greater, Philip, Matthew,
Thaddeus, and Simon. The moment chosen by the painter is that given by
Matthew: "And as they did eat, he said, Verily I say unto you, that one
of you shall betray me. And they were exceeding sorrowful, and began
every one of them to say unto him, Lord, is it I?"
Mrs. C. W. Heaton says of this picture, in her valuable life of Da
Vinci, "In his dramatic rendering of the disciples, Leonardo has shown
the boldest and grandest naturalism. They are all of them real, living
men with passions like unto us--passions called for the moment by the
fearful words of the Master, 'One of you shall betray me,' into full and
various play."
Most who visit Milan to see the lace-work in stone of its exquisite
cathedral, go also to the famous painting which tells alike the story of
a great artist struggling to put immortal thoughts into his faces, and
the story of the remorse of a human being in breaking the heart of a
lovely woman. Had it not been to atone to Beatrice, probably the "Last
Supper" would never have been painted in Santa Maria delle Grazie. Thus
strangely has the bitterness of one soul led to the joy and inspiration
of thousands!
In 1498, Louis XII. came to the throne of France, and laid claim to the
duchy of Milan, enforcing his claim by arms. Lodovico fled, but was
captured by the French, and kept a prisoner for ten years, until his
death. Leonardo went back to his old home in Florence, taking with him
two persons, his friend Luca Paciolo, who had lived with him three
years at Milan, the author of _De Divina Proportione_, for which book
the artist made sixty drawings; and his beautiful pupil Salai, his son
as he called him, "a youth of singular grace and beauty of person, with
curling and wavy hair, a feature of personal beauty by which Leonardo
was greatly pleased." From this dear disciple the artist painted many of
his angels' heads.
Florence had changed since he went away, scarcely more than a boy. Now
he was in middle life, forty-eight years old, the famous painter of the
"Last Supper," the polished and renowned scholar. His first work on his
return was an altar-piece for the Annunciata Church,--the Madonna, St.
Anna, and the infant Christ. The cartoon, now in the Royal Academy at
London, caused the greatest delight. "When finished, the chamber wherein
it stood was crowded for two days by men and women, old and young, as if
going to a solemn festival, all hastening to behold this marvel of
Leonardo's, which amazed the whole population."
He now painted two noble Florentine ladies, Ginevra Benci, a famous
beauty, and the Mona Lisa, the third wife of Francesco del Giocondo, the
latter of whom it is conjectured that Leonardo loved.
Vasari says, "Whoever shall desire to see how far art can imitate
nature, may do so to perfection in this head, wherein every peculiarity
that could be depicted by the utmost subtlety of the pencil has been
faithfully reproduced. The eyes have the lustrous brightness and
moisture which is seen in life, and around them are those pale, red, and
slightly livid circles, also proper to nature, with the lashes, which
can only be copied as these are with the greatest difficulty; the
eyebrows also are represented with the closest exactitude, where fuller
and where more thinly set, with the separate hairs delineated as they
issue from the skin, every turn being followed and all the pores
exhibited in a manner that could not be more natural than it is; the
nose, with its beautiful and delicately roseate nostrils, might be
easily believed to be alive; the mouth, admirable in its outline, has
the lips uniting the rose-tints of their color with that of the face in
the utmost perfection, and the carnation of the cheek does not appear to
be painted, but truly of flesh and blood; he who looks earnestly at the
pit of the throat cannot but believe that he sees the beating of the
pulses, and it may be truly said that this work is painted in a manner
well calculated to make the boldest master tremble, and astonishes all
who behold it, however well accustomed to the marvels of art.
"Mona Lisa was exceedingly beautiful; and while Leonardo was painting
her portrait, he took the precaution of keeping some one constantly near
her, to sing or play on instruments, or to jest and otherwise amuse her,
to the end that she might continue cheerful, and so that her face might
not exhibit the melancholy expression often imparted by painters to the
likenesses they take. In this portrait of Leonardo's, on the contrary,
there is so pleasing an expression, and a smile so sweet, that while
looking at it one thinks it rather divine than human, and it has ever
been esteemed a wonderful work, since life itself could exhibit no other
appearance."
No wonder Grimm says, "He who has seen the Mona Lisa smile is followed
forever by this smile, just as he is followed by Lear's fury, Macbeth's
ambition, Hamlet's melancholy, and Iphigenia's touching purity."
