In the January of 1504, the year he finished the Mona Lisa, being fifty-two, Leonardo was called as one of the jury of artists by the Signoria of Florence to settle the site for [155] the setting up of Michelangelo's great statue of David; and about the same time he was given the decoration of one of the walls of the Council Hall at the Palazzo Vecchio, for which he took as subject a Skirmish between the Florentine and Milanese troops at Anghiari, which had taken place in 1440, some sixty years before. He made the magnificent cartoon, but finding the oil-paint impossible on the plaster ground, after working upon it for eight months he abandoned it in despair. The cartoon, as long as it existed, roused the enthusiastic admiration of Florence, and was said to have been one of his supreme achievements in art ; but of it we can only now judge by some of his original studies.

In his fifty-fourth year, 1506, he was back in Milan, now in the service of the French king; but 1507 drew him to Florence again to defend a lawsuit; the next year, 1508, he was again in Milan.

It was in 1516, in his sixty-fourth year, that the ageing and vigorous painter was persuaded by Francis I. of France, victor of Marignano, to go with him to France on a princely income ; and he never looked upon the land of his own people again. It was in these last years that he drew the only portrait of himself, as an old man, that has come down to us. Three years afterwards, on the 2nd of the May of 1519, at his residence in Cloux, near Amboise, by Tours, his restless spirit passed away-just forty-five years before the birth of Shakespeare.

It has been claimed that in that mighty passing, there departed the greatest intellect the world has ever seen. Leonardo da Vinci was not wholly that, prodigious as was his genius. He was not the world's greatest artist, stupendous master though he was ; nor its greatest thinker, powerful thinker though he was ; nor its greatest scientist. Yet, when [156] all his vast gifts are summed together, and set in one man's being, he stands forth a very giant. Sovereign master of Sentiment he was not ; sovereign master of Thought he was not ; sovereign master of Beauty he certainly was not. But sovereign of a profound and prodigious achievement he was, which perhaps was as great as these.

Embarrassing his teachers in childhood by profound mathematics beyond their solving, by the time he reached manhood he was the finest master of anatomy in Italy. Inventing machinery for water-mills and aqueducts ; making engines of war ; discovering the conical rifle-bullet ; making the paddle-wheel for boats ; conducting deep researches into optics ; an architect, he raised churches and buildings ; an engineer, he planned the piercing of mountains by tunnels, the connecting of rivers by canals ; there was scarce a region of science that he did not master. He forestalled Copernicus's theory of the movement of the earth ; Lamarck's classification of animals into vertebrate and invertebrate-the laws of gravitation, of friction, of heat, of light ; he discovered steam as a motive force in navigation, magnetic attraction, the use of the stone-saw, the circulation of the blood ; he invented canals, breech-loading cannon, the wheelbarrow, the swimming-belt, the composition of explosives, the smoke-stack, and the mincing-machine. Gifted with prodigious patience, unflagging industry, he never allowed his quickness of surmise to be content without practical test.

Over all he wrought he wrote that inscrutable smile, sphinx-like, that baffles us in our survey of the man himself.

And of all his profound insight into life, perhaps the most profound result of his deep inquisitions was his discovery that art is not beauty. He found that art was the [157] utterance of the emotions. " Tears," said he, " come from the heart, not from the brain." Sensitive to beauty as he was-he would walk the streets of Florence and of Milan learning a beautiful face by heart, then home and set it down on paper-but not for its mere beauty of the flesh, seeking rather to search its emotional significance, its character, its spiritual essence. But with equal inquisition he sought to utter the significance of ugliness. He assailed the habit of painters in isolating the human figure from landscape ; he had a profound feeling for the oneness of nature and of life. " The eye," said he, " is the window of the soul."

He is in many ways the supreme spirit of the Renaissance-he had unlimited passion for discovery.

But, for Leonardo, mere discovery was not enough ; it had to be based on mastery of detail. In painting he essayed to realise the completeness on the painted surface of that which was mirrored in the eye and created the impression on the senses. All the advances in craftsmanship to his day-chemistry of colours, science of composition, perspective, the illusion created by light and shadow, he perfected and thrust forward to mighty achievement. The Virgin of the Rocks holds it completely. To deceive the eye to the utmost became, as it was the aim of all Florentine art from the beginning, his goal. But he knew that impression, not imitation, created the work of art. Look upon the supreme works of art before Leonardo da Vinci, then upon his hand's skill-see with what astounding draughtsmanship his drawing of a lip, of the curve of a cheek, of the hardness of a rock, the limpid deeps of atmosphere, are rendered! How the rest falls back into mere effort by contrast ! How his profound love of life and all living things comes forth ! This great powerful, [158] handsome giant would buy birds in the market-place that he might let them go.

Oddly enough, Leonardo was left-handed, and wrote from right to left. He spent himself remorselessly-on discovering flight for man, on puzzles, on making flat corks wherewith to walk on the waters; always for Leonardo the Riddle of the Universe.

His achievement is a vast multitude of incomplete endeavour. He would make vast preparations, and complete nothing. So that men cried out upon him that he could not complete. The Prior of S. Maria delle Grazie bitterly complained that Leonardo would stand gazing for days at the fresco upon which he should have been at work, and for weeks would not come near it. He had ever the quick retort to an accusation, "The man of genius works most when his hands are idle."

The fourteen-hundreds came to an end in a sea of cynicism and doubt-men's eyes bent on material things. Turning his back to it all, Leonardo stands out, seeking to solve the infinite. He detested convention-the established and completed thing. In his Last Supper he flings aside the timidities, flings away the halos of the apostles ; takes instead a dramatic moment-the moment when Christ announces, " One of you shall betray me " ; makes it dramatic ; makes each apostle a human character ; and, in the doing, for the first time in Italian art, creates a beautiful head of the Christ.

" Miserable men," wrote Leonardo, " how often do you enslave yourselves to gain money." He put will and freedom of the individual above all things.

XXI
L U I N I
1475? -1532
"THE MYSTIC MARRIAGE OF ST. CATHERINE"
IN THE BRERA (MILAN)
The Child Christ may be seen placing the ring upon the finger of St. Catherine.