finite sweetness and serenity. At one time he advises us to neglect studies the results of which die with us; at another he declares that he who wishes to become rich in a day, runs the risk of being hanged in a year. The eloquence of certain other thoughts is only equalled by their profundity: "Where there is most feeling, there will also be most suffering."-" Tears come from the heart, not from the brain." It is the physiologist who speaks; but what thinker would not have been proud of this admirable definition !

The man of science, in his turn, demands our homage. It is no longer a secret to any one that Leonardo was a savant of the highest order; that he discovered twenty laws, a single one of which has sufficed for the glory of his successors. What am I saying? He invented the very method of modern science, and his latest biographer, M. Séailles1 has justly shown in him the true precursor of Bacon. The names of certain men of genius, Archimedes, Christopher Columbus, Copernicus, Galileo, Harvey, Pascal, Newton, Lavoisier, Cuvier, are associated with discoveries of greater renown. But is there one who united such a multitude of innate gifts, who brought a curiosity so passionate, an ardour so penetrating, to bear on such various branches of knowledge; who had such illuminating flashes of genius, and such an intuition of the unknown links connecting things capable of being harmonised? Had his writings been published, they would have advanced the march of science by a whole century. We cannot sufficiently deplore his modesty, or the sort of horror he had of printing. Whereas a scribbler like his friend Fra Luca Pacioli comes before the public with several volumes in fine type, Leonardo, either by pride or timidity, never published a single line.

In this brief sketch, we have some of the traits which made Leonardo the equal of Michelangelo and Raphael, one of the sovereign masters of sentiment, of thought, and of beauty.

It is time to make a methodical analysis of so many marvels-I might say, of so many tours de force, were not Leonardo's art so essentially healthy and normal, so profoundly vital.

We will begin by inquiring into the origin and early life of the magician.

The painter of the Last Supper and the Gioconda, the sculptor of

1 Léonard de Vinci. L'Artiste et le Savant. Paris, 1892.

the equestrian statue of Francesco Sforza, the scientific genius who forestalled so many of our modern discoveries and inventions, was born in 1452 in the neighbourhood of Empoli, on the right bank of the Arno, between Florence and Pisa. The little town of Vinci, in which he first saw the light, lies hidden away among the multitudinous folds of Monte Albano. On one side, the plain with its river-now almost dry, now rushing in a noisy yellow torrent: on the other, the most broken of landscapes; endless hillocks scattered over with villas, and here and there at intervals, a more imposing height, whose bare summit is bathed in violet light at sundown.

Leonardo's native country was such then as we see it to-day; austere in character rather than laughing or exuberant, a rocky territory intersected by interminable walls, over which, in the vicinity of the houses, some straggling branch of rose-bush may clamber; for nucleus of the vegetation, vines and olive trees. Here and there, one catches a glimpse of villa, cottage or farm; in the distance, the dwelling has a smiling air, with its yellow walls and green shutters; but penetrate to the interior, and you will find nakedness and poverty-the walls with a simple coating of rough plaster, mortar or brick for flooring; very little furniture, and that of the humblest, neither carpets nor wall papers; nothing to give an impression of comfort, not to speak of luxury; finally, no precautions whatever against the cold, which is severe in this part of the country during the long winter months.

On these stern heights a race has grown up, frugal, industrious, alert, untouched by the nonchalance of the Roman, by the mysticism of the Umbrian, or the nervous excitability of the Neapolitan. The majority of the natives are employed in agricultural pursuits; the few artisans being merely for local use. As for the more ambitious spirits, for whom the horizon of their villages is too restricted, it is to Florence, to Pisa, or to Siena they go to seek their fortunes.

Certain modern biographers tell us of the castle in which Leonardo first saw the light; over and above this, they conjure up for us a tutor attached to the family, a library wherein the child first found food for his curiosity, and much besides. But all this-let it be said at

once is legend and not history.

There was, it is true, a castle at Vinci, but it was a fortress, a

stronghold held by Florence. As to Leonardo's parents, they can only have occupied a house, and a very modest one at that, nor do we even know for certain if this house was situated within the walls of Vinci itself, or a little beyond it, in the village of Anchiano.1 The domestic service consisted of one fante, that is, a woman servant, at a wage of eight florins per annum.