Pater says of the Mona Lisa, "'La Gioconda' is, in the truest sense,
Leonardo's masterpiece, the revealing instance of his mode of thought
and work. In suggestiveness, only the 'Melancholia' of Duerer is
comparable to it; and no crude symbolism disturbs the effect of its
subdued and graceful mystery. We all know the face and hands of the
figure, set in its marble chair, in that cirque of fantastic webs, as in
some faint light under sea. Perhaps of all ancient pictures time has
chilled it least.
* * * * *
"The fancy of a perpetual life, sweeping together ten thousand
experiences, is an old one; and modern thought has conceived the idea of
humanity as wrought upon by, and summing up in itself, all modes of
thought and life. Certainly Lady Lisa might stand as the embodiment of
the old fancy, the symbol of the modern idea."
One feels with Michelet, when he says, "It fascinates and absorbs me. I
go to it in spite of myself, as the bird is drawn to the serpent." I
have found myself going day after day to the Louvre to linger before two
masterpieces; to grow better through the womanhood of the Venus de Milo,
and to rest in the peaceful, contented smile of the Mona Lisa. Nobody
can forget the perfect hand. One seems to feel the delicacy of the
loving touch which Leonardo gave as he painted through those long yet
short four years, leaving the portrait, as he declared, unfinished,
because of his high ideal of what a painting should be. The husband did
not purchase the picture of the artist--did he not value the beauty? It
was finally sold to Francis I., for four thousand gold crowns, an
enormous sum at that day.
After Da Vinci had been two years in Florence, Caesar Borgia, the son of
Pope Alexander VI., appointed him architect and general engineer. He
travelled through Central Italy, making ramparts and stairways for the
citadel of Urbino, machinery at Pesaro, designing a house and better
methods of transporting grapes at Cesena, and finer gates at Cesenatico.
At one place he lingered to enjoy the regular cadence of the waves
beating on the shore; at another, his soul filled with music, he was
soothed by the murmur of the fountains. But Caesar was soon obliged to
flee into Spain, and Leonardo could no longer hold the position of
engineer.
Pietro Soderini, who had been elected gonfaloniere for life, was the
friend of both Leonardo and Michael Angelo. He wished to have these two
greatest artists paint each a wall in the Hall of the Palazzo Vecchio.
Michael Angelo chose for his subject a group of soldiers surprised by
the enemy while bathing in the Arno; Leonardo, a troop of horsemen
fighting round a standard, a scene from the battle of Anghiari, fought
by the Florentines against the North Italians. Vasari says, "Not only
are rage, disdain, and the desire for revenge apparent in the men, but
in the horses also; two of those animals, with their fore-legs
intertwined, are attacking each other with their teeth, no less fiercely
than do the cavaliers who are fighting for the standard."
Vasari thinks it "scarcely possible adequately to describe ... the
wonderful mastery he exhibits in the forms and movements of the
horses.... The muscular development, the animation of their movements,
and their exquisite beauty, are rendered with the utmost fidelity."
When the rival cartoons of Michael Angelo and Da Vinci were publicly
exhibited, the excitement was great between the followers of each
artist. When Da Vinci began to paint upon the wall, in oils, as in the
"Last Supper," the colors so sank into it that he abandoned the work.
Soderini accused him of having received money and not rendering an
equivalent, which so wounded the pride, of the artist that his friends
raised the amount which had been advanced to him, and offered it to the
gonfaloniere, who generously refused to accept it. Da Vinci had already
become offended with Soderini's treasurer, who offered him a portion of
his pay in copper money. Leonardo would not take it, saying, "I am no
penny-painter."
In 1504, Da Vinci's father died, and the artist became involved in
lawsuits with the other twelve children, who seem to have disputed his
share in the property.
At this time Leonardo made drawings for the raising of the Church of San
Giovanni (the Baptistery), and the placing of steps beneath it. "He
supported his assertions with reasons so persuasive that while he spoke
the undertaking seemed feasible, although every one of his hearers, when
he had departed, could see for himself that such a thing was
impossible." They could not understand that they had a genius in their
midst some centuries in advance of his age. He made three bronze figures
over the portal of the Baptistery, "without doubt the most beautiful
castings that have been seen in these latter days."
