Of such prodigious strength that he could bend an iron ring or [145] horse-shoe with his fingers, his touch was so delicate that he was famed for his mastery of the lute. He composed music, wrote sonnets. His researches into science and art were profound ; his philosophy forestalled most modern thought-he stated Will as the energy of life. He lifted the veil from many secrets of science. Yet, the pursued object once discovered, he seemed content, and passed to other things. The only portrait known of Leonardo was painted in his old age, and gives small hint of the splendid physique of the man.

At eighteen, in 1470, Leonardo joined the studio of the sculptor-painter Andrea del Verrocchio, where he was to meet gentle Lorenzo di Credi, genial Botticelli, and scoundrelly Perugino. His abundant and astounding genius soon revealed itself; and he early surpassed his master in painting. It was whilst Verrocchio was at work on his Baptism of Christ, to-day at the Academy in Florence, that Leonardo, as we have seen, was set to paint one of the angels ; and Verrocchio was so astonished at the power and the gifts displayed by his pupil that he straightway vowed never again to take brush in hand.

Leonardo's twentieth year, 1472, saw his name enrolled in the Company of Painters in Florence ; and small wonder, since he painted about that time the little Assumption now at the Louvre, long attributed to Lorenzo di Credi.

The 31ist of December 1479 was the day of the public execution of Bernardo Bandini for his part in the slaying of Giuliano de' Medici during High Mass in Florence Cathedral, when Lorenzo so narrowly escaped-the attempt at the destruction of the house of the Medici known as the Pazzi Conspiracy. Leonardo da Vinci made a fine drawing of Bandini, dated upon that day.

This also was the year of Leonardo's unfinished [146] St. Jerome in the Desert, now at the Vatican, which Cardinal Fesch found, part being used as a box-lid in a shop in Rome, and the other part in a shoemaker's shop some time afterwards.

The unfinished cartoon of The Adoration of the Magi at the Uffizi was done for the monks of S. Donato at Scopeto in Leonardo's twenty-eighth year (1480).

It was about his thirtieth year, in 1482 or 1483, that Leonardo da Vinci's restless and untiring spirit caused him to turn his eyes towards Milan, then the most important and magnificent Court in the north ; and he started on that fateful series of moves that were to have so profound an effect on Italy and France ; and to narrow perhaps the wide creation that should have been the fruit of his vast energy and intellect.

To Milan then he went, about 1482, to enter the service of Ludovico Sforza, Duke of Milan, as scientist, architect, sculptor, painter, military engineer, or what-you-will ; and in Milan he made his restless home for close on seventeen of the best years of his life, until in his forty-seventh year, 1499, on the edge of the fifteen-hundreds, he returned to Florence. Those seventeen years in Milan were strenuous years of unbounded energy and achievement in almost every intellectual and artistic and scientific activity. The vast range of his interests and his work is well-nigh incredible. In his thirtieth year, with full knowledge of his great powers, and no mean estimate of them, his abilities to carry out his wide-ranging talents were unbounded. The field of his industry and endeavour was limitless. To every activity of the human understanding, so far as learning had then developed these activities, he turned his keen eyes, increasing the aim, and thrusting forward the outposts and enlarging the conquest and domain of each.

XVIII
LEONARDO DA VINCI
1452 - 1519
"THE LAST SUPPER"
Refectory of St. Maria delle Grazie, Milan. This, the world-reputed masterpiece upon which Leonardo da Vinci's fame chiefly rests, was painted in oils upon a stucco ground, which caused its rapid decay. The monks pierced the lower part with a doorway ; and Napoleon's cavalry, stabled in the Refectory, came wellnigh to ending it.
About 13 ft. 8 in. h. x 26 ft. 7 in. w. (4.16 x 8.09).

XIX
LEONARDO DA VINCI
1452 - 1519
"THE HEAD OF CHRIST" IN THE BRERA GALLERY (MILAN)
This, the wonderful study made by Leonardo for his great masterpiece of The Last Supper, reveals him as pure poet.
1 ft. o 1/2 in. x 1 ft. 4 in. (0.32 x 0.40).