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master to whom this branch of art was practically foreign? Moreover, if one studies closely the analogies between the productions of Verrocchio and those of his two undisputed pupils, Leonardo da Vinci and Lorenzo di Credi, and then the traces of relationship. between the works of the two latter, one is forced to acknowledge that at no period of an extraordinarily prolific career does the manner of Perugino present the slightest family resemblance to that of his reputed master, or his reputed fellow-students. His warm and lustrous scale of colour, his sharply accentuated outlines, and above all, his favourite types, taken exclusively from his native country, and showing all the meagreness of the Umbrian race, are all his own. At the most, his sojourn in Florence and, later on, in Rome, familiarised him with certain accessories then in fashion, for instance, those ornaments in the antique style which he introduced lavishly in his pictures, where they proclaim their want of harmony with the rest of the composition, the sentiment of which is so unclassical.

We must be careful, however, to question the testimony of an author usually so well informed as Vasari on such evidence. If we consider the house of Verrocchio not as an artist's studio, strictly speaking, but as a laboratory, a true chemical laboratory, the arguments just brought forward lose their force. Under this ardent innovator, Perugino may well have studied, not so much the art of painting, as the science of colouring, the chemical properties of colours, their combinations, all those problems which the pupils of Verrocchio, Leonardo as well as Lorenzo di Credi, were unceasingly engaged upon.1

Like all his fellow-students, Perugino was rather a colourist than a draughtsman. It were fruitless to demand of him compositions brilliantly imagined or cunningly put together; warmth of colour, combined with the expression of meditation, of religious fervour-these are his sole qualities, and they are not to be despised. Perugino had,

1 And, indeed, the group of the Holy Family by Perugino, in the Museum at Nancy, had its origin in the corresponding group of Leonardo's Virgin of the Rocks (Crowe and Cavalcaselle, History of Painting in Italy, vol. iii. p. 225). Nor, most assuredly, is it from simple caprice that Perugino introduces the portrait of Verrocchio into one of his paintings for the monastery of the Jesuits in Florence (Vasari, Milanesi's ed., vol. iii, p. 574). Such distinctions were accorded only to patrons or to friends.

in all probability, already quitted Verrocchio's atelier in 1475. At least, it was suggested that he should paint the great hall of the Palazzo Pubblico of Perugia at this

STUDY OF A HORSEMAN (ASCRIBED TO VERROCCHIO).

date.

Leonardo, with all his numerous writings, is so chary of details as to his private affairs and connections that we know not whether the relations with Perugino, begun in Verrocchio's studio, survived the departure of the latter. The two artists must, however, have had many opportunities of meeting again later

on: first of all, in Florence, where Perugino was working in 1482; then in Lombardy in 1496; then, after 1500, once more in Florence, where Perugino had set up a studio which was much frequented. Raphael's father, Giovanni Santi, has perpetuated the memory of this connection in three well-known lines, wherein he speaks of two adolescents of the same age animated by the same passions -Leonardo da Vinci and Perugino, or Pietro della Pieve, a divine painter:

Due giovin par d'etate e par d'amori
Leonardo da Vinci e'l Perusino,

Pier della Pieve ch'è un divin pittore.

Yet another Umbrian, Fiorenzo di Lorenzo of Perugia, appears to

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Lorenzo di Andrea Credi (1459-1537), the son and grandson of goldsmiths, was placed, when quite a child, under Verrocchio's tuition,

1 Schmarsow, Pinturricchio in Rom, p. 5. Bode, Italienische Bildhauer, p. 151. Ulmann, Sandro Botticelli, p. 38.

and was still working under him, at the age of twenty-one, content with the modest salary of one florin (about 2) a month. He was living at that time (1480) with his mother "Mona Lisa," a widow aged sixty years. His two sisters, Lucrezia and Lena, were married. The fortune of the little household consisted of a tiny property at Casarotta.

A tender friendship united Lorenzo and his master, whom he accompanied later to Venice, to assist in the execution of the statue

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of Colleone, and who, at his death, named him his executor. His nature profoundly contemplative and religious: he was an impassioned follower of Savonarola, as were the great majority of Florentine artists; but, after the fall of the prophet, discouragement followed on boundless enthusiasm. His will bears witness to his sense of contrition: after having assured the future of his old woman-servant, to whom he left his bedding, and an annuity in kind; after having made certain donations to his niece and to the daughter of a friend, a goldsmith; he directed that the rest of his fortune should go to the brotherhood of the indigent poor, and that his

obsequies should be as simple as possible: "Quo minimo sumptu fieri potest."