Tired of lawsuits, and his ineffectual efforts toward the raising of the
Baptistery, he gladly went back to Milan, having been invited thither by
Marechal de Chaumont, the French governor, after an absence in Florence
of six years. He seems to have been straitened in circumstances, for he
had but thirty crowns left, and of these he generously gave thirteen to
make up the marriage portion of the sister of his beloved Salai.
For seven years during this second sojourn in Milan, he was prosperous
and happy. He built large docks and basins, planned many mills, enlarged
and improved the great Martesan canal, two hundred miles long, "which
brings the waters of the Adda through the Valtellina and across the
Chiavenna district, contributing greatly to the fertility of the garden
of Northern Italy," and painted several pictures. "La Monaca," now in
the Pitti Palace, is the half-length figure of a young nun. Taine says,
"The face is colorless excepting the powerful and strange red lips, and
the whole physiognomy is calm, with a slight expression of disquietude.
This is not an abstract being, emanating from the painter's brain, but
an actual woman who has lived, a sister of Mona Lisa, as complex, as
full of inward contrasts, and as inexplicable."
"Flora," a beautiful woman in blue drapery, holding a flower in her left
hand, believed by many to be a portrait of Diana of Poitiers, is at the
Hague, where the Hollanders call it "Frivolity" or "Vanity." Leda, the
bride of Jupiter, with the twins, Castor and Pollux, "playing among the
shell-chips of their broken egg," is also at the Hague.
Probably the celebrated _La Vierge aux Rochers_ ("The Virgin among the
Rocks") was painted at this time. Of this Theophile Gautier says, "The
aspect of the Virgin is mysterious and charming. A grotto of basaltic
rocks shelters the divine group, who are sitting on the margin of a
clear spring, in the transparent depths of which we see the pebbles of
its bed. Through the arcade of the grotto, we discover a rocky
landscape, with a few scattered trees, and crossed by a stream, on the
banks of which rises a village. All this is of a color as indefinable as
those mysterious countries one traverses in a dream, and accords
marvellously with the figures. What more adorable type than that of the
Madonna! it is especially Leonardo's, and does not in any way recall the
Virgins of Perugino or Raphael. Her head is spherical in form; the
forehead well developed; the fine oval of her cheeks is gracefully
rounded so as to enclose a chin most delicately curved; the eyes with
lowered eyelids encircled with shadow, and the nose, not in a line with
the forehead, like that of a Grecian statue, but still finely shaped;
with nostrils tenderly cut, and trembling as though her breathing made
them palpitate; the mouth a little large, it is true, but smiling with a
deliciously enigmatic expression that Da Vinci gives to his female
faces, a tiny shade of mischief mingling with the purity and goodness.
The hair is long, loose, and silky, and falls in crisp meshes around the
shadow-softened cheeks, according with the half-tints with incomparable
grace."
This picture was originally on wood, but has been transferred to canvas.
There are three pictures of this scene; the one in the collection of the
Duke of Suffolk is believed to be the original, while that in the Louvre
is best known.
Of the Virgin seated on the knees of St. Anne, now in the Louvre, Taine
says, "In the little Jesus of the picture of St. Anne, a shoulder, a
cheek, a temple, alone emerge from the shadowy depth. Leonardo da Vinci
was a great musician. Perhaps he found in that gradation and change of
color, in that vague yet charming magic of chiaroscuro, an effect
resembling the crescendoes and decrescendoes of grand musical works."
"St. John the Baptist," in the Louvre, is one of the few pictures, among
the many attributed to Leonardo, which critics regard as authentic. "St.
Sebastian," now in the Hermitage in St. Petersburg, was purchased by the
Tsar of Russia in 1860, for twelve thousand dollars.
When the French were driven out of Lombardy, Da Vinci left Milan, in
1514, and, taking his devoted pupils, Salai, Francesco Melzi, and a few
others with him, started for Rome, whither Michael Angelo and Raphael
had already gone. Leo X. was on the papal throne: he cordially welcomed
him, and bade him "work for the glory of God, Italy, Leo X., and
Leonardo da Vinci." However, the pope gave him very little to do. "The
pontiff," says Vasari, "was much inclined to philosophical inquiry, and
was more especially addicted to the study of alchemy. Leonardo,
therefore, having composed a kind of paste from wax, made of this, while
it was still in its half-liquid state, certain figures of animals,
entirely hollow and exceedingly slight in texture, which he then filled
with air. When he blew into these figures he could make them fly
through the air, but when the air within had escaped from them they fell
to the earth.
