a name-though only in reference to their technique. His letter to the commissaries of Piacenza Cathedral is more explicit; in it he cites with justifiable pride the works in bronze which adorn his native Florence, and notably the gates of the Baptistery,1 the masterpiece of Ghiberti. Vasari further tells us that he professed great admiration for Donatello. An admirable terracotta in South Kensington Museum, formerly in the Gigli-Campana collection, a young Saint John the Baptist, half length, with thick hair, bare neck and arms, and a strip of sheep's skin across the breast, displays the Leonardesque in every point. If it cannot with certainty be attributed to the youthful master, it may at least show us what the style of his first Florentine sculptures probably was. type PORTRAIT OF A WARRIOR. (Malcolm Collection, British Museum.) After 1478, we feel we are at last on firm ground. A drawing in the Uffizi, to which M. Charles Ravaisson first called attention, furnishes us with some particularly valuable indications bearing upon Leonardo's work after he left Verrocchio. This drawing, inscribed with the date in question, shows us that by this time the young master had already addressed himself to the study of those character-heads, beautiful or the reverse, which were destined to occupy so large a place in his work. He has sketched the portrait of a man about sixty, with a hooked nose, a bold and prominent chin, a very forcibly 1 Richter, vol. ii. p. 401. I |