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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 Nantiporta 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,

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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

STUDY OF OLD MAN.

(The Uffizi, Florence.)

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.

C

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 Annunciationonly 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.)

Benozzo Gozzoli painted with so much spirit on the walls of the Campo
Santo at Pisa.

While yet very young, Ser Piero formed a connection with her who, though never his wife, became the mother of his eldest son. This was a certain Catarina, in all probability a simple peasant girl of Vinci or the neighbourhood. (An anonymous writer of the sixteenth century affirms, nevertheless, that Leonardo was "per madre nato di bon sangue.") The liaison was of short duration. Ser Piero married in the year of Leonardo's birth, while Catarina, in her turn, married a man of her own standing, who answered to the not very euphonious name of Chartabrigha or Accartabrigha di Piero del Vaccha, a peasant too, most likely--indeed, what was there to turn to in Vinci for a living, except the soil! Contrary to modern custom and the civil code, the father undertook the rearing of the child.

In the beginning, Leonardo's position was, relatively speaking, enviable, his first two stepmothers having no children—a circumstance which has not been taken into account hitherto, and which goes far to explain how they came to adopt the little intruder : he usurped no one's birthright. 1

Leonardo was three and twenty when his father-who made up so well for lost time afterwards-was still waiting for legitimate offspring. With the arrival of the first brother, however, the young man's happiness fled, and there was no more peace for him under his father's roof. He realised that nothing remained for him but to seek his fortune elsewhere, and did not wait to be told twice. From this moment, too, his name vanishes from the family list in the official records.

On more than one occasion, Leonardo mentions his parents, notably his father, whom he designates by his title of "Ser" Piero, but without one word by which one may judge of his feelings towards them. One might be tempted to tax him with want of heart, if such an absence of sentiment were not a characteristic feature of the times. Both parents and children made a virtue of repressing their 1 A certain Alessandro degli Amatori, a brother of Ser Piero's first wife, alludes to Leonardo as his nephew, although, in reality, there was no legal relationship between them. In 1506 particularly, this person made himself the assiduous interpreter to Leonardo of the wishes of the Marchesa Isabella d'Este. (Yriarte, Gazette des Beaux Arts, 1888, vol. i. p. 128-129.)

emotions; guarding themselves especially against the slightest manifestation of sentimentality. No period ever exhibited a more marked aversion for the emotional or the pathetic. Only here and there, in letters-for example, in the admirable letters of a Florentine patrician, Alessandra Strozzi, mother of the famous banker,—some irrepressible cry of the heart escapes.

This notwithstanding, Leonardo's impassibility exceeds all bounds,

STUDIES OF INFANTS (FOR THE SAINT ANNE). (Musée Condé, Chantilly.)

and constitutes a veri-
table psychological
problem. The master
registers without one.
word of regret, of anger,
or of emotion, the petty
thefts of his pupil, the
fall of his patron, Lodo-
vico il Moro, the death
of his father.

And yet we know
what a wealth of kind-
ness and affection was
stored up in him; how
he was indulgent, even
to weakness, towards his
servants, deferred to
their caprices, tended
them in sickness, and
provided marriage por-
tions for their sisters.
Let us forthwith con-

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clude the story of Leonardo's connection with his natural family, which was very far from being his adoptive one. Ser Piero died July 9, 1504, at the age of seventy-seven, and not eighty, as Leonardo reports when registering his death in laconic terms.1 Of

1 "Adi 9 di Luglio 1504, mercoledi a ore 7 mori ser Piero da Vinci, notaio al palazzo del Potestà, mio padre, a ore 7. Era d'età d'anni 80, lasciò 1o figlioli maschi e 2 femmine." (J. P. Richter, The Literary Works of Leonardo da Vinci, vol. ii. p. 416. London, 1883. 2 vols. 4to. We have borrowed several plates from this richly illustrated work.)

1

his four stepmothers, the last only, Lucrezia, who was still alive in 1520, is mentioned in terms of praise by a poet-friend of Leonardo, Bellincioni. As to the nine sons and two daughters, all the issue of the two last marriages of his father, they seem to have been rather the adversaries than the

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friends of their natural
brother. After the death

of their uncle in 1507,
more especially, they
raised financial difficul-
ties. By his will of
August 12, 1504, Fran-
cesco da Vinci had left a
few acres to Leonardo-
hence a lawsuit. Later,
however, a reconciliation
was effected. In 1513,
during Leonardo's resi-
dence in Rome, one of his
sisters-in-law charged her
husband to remember her
to the artist, then at the
height of his glory.
his will, Leonardo left his
brothers, in token of his
regard, the 400 florins he
had deposited at the
Hospital of Santa Maria
Novella in Florence.
Finally, his beloved dis-
ciple, Melzi, in his letter
to Leonardo's brothers
informing them of the

In

STUDY OF A YOUNG WOMAN.

(Windsor Library.)

master's death, adds that he has bequeathed them his little property at Fiesole. The will, however, is silent on this point. Besides all this, one of his youthful productions, the cartoon of Adam and Eve, remained in the possession of one of his kinsmen

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