"One day the vine-dresser of the Belvedere found a very curious lizard,
and for this creature Leonardo constructed wings made from the skins of
other lizards, flayed for the purpose; into these wings he put
quicksilver, so that when the animal walked the wings moved also, with a
tremulous motion; he then made eyes, horns, and a beard for the
creature, which he tamed and kept in a case; he would then show it to
the friends who came to visit him, and all who saw it ran away
terrified."
When the pope asked him to paint a picture, Leonardo immediately began
to distil oils and herbs for the varnish, whereupon the pontiff
exclaimed, "Alas! this man will assuredly do nothing at all, since he is
thinking of the end before he has made a beginning to his work." It is
supposed that Leonardo painted for Leo X. the "Holy Family of St.
Petersburg," with the bride of Giuliano de Medici as the St. Catherine.
Louis XII. of France having died, the brilliant young Francis I.
succeeded him January 1, 1515, and soon after won back Lombardy to
himself in battle. At once Leonardo, who had been painter to King Louis
while in Milan, joined himself to Francis, not wishing to remain in
Rome. He was received by that monarch with the greatest delight, and
given the Chateau of Cloux with its woods, meadows, and fish-ponds, just
outside the walls of the king's castle at Amboise. Here he abode with
his dear pupils, who were content to live in any country so they were
with Da Vinci; and was allowed a pension of seven hundred crowns of gold
and the title of Painter to the King.
He was sixty-three. He had done many great things, but now, with ease
and every comfort, perchance his genius would be more brilliant than
ever. When about this age, Michael Angelo had completed his wonderful
statues in the Medici chapel, and later even painted his "Last Judgment"
and planned the great dome of St. Peter's. But Leonardo, the versatile,
luxury-loving, "divine Leonardo," no longer urged to duty by necessity,
did nothing further for the world. He mingled in the gayeties of the
court, walked arm in arm in his gardens with the beautiful Salai, his
long white hair falling to his shoulders, and made a unique automaton
for the great festivities of the conquering young king at Pavia, a lion
filled with hidden machinery by means of which it walked up to the
throne, and, opening its breast, showed it filled with a great number of
fleurs-de-lis. He soon fell into a kind of languor that presaged the
sure coming of death.
In early life he had been so devoted to science that Vasari tells us "by
this means he conceived such heretical ideas that he did not belong to
any religion, but esteemed it better to be a philosopher than a
Christian." Now he turned his thoughts toward the Catholic church, and
made his will, which recommends his soul "to God, the glorious Virgin
Mary, his lordship St. Michael, and all the beautiful angels and saints
of Paradise." He wishes that at his obsequies "there shall be sixty
torches carried by sixty poor persons, who shall be paid for carrying
them according to the discretion of the said Melzi, which torches shall
be shared among the four churches above named."
To his beloved pupils, ever with him, he gives his property. Nine days
after this, says Vasari, May 2, 1519, at the age of sixty-seven,
Leonardo died in the arms of his devoted King, Francis I.; but later
historians have considered this doubtful. He was buried under the
flag-stones in the Church of St. Florentin at Amboise.
In the religious wars which followed, the church was demolished, the
gravestones sold, and the lead coffins melted for their metal. Many
persons have tried to find the grave of the great master, and M. Arsene
Houssaye made a last and perhaps successful attempt in 1863. He says,
"More than one Italian had gone to Amboise for the purpose of finding
the tomb of Leonardo da Vinci, and had gazed sadly on the spot where the
church once stood, now covered by thick growing covert.
"The gardener's daughter had been often questioned, and it was she who
first gave me the idea, some years ago, of seeking for the tomb of the
painter of the 'Last Supper,' but I do not know whether the fact of her
having the painter's name sometimes on her lips arose from the fact of
her hearing him spoken of by her father or by visitors. She it was who
pointed out to me the spot where the great painter of Francis I. might
be found; a white-cherry tree was growing there, whose fruit was so rich
from the fact of its growing above the dead.
"On Tuesday, the 23d of June, 1863, the first spadeful of earth was
turned up before the mayor and the archbishop of Amboise. I set the men
to work on three different spots, some to reconnoitre the foundations of
the church, others to look for the ossuary, and the rest to search the
tombs. It was necessary to dig down deeply, the soil having risen over
the site of the church to the height of two or three yards....
