Vatican codex, are carefully set out. Unfortunately this volume is disfigured by a great deal of coarse and unfair abuse of Dr.

Richter.

As a result of Ludwig's researches we find that the fragments of the Trattato printed by Dr. Richter form 662 paragraphs, while the Vatican MS. runs to 944. The text of 225 paragraphs is identical both in the collected manuscripts and the Vatican copy.

This great encylopædia of painting contains eight books: i., On Poetry and Painting; ii., On Precepts for the Painter; iii., On Anatomy, Proportions, &c. ; iv., On Drapery; v., On Light and Shadow; vi., On Trees and Verdure; vii., On Clouds; viii., On the Horizon.

LEONARDI VINCI."
(The Ambrosiana, Milan.)

hear, but cannot see." "A picture is a mute poem, and a poem a blind

picture" (c. 20, 21).2 But Leonardo pushes his comparison too far

1 There is, unhappily, no French translation in which artists and amateurs might note the numerous and important additions to the Trattato contained in the autographs and in the Vatican codex. In France we have still perforce to content ourselves with Gault de Saint-Germain's very incomplete version. This reproach, is, I am glad to hear, in the way of being shortly removed by M. Rouveyre, who has done so much for students of Leonardo.

2 In Lodovico Dolce's Aretino, Pietro Aretino reminds us that certain men of talent have called the painter a mute poet, and the poet a talking painter.

when he declares that poetry is supremely suitable for the deaf! (cap. 28).

The arguments used by Leonardo in favour of painting offer a certain analogy with those set forth about the same time by Baldassare Castiglione, in the Cortegiano. I mean that occasionally they have a somewhat prosaic quality, rather than one of high philosophical speculation. Hear what he

says on the question of visual illusion. "I have seen a portrait so like that the favourite dog of the original took it for his master and

displayed every sign

have

of delight; I
also seen dogs bark
at painted dogs and try
to bite them; and a
monkey make all sorts
of faces at portraits of
his own kind; I have
seen swallows on the
wing attempt to settle
on iron bars painted
across the painted win-
dows of painted houses"
(cap. 14).

In another section

(Windsor Library.)

(13) Leonardo brings out the omnipotence of the painter. When he wants to see such beauties as excite his love, he can create them for himself; if he should wish to see monstrous and terrific things, or absurd and laughable things, or things which excite compassion, again he is sovereign and divine ("n' è signore e dio"); he can create countries teeming with population, or deserts, places dark and shady with trees, or blazing with the sun, &c.

H H

These transcendental considerations are followed up by comparisons between painting and music, painting and sculpture.

The more or less idle question, whether painting was superior to sculpture, or "vice versa," was passionately discussed all through the Renaissance.

SKETCH IN THE TRATTATO DELLA

PITTURA."

(Vatican Library.)

Half

a century, at least, before Leonardo, Leone Battista Alberti had pronounced in favour of painting.1

Leonardo accords the palm to the same art. "Sculpture," he says, "is not a science, but a mechanical art, if there is one, for it makes the sculptor sweat, and gives him bodily fatigue. The only difference I find between painting and sculpture is this: the sculptor

carries out his works with more bodily fatigue than the painter, the painter with more mental fatigue than the sculptor (cap. 35, 36). About the same time, perhaps, as Leonardo, Baldassare Castiglione arrived at a similar conclusion in his Cortegiano.

A decade or two later, in 1549, a distinguished Florentine man of letters, Benedetto Varchi, published a Lezione, in which the question Quale sia più nobile arte, la Scultura o la Pittura, was discussed. Michelangelo wrote him a letter in which he makes a determined stand for his favourite art: "I say that the nearer painting approaches to the round, the better it seems to me, and the nearer the round approaches to painting the worse it seems. Το me, sculpture appears the lamp of painting; between the one and the

SKETCH IN THE

TRAT

TATO DELLA PITTURA." (Vatican Library).

1 "And truly," he cries, "is she not the queen and chief ornament of the arts. If I am not in error, it was from the painter that the architect took his architraves, his capitals, his bases, his columns, his pinnacles, and other adornments of his buildings. It is evidently on the principles of the painter's art that the lapidary, the sculptor, the jeweller, and other manual artists regulate their practice; in short, there is no art, however humble, which has not some connection with painting." (Della Pittura.)-Other points of sympathy between the treatises of Leonardo and Alberti have been established by Seibt., Hell-Dunkel (pp. 37, 38, 53). Both Alberti and Leonardo declare that black and white are not colours, that vigour of relief is preferable to beauty of colour, etc. See also C. Brun's paper in the Repertorium für Künstwissenschaft, 1892, p. 267.

other there is the same difference as between the sun and the moon." 1

It was long before the dispute ceased to set artists and critics by Vasari, Bronzino, Pontormo, Tribolo, and a crowd of others,

the ears.

roborate it by a criticism which never slept, a criticism exercised both by the artist himself and by strangers. So he begins with a series of precepts calculated to give the painter the greatest possible independence, and to make him an impartial and, as it were, outside judge of his own productions. "We know, as a fact, that one sees the faults of others more quickly than one's own; we even go so. far as to blame small errors in our neighbours when we ourselves possess them in a still greater degree. To escape this ignorance, master perspective first of all, and then learn thoroughly the measurements of men and animals; become also a good architect, at least so far as the general forms of buildings, and of other things which stand upon the earth are concerned. These forms are, in fact, infinite. The more various your knowledge is, the more will your work be praised. Do not disdain to copy slavishly from nature those details with which you are not familiar."

SKETCH IN THE

46 TRATTATO DELLA PITTURA.'

(Vatican Library.)

"To come back," he adds, "to the point from which we started, I 2 See P. Gauthiez, L'Aretin, p. 261.

1 Lettere, Milanesi's edition, p. 522.

3 I Trattati dell' Oreficeria, Milanesi's edition, p. xx.-xxxiv., 229, 233, 321, 331.

* See François Benoit : Quas opiniones et quas controversias Falconet de arte habuerit. Paris, 1897, p. 11-12.

tell you that you should always have beside you a flat mirror, and should look continually at the reflection in it of your work. Being reversed, the image will appeal to you as if it were done by some one else. By this means you will discover your faults much more readily. It will also be useful to leave off work pretty often and amuse yourself with something else. When you go back you will judge what you have done more fairly, for too much application lays you open to mistakes. Again, it is good to look at your work from a distance, for

(Windsor Library.)

it then appears smaller and can be more easily embraced as a whole by the eye, which will recognise discords, faults of proportion in limbs, and bad quantities in the colours more easily than when close at hand " (cap. 407).

In his discussion of the weight to be given to remarks made by others, Leonardo, I should think, does some little violence to his own convictions. Seeing how he worked himself, it is

pretty safe to assert that he laid very little store indeed by the advice of his colleagues, whether they were professional artists or amateurs. Did he not know more of the secrets of art than the whole of them put together? The most he did was to ask, now and then, for some little technical guidance, as, for instance, when he took the advice of Giuliano da San Gallo on the process of casting in metal.

However this may be, this is what he actually says on the function of criticism: "As a painter should be desirous of hearing what others think of his work, he should not repulse an external opinion while he is painting. For we can see clearly that even a man who is not