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glance. The costume, a red dress, simple yet elegant, makes an exquisite harmony with the chestnut hair, which is drawn down in bandeaux along the cheek, and fastened under a pearl-embroidered net. The arm-hole of the slashed sleeve is embroidered with an interlaced pattern, finished off on the shoulder by a jewelled ornament of two large cut gems, and a hanging pear-shaped pearl. From a row of large pearls round the throat hangs a similar pendant, attached to a short gold chain. The whole work breathes an air of youth, of grace, and of freshness that only Leonardo could have suggested. Signor Morelli ascribes this picture to Ambrogio de Predis, whereas Dr. Bode, while insisting on Leonardo's authorship, proves that the young woman represented was not, as has been asserted, Bianca Maria Sforza, wife of the Emperor Maximilian. Fortunately, Dr. Bode's arguments in favour of the authenticity of the work are irrefutable. The learned Director of the Berlin Gallery shows that Ambrogio de Predis certainly painted a portrait of Bianca Maria, which now forms part of the Arconati - Visconti collection in Paris, but that this has nothing in common, either in feature or technique, with the masterpiece in the Ambrosiana.2

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1 Die Galerie Borghese, p. 238. Cf. Motta, Archivio storico lombardo, 1893, p. 987.

PORTRAIT OF AN UNKNOWN MAN.

(The Ambrosiana, Milan)

2 Jahrbuch der kg. Kunstsammlungen, 1889, no. 2.-A bronze statue in the cathedral at Innsprück represents Maximilian's consort standing, one hand on her hip, the other slightly extended. Her costume is gorgeous in the extreme. Strings of pearls are arranged upon her

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From Leonardo's own admissions, as well as from the evidence of his contemporaries, it is evident that, unable to satisfy his own fastidious taste, he painted extremely slowly, correcting incessantly. Did he not himself declare that the painter who has no doubts makes no progress ? "Quel pittore, che no' dubita, poco acquiesta" (Trattato della Pittura, cap. 62). If he left many works unfinished it was, as Vasari has well said, because he was always striving after a higher excellence. The biographer quotes Petrarch's verse in this connection:

E l'amor di saper che m'ha si acceso,
Che l'opera e retardato dal desio.

"My love of knowledge so enflamed me,

That my work was retarded by my desire."

Fortunately, he has left innumerable drawings to make up for the rarity of his pictures, and these reveal the incomparable mastery, the incredible variety of the draughtsman in the most varied aspects. It is to this manifestation of his genius that I now propose to call attention. Although the painter too often left his creations mere sketches, the draughtsman tried his hand at every process, and excelled in all. We find him alternately making use of pen and ink, charcoal and silverpoint, with equal mastery, the latter method being perhaps especially to his taste, because of the mysterious quality inherent in it. After his establishment at Milan, he used red chalk, a more expeditious medium, which first appears in his studies for the Last Supper. It is not improbable that his first essay, in fact, was the sketch in the

bodice; from her necklace hangs a diamond or ruby cut to a point, at the end of which is a pearl, as in the drawing in the Accademia at Venice here reproduced (p. 106), and the Arconati-Visconti picture. As in these again, the hair is brought down on either side of the face in bandeaux, hiding the ears, and is gathered into a net at the back of the head. The face, round and full, indeed, a little heavy, resembles the two portraits in question, but has nothing in common with that of the Ambrosiana picture.

Signor Coceva has attempted to show, in the Archivio storico dell' Arte (1889, p. 264), that the latter represents Beatrice d'Este. It has, in fact, certain analogies with her bust in the Louvre, especially in profile. But we have only to examine the various portraits of Beatrice to see that the unknown in the Ambrosiana is of a very different type. The lines of the mouth are totally dissimilar; the chin especially is of quite a different shape. In the Ambrosiana picture it is attached to the throat by a straight line of supreme distinction. In all Beatrice's authentic portraits, it is round and heavy.