Seven years younger than Leonardo, Lorenzo soon came under the influence of his fellow-student. No one, affirms Vasari, could better imitate the latter's manner; one of Leonardo's pictures, in particular, he copied so perfectly that it was impossible to distinguish the copy from the original. This picture, as well as another after Verrocchio, went to Spain.

Lorenzo was a slow and laborious spirit, rather than a lively and original genius. It is said that he prepared his oils himself, and with his own hand ground his colours to an impalpable dust. After having tried the gradations of each colour upon his palette-he made use of as many as thirty shades to the colour-he forbade his servants to sweep his studio, lest one speck of dust should dim the transparency and polish of his pictures, which, in this respect, are like enamels. He was distinguished for deep religious convictions; but of what avail are convictions to the artist or the poet without talent, the gift of communicating his emotions to others?

His

Nothing could be more limited than the range of Lorenzo's compositions; they are either Holy Conversations or Madonnas, these last usually circular in form. About the only secular picture known as his is his Venus, in the Uffizi Gallery. His figures are, for the most part, heavy the Infant Jesus in particular being remarkable for the inordinate size of the head, and the total absence of expression. landscape, indeed, has higher qualities, thanks chiefly to the colour, in which firmness has not destroyed harmony. Lorenzo practised portraiture as well as religious painting. If the portraits attributed to him in the Louvre are indeed his, Leonardo's fellow-student must have possessed the power of subtle characterisation in the very highest degree. A few touches, as quiet as they are exact, and of incomparable lightness, suffice to fix the physiognomy, and suggest the soul of his model, on a sheet of paper, usually rose-tinted. The École des Beaux Arts in Paris possesses a portrait of an old man, in body-colour, more closely akin to Lorenzo's pictures, and marked by the same laboured handling: this is the sign manual of the master.

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It is not impossible that Leonardo may also have met another artist, much his senior, in Verrocchio's studio, where he was working. rather as an assistant than a pupil-I mean Sandro Botticelli. He was one of the few contemporary masters of whom our hero makes mention in his writings, and he adds to the name the significant qualification "il nostro Botticelli." He invokes Botticelli's testimony, however, only to criticise him. That artist," he says, "is not universal who does not show an equal taste for all branches of painting. For instance, one who does not care for landscape, will declare that it is a matter for short and simple study only. Our Botticelli was wont to say that this study was vain, for you had but to throw a sponge soaked with different colours against a wall, and you at once obtained upon that wall a stain, wherein you might distinguish a landscape. And indeed," Leonardo adds, "this artist painted very poor landscapes." 1 The end of this demonstration deserves to be quoted. In it Leonardo unconsciously criticises that very species of picturesque pantheism, those optical illusions to which no one sacrificed more than he did himself. 'It is true," he declares, "that he who seeks them will find in that stain many inventions, such as human faces, various animals, battles, rocks, oceans, clouds or forests, and other objects of the kind. It is the same with the sound of bells, wherein each person can distinguish whatever words he pleases. But although these stains furnish forth divers subjects, they do not show us how to terminate a particular point." 2 How often must Leonardo have let his vision and his imagination float thus in the clouds or on the waves, striving to grasp in their infinite combinations the image he was pursuing, or, by an opposite effect, endeavouring to give form and substance to the undulating, intangible masses!

Taking into consideration Leonardo's facetious humour, his delight in mystification-there was a touch of the Mephistopheles in him—and his extravagant habits, it is highly probable that he formed a close connection with a band of hare-brained young fellows who frequented

1 See Ulman, Sandro Botticelli, pp. 37-38. I shall have occasion to return to the numerous motives borrowed by Botticelli from Leonardo: in the Virgin of the Magnificat (see the Archivio storico dell' Arte, 1897, p. 3, et seq), in the Nativity of the National Gallery, in the Adoration of the Magi of the Uffizi.

2 Trattato della Pittura, chap. Ix. Piero di Cosimo attempted, like Leonardo, to form figures with clouds. (See his biography in Vasari.)

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