"The 20th of August we lighted on a very old tomb, which had been, at
the demolition of St. Florentin, covered with unequal stones. No doubt
the original tombstone had been broken, and, out of respect for the
dead, replaced by slabs belonging to the church, and bearing still some
rude traces of fresco painting.... It was in the choir of the church,
close to the wall, and toward the top of the plantation, where grew the
white-cherry tree.
"We uncovered the skeleton with great respect; nothing had occurred to
disturb the repose of death, excepting that towards the head the roots
of the tree had overturned the vase of charcoal. After displacing a few
handfuls of earth, we saw great dignity in the attitude of the majestic
dead.... The head rested on the hand as if in sleep. This is the only
skeleton we discovered in this position, which is never given to the
dead, and appears that of a deep thinker tired with study.... I had
brought with me from Milan a portrait of Leonardo da Vinci ... and the
skull we had taken from its tomb corresponded exactly with the drawing.
Many doctors have seen it, and consider it to be the skull of a
septuagenarian. Eight teeth still remain in the jaws, four above and
four below.... The brow projects over the eyes, and is broad and high;
the occipital arch was ample and purely defined. Intellect had reigned
there, but no especial quality predominated.
"We collected near the head some fragments of hair or beard, and a few
shreds of brown woollen material. On the feet were found some pieces of
sandals, still keeping the shape of the feet....
"The skeleton, which measured five feet eight inches, accords with the
height of Leonardo da Vinci. The skull might have served for the model
of the portrait Leonardo drew of himself in red chalk a few years before
his death. M. Robert Fleury, head master of the Fine Art School of Rome,
has handled the skull with respect, and recognized in it the grand and
simple outline of this human yet divine head, which once held a world
within its limits."
In 1873 Italy raised a monument to her great genius, at Milan. His
statue stands on a lofty pedestal, which has four bas-reliefs,
representing scenes from his life. At the four corners are placed
statues of his principal scholars,--Cesare da Sesto, Marco d' Oggione,
Beltraffio, and Andrea Solario.
All Leonardo's precious manuscripts were bequeathed to Francesco Melzi,
and unfortunately became scattered. About the end of the seventeenth
century they were mostly in the Ambrosian Library at Milan; but the
French under Napoleon took fourteen of the principal manuscripts,
leaving only two, which now form the "Codex Atlantico" at Milan. The
latter is a collection of four hundred of Leonardo's drawings and
manuscripts. One volume on mathematics and physics is among the Arundel
Manuscripts, at the British Museum. At Holkham is a manuscript of the
_Libro Originali di Natura_.
In 1651 Raphael Trichet Dupresne, of Paris, published a selection from
Da Vinci's works on painting, the _Trattato della Pittura_, which has
been reprinted twenty-two times in six different languages, "one of the
best guides and counsellors of the painter." A "Treatise on the Motion
and Power of Water" was published later. In 1883 Jean Paul Richter,
Knight of the Bavarian Order of St. Michael, after years of labor over
the strange handwriting of Da Vinci, from right to left across the page,
published much of the work of the great painter, reproducing his
sketches by photogravure. He had access to the manuscripts in the Royal
Library at Windsor, the Institute of France, the Ambrosian Library at
Milan, the Louvre, the Academy of Venice, the Uffizi, the Royal Library
of Turin, the British and South Kensington Museums, and Christ Church
College, Oxford.
Richter says, "Da Vinci has been unjustly accused of having squandered
his powers by beginning a variety of studies, and then, having hardly
begun, thrown them aside. The truth is that the labors of three
centuries have hardly sufficed for the elucidation of some of the
problems which occupied his mighty mind."
Leonardo's astronomical speculations, his remarks on fossils, at that
time believed to be mere freaks of nature, his close study of botany,
his researches in chemistry, color, heat, light, mechanics, anatomy,
music, acoustics, and magnetism, have been an astonishment to every
reader.
Among his inventions were "a proportional compass, a lathe for turning
ovals, an hygrometer; an ingenious surgical probe, a universal joint,
dredging machines, wheelbarrows, diving-suits, a porphyry color-grinder,
boats moved by paddle-wheels, a roasting-jack worked by hot air, a
three-legged sketching-stool which folded up, a revolving cowl for
chimneys, ribbon-looms, coining presses, saws for stone, silk spindles
and throwers, wire-drawing and file-cutting, and plate-rolling
machines." No wonder he was called the "all-knowing Leonardo."