great rivals. We could not imagine him painting a Crucifixion or a Last Judgment. For him the history of Mary and of Jesus is no more than a pretext for exquisite idylls, in which he elaborates the joys of maternity and the innocence of childhood. The Old Testament is a closed book for him, with the single exception of the Deluge incident. This he treated in a fashion which betrayed the naturalist behind the artist. Once, and once only, did he treat a fundamental event in the history of Christianity, the institution of the Eucharist. It is unnecessary to add that he represented the Last Supper of our Lord with a dignity, breadth, and eloquence, which have made the great work in Santa Maria delle Grazie the highest and most perfect rendering of this cardinal

SKETCH IN THE "TRATTATO DELLA PITTURA.'

(Vatican Library.)

event.

Although iconography, and literary elements generally, hold so low a place in the Trattato della Pittura, its author aspired to instil new life into allegory. While accepting certain traditional attributes, he set himself to create a new symbolism, and that a symbolism of so deep a subtlety that his own contemporaries could scarcely have understood it.1 On one occasion he gives a receipt for the concoction of monsters ("un animal finto"). "No animal exists," he says, "whose limbs, taken separately, offer no resemblance to those of any other animal. If you wish to give a look of probability to an imaginary animal (say a serpent) give it the head of a mastiff or a setter, the eyes of a cat, the ears of a porcupine, the nose of a greyhound, the eyebrows of a lion, the temples of an old cock, and the neck of a tortoise" (cap. 421).2

Following close upon what we may call pictorial æsthetics, we find practical advice, technical recipes, and those secrets of practice which are discovered with so much labour and so easily lost. Here Leonardo

1 See below, the chapters on Leonardo and the antique, and on Leonardo and the occult sciences. Also cf. my Histoire de l'Art pendant la Renaissance, vol. ii., p. 124.

2 A drawing in the Uffizi (Braun, no. 451) represents a dragon springing on a lion; in the background, two pen sketches of the Virgin holding the Child. The authenticity of this drawing seems to me doubtful.

gives proof of great experience and of an admirable fertility of resource. Whether it is a question of perspective, of colour, or of chiaroscuro, he generously pours out

the discoveries of a long career of ardent investigation. As it is clearly impossible to summarise here many hundreds of paragraphs, rich both in facts and ideas, it must suffice to select a few passages which throw light on our hero's ingenuity and the extreme interest of his work.

SKETCH IN THE TRATTATO DELLA PITTURA."

(Vatican Library.)

In a most interesting paper, for which one of my own publications supplied the "à propos," M. Félix Ravaisson describes the methods of teaching recommended by Leonardo.1 He advises that the hand should first be exercised in copying drawings by good masters; and then, after receiving the teacher's advice (it is Leonardo who speaks, and he clearly means "after the teacher has pronounced the pupil ready to take a further step ") in drawing step") from good works in the round (cap. 63, 82). "In the first of these two passages," says M. Ravaisson, "Leonardo confines himself to recommending the pupil to draw, not from nature, but from good works of art, which will prepare him for the observation and compre

hension of what nature has to give." In the second passage, he divides this first stage into two, and adds that the works to be copied at first should not be objects in relief, such as pieces of sculpture, but drawings, in which everything is translated into the flat. . . . . So, too, he recommends that the parts should be drawn separately before attempting the whole. "If you wish to mount to the top of a building, you must go up step by step, and so it is, I tell you frankly, with the art of drawing. If you wish really to understand the forms of things, you must begin with their 1 Revue politique et littéraire, 1887, p. 628.

SKETCH IN THE "TRATTAto della

PITTURA."

(Vatican Library,)

parts, and must not go on to the second until you are master, both in mind and hand, of the first. If you do otherwise you lose your time, or at least, you prolong your period of study. Accuracy must be learnt before rapidity."