Accademia at Venice, which is certainly one of the earliest studies for the composition.1 He also used wash, water-colour, and body-colour.

The variety of paper used by the master was equally great. The majority of the studies for the Virgin of the Rocks are on green paper. I may instance the head of the Infant Saviour (in the Louvre) and the little S. John, in the same collection, and in the Duke of Devonshire's collection at Chatsworth.

According to several critics (Emile Galichon, Morelli, and Richter), one distinguishing characteristic of Leonardo's manner was his method of shading by means of parallel hatchings from left to right, a peculiarity to be explained by the fact that he was left-handed. But M. de Geymüller has shown this theory to have been an exaggerated one. In one single drawing (a study in the Louvre for the little S. John of the Virgin of the Rocks), the hatchings are laid in seven different directions; in the corner of the eye, they are laid one above the other in three directions.3

A painter even more pre-eminently than a draughtsman, Leonardo avoided over-definite contours in painting. He modelled with colour and with light, rather than with lines and hatchings. I cannot do better than let him speak for himself here: "On the beauty of faces. Do not make the lines of the muscles too insistent ('con aspra defini.zione'), but allow soft lights to melt gradually into pleasant and agreeable shades. This gives grace and beauty." 4

1 Red chalk drawings in Richter's work: vol. i., plates xxi., xxix., xl., xliv., xlvi. xlvii., 1., li., etc.-For the methods of draughtsmanship recommended by Leonardo, see Richter, vol. i., p. 315 et seq.

2 "Looking over these sketches, made with the left hand, as we see by the direction of the hatchings (from left to right)," says Emile Galichon, "we are amazed at the facility. with which Leonardo handled the pen. A careful examination of his drawings would almost lead us to the conclusion that his left hand was the more obedient to the pulsations of his soul, his right to the directions of his reason. When he wished to translate the feelings that stirred his heart, when he came home, perhaps, after having followed a man about all day whose bizarre or expressive features had struck him, his left hand fixed his emotion. or his recollection rapidly on the paper. But when he wanted to model or work out a figure clearly present to his mind, the final study of the Infant Jesus for the Virgin of the Rocks, or the head of the S. Anne in the Louvre, his right hand undertook the task." (Gazette des Beaux-Arts, 1867, vol. ii., p. 536.)

3 Les derniers Travaux sur Léonard de Vinci, p. 55.

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He recommends the use of the same colour for the contours as that used for the background -in other words, he deprecates the practice of separating the figures from the background by means of a dark outline (cap. 116).

To him, the chiet triumph of painting lay in chiaroscuro and foreshortening: "Il chiaro e lo scuro insieme co li scorti è la eccelenzia della scienza della pittura" (cap. 671). He at

A SHEET OF SKETCHES.

(Bonnat Collection, Paris.)

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tached the utmost importance to relief, to the tactile quality of painting. Here he is at one with Michelangelo, who, in his letter to Varchi, pronounced painting to be excellent in proportion to the effect of relief it produces.1

On the other hand, as if divining the abuses that were to spring from Michelangelo's example, the author of the Trattato condemns the anatomist-painters, who, anxious to show their knowledge of bones, nerves, and muscles, paint figures that might be of wood (cap. 125. Cf. cap. 340).

It was, indeed, the human body in its

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

STUDY FOR A STANDING FIGURE.

(Library of the Institut de France.),

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most flexible aspect, and still more the human soul in its most sensitive moods, that he took as the basis and inspiration of his art. But it was the human body as softly moulded mass, rather than as a bony, anatomical structure. In spite of his interest in anatomy, or rather myology, he had a horror of all things connected. with death.

No art was

ever more radiant than

his. Hence his distaste

for architectural backgrounds.

against rigid statical laws.

STUDY OF A HEAD.

(The Louvre.)

His independent genius rebelled

I may add, to complete the antithesis between Leonardo and Michelangelo, that Leonardo was a respectful disciple of Nature, approaching her without foregone conclusions, whereas the great Florentine sculptor made his researches under the influence of a

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