If there ever was a family to whom the culture of the arts was foreign, it was that of Leonardo. Of five forbears of the painter on his father's side, four had filled the position of notary, from which these worthy officials derived their title of "Ser" corresponding to the

French Maître ": these were the father of the artist, his grandfather, great-grandfather, and great-great-grandfather. We need not be surprised to find this independent spirit par excellence developing in the midst of musty law-books. The Italian notary in no wise resembled the pompous scrivener of modern playwrights. In the thirteenth century, Brunetto Latini, Dante's master, was essentially wanting in the pedantic gravity which we are accustomed to associate with his profession. In the following century, another notary-Ser

1 This last hypothesis is vigorously contested by Signor Uzielli (Ricerche, 2nd ed. vol. i. pp. 38-40), who shows that Leonardo's father owned no property at Anchiano till after the birth of his son.

2 Our illustration reproduces a view of the town of Vinci from Signor Uzielli's Ricerche intorno a Leonardo da Vinci (1st ed. 1872, vol. i. frontispiece; 2nd ed. 1896, vol. i. p. 3.)

Lappo Mazzei de Prato-made himself famous by his letters, rich in racy traits of contemporary manners, and written in the purest Tuscan idiom. Finally, in the fifteenth century, the notary of Nantiportal edited a chronicle-occasionally far from edifying-of the Roman Here too, we may recall the fact that Brunellesco and Masaccio were the sons of notaries.

court.

One point of capital interest in retracing the origin of Leonardo and his family connections,

is the strange freak of fate in bringing forth this artistic phenomenon from the union of a notary and a peasant girl, and in the midst of the most commonplace and practical surroundings. It is very well in speaking of Raphael, for instance, to talk of race selection, of hereditary predisposition, of educational incitements. The truth is, that with the vast majority of our famous artists the aptitudes and special faculties of the parents count for nothing, and that the personal vocation, the

mysterious gift, is everything. Oh, vain theories of Darwin and of Lombroso, does not the unaccountable apparition of great talents and genius perpetually set your theories at naught? Just as nothing in the profession of Leonardo's forefathers gave any promise of developing the artistic vocation, so the nephew and grand-nephews of the great man sank to simple tillers of the soil. Thus does nature mock our speculations! Could the disciples of Darwin carry out their scheme of cross-breeding on the human species, there is every chance that the result would be a race rather of monsters than of superior beings.

с

However, if it were not in the power of Leonardo's parents to transmit genius to him, they at least were able to provide him with robust health, and a generous heart.

As a child, Leonardo must have known his paternal grandfather, Antonio di Ser Piero, who was eighty-four years of age when the boy was five; also his grandmother, who was twenty-one years younger than her husband. Further details as to these two personages are wanting, and I confess frankly that I shall not attempt to pierce the obscurity which surrounds them. But it would be inexcusable in me not to employ every means in my power to follow up at least some characteristic traits of their son, the father of Leonardo.

Ser Piero was twenty-two or twenty-three years of age at the time of Leonardo's birth. He was—and despite their apparent dryness, existing documents testify to this-an active, intelligent, and enterprising man, the veritable builder up of the family fortunes. Starting from the smallest beginnings,2 he rapidly extended his practice and acquired piece after piece of landed property; in short, from a poor village notary he rose to be a wealthy and much respected personage. In 1498, for instance, we find him owner of several houses and various pieces of land of more or less extent. Judging by the brilliant impulse he gave to his fortunes, by his four marriages, preceded by an irregular connection, and also by his numerous progeny, his was assuredly a vivid and exuberant nature, one of those patriarchal figures

1 In 1469-70 the family consisted of the grandmother Lucia, aged seventy-four, of Ser Piero (forty), and his wife Francesca (twenty), of Francesco, Piero's brother (thirtytwo), member of the "Arte della seta," of Alessandra, wife of Francesco (twenty-six), and of Leonardo, Piero's illegitimate son (eighteen). They inhabited a house near the church-"nel popolo di S. Croce," a district of Vinci. In Florence they occupied half a house, for which they paid 24 florins a year. They also owned a house at Fiesole. (Amoretti, Memorie storiche su la vita, gli studj e le opere di Lionardo da Vinci, Milan, 1804, pp. 7, 9. Uzielli, loc. cit.)

2 One of his appointments-that of procurator to the Convent of the Annunciation— only brought him in emoluments to the amount of 2 florins (about £4) a year. In 1451, his father's income from real estate came to about £30 of English money. When this fortune came to be divided between the two sons, Ser Piero drew an income of about 400 francs from the paternal heritage. Vasari names Ser Piero, the father of Leonardo, among the organisers of the pageant given in 1513 to celebrate the accession of Leo X. to the papal throne. But as Ser Piero died in 1504 the office must have been held by one of his sons-Ser Giuliano-of whom we know for certain that he took part in the organisation of the pageants in the carnival of 1515-1516. (Vasari, ed. Milan, vol. vi. p. 251.)