As Leonardo, in the Trattato, never wearies of asserting that the painter should be universal (cap. 52, 60, 61, 73, 78, 79), we

(Bonnat Collection, Paris.)

have every right to be

lieve that the teach

ing he gave was ency clopædic.

No artist's eye has seen more profoundly than his into the mysteries of light; no artist's brain has more clearly formulated its rules. In him painter and optician were combined, as the result of innumerable experiments. Nothing escaped himsunlight effects, rain effects, effects of mist and dust, variations of the atmosphere (book iii). He investigated the changes undergone

by the tones of nature, by watching them through coloured glasses (cap. 254).

ence.

The book devoted to light and shadow is of peculiar subtlety. Only the eye of Leonardo could distinguish so many shades of differThis we may see from the following paragraph. "There are three kinds of shadows. One kind is produced by a single point of light, such as the sun, the moon, or a flame. The stond is produced by a door, a window, or other opening through which a large part of the sky can be seen. The third is produced by such a universal light

as the illumination of our hemisphere when the sun is not shining" (cap. 569).1

The teaching of perspective occupies a large section of the Trattato. Leonardo

divides it into three

kinds: "linear perspective (prospettiva liniale), the perspective of colours, and aërial perspective; otherwise called the diminution in the distinctness of bodies, the diminution of their size, and the diminution of their colour. The first has its origin in the eye, the two others in the veil of air interposed between the eye and the object." 2

Long before Albert Dürer, to whom the invention of the camera lucida is usually ascribed, the Florentine master contrived an easy way of drawing figures in perspective with the help of a sheet of glass. He describes the process in the Codex Atlanticus, and in the Trattato.3

1 Richter, vol. i., p. 16.-The laws of aërial perspective are very clearly laid down in cap. cclxii.

2 Govi, Saggio, p. 13.-On Leonardo's studies in perspective, see Brockhaus, De Sculptura, von Pomponius Gauricus, p. 46-48.

3 Leonardo's researches in chiaroscuro have been analysed by Seibt: Hell-Dunkel; Frankfort A.M., 1885, p. 33-53

The author of the Trattato devoted much study to the preparation of pigments. Unfortunately, the results of his investigations in that direction have only reached us in a very fragmentary condition.

We have seen that fresco did not appeal to him. On the other hand, unlike Michelangelo, he was passionately attached to the oil medium. He was the first to win a full harmony and transparency of tone, and to obtain effects of chiaroscuro which even now, after four centuries have passed, still transport us with admiration. But these "tours de force" were dearly bought. The master demanded more from oil painting than it could give. He applied it indifferently to easel pictures and to monumental wall paintings. The Last Supper, the Vierge aux Rochers, the Belle Ferronière, and the Mona Lisa are all in a sad state; such as are not blackened are covered with cracks.

In this respect Leonardo's influence worked nothing but harm. His imitator Raphael, who followed the excellent and far-seeing practice of the Umbrians in his early work, relaxed such wise precautions more and more towards the end of his career. Lamp-black, which he used so recklessly, especially in the Louvre St. Michael, did as much damage as bitumen has had to answer for in our own day. Among the Venetians-who, by the way, contrary to usual belief, practised tempera concurrently with oil-painting, there are many canvases, especially those of Tintoretto, which look like vast slabs of ink. And how many victims the same deplorable practice has made even in our own century!

In the researches carried on by Leonardo in his "rôle" as an artist and chemist in combination, the archæologist also finds an opportunity. We shall see, in the chapter devoted to the Battle of Anghiari, that the master, making use of a passage in Pliny, endeavours to recover the secret of painting in encaustic. Nothing came of it. His attempts failed, and greatly discouraged, he never carried his work beyond

the sketch.

As precursor of Correggio and the Dutchmen, Leonardo pointed out how night effects should be managed. "Do you want to paint a night scene? Represent a great fire, and give to the objects nearest to it the same colour as the fire; the nearer one thing is to another, the more it participates in its colour" (cap. 146).