rissereneva ogni animo mesto." ("The splendour of his aspect, which was beautiful beyond measure, rejoiced the most sorrowful souls.") Leonardo was gifted by nature with most unusual

OF THE MAGI).

(Collection P. Valton.)

muscular strength: he could twist the clapper of a bell or a horse-shoe as if it were of lead. A species of infirmity. however, was mingled with this extraordinary aptitude: the artist was lefthanded his biographers assert this formally 1 -and in his old age, paralysis finally deprived him of the use of his right hand.

The Renaissance had already produced one of these exceptional organisations, combining the rarest intellectual aptitudes with every physical perfection, beauty, dexterity, strength. At once mathematician, poet, musician, philosopher, architect, sculptor, an ardent disciple of STUDY OF YOUTH (FOR THE ADORATION the ancients, and a daring innovator, Leone Battista Alberti, the great Florentine thinker and artist, excelled in all physical exercises. The most fiery horses trembled before him; he could leap over the shoulders of a grown man with his feet touching each other; in the cathedral at Florence he would throw a coin into the air with such force that it was heard to ring against the vaulted roof of the gigantic edifice. The temple of S. Francis at Rimini, the Rucellai palace in Florence, the invention of the camera lucida, the earliest use of free verse in the Italian language, the reorganisation of the Italian

1 66

STUDY OF HELMETED HEADS.

(Windsor Library.)

Quella ineffabile senistra mano a tutte discipline matematiche accomodatissima ""Scrivesi ancora allo rovescia e mancina che non si posson leggere se non con lo specchio, ovvero guardando la carta del suo rovescio contro alla luce, como so m'intendi senz' altro dica, e come fa il nostro Leonardo da Vinci, lume . . . della pittura, qual' e mancino, come più volte è detto." (Pacioli, De Divina Proportione.)