was not ripe for the teaching, artistic or scientific, of this pre-eminent representative of the new school of thought, and the influence which the gifted leader should have exercised on French art in general, and the artists of Touraine in particular, was reduced to little or nothing. The time was past when the valiant chief of the School of Tours, Jehan Foucquet, had gone to Italy, to assimilate the conquests of the Renaissance. Flemish influence, and still more a kind of inertia, had laid

a paralysing hand on our French painters. Leonardo

was too worn out to re

sume, among insufficiently prepared pupils, a work of initiation which, in his hands, would have been crowned with very different success from that it earned in those of such decadent artists as Il Rosso, Primaticcio, and Niccolo dell' Abbate. But we have no proof, indeed, that the French painters felt themselves at all attracted by a style which was far too transcendent for their com

monplace natures.

Not that the master's

reputation had failed to reach the banks of the Seine, the Loire, and the Rhone. So early as 1509, Jean Lemaire had done homage in La Plainte du Désiré to "Léonard qui a grâces supernes.' But the very superiority of his genius discouraged his new fellow-citizens, and divided them from him.

Among the few French artists who were influenced more or less directly by Leonardo, the place of honour must be allotted to the engraver Geoffroy Tory, of Bourges. In his Champ Fleury (1529), he speaks of the Italian artist in terms of high praise.

A collection of drawings by a French artist who lived about the middle of the sixteenth century, which has recently passed with M. Lesoufaché's collection into the Library of the École des Beaux Arts, also shows traces of Leonardo's influence. Some studies of horses, in spirited attitudes, were certainly inspired by the Battle of Anghiari. On the other hand, a reproduction of the drawing, now in the Windsor Library (a replica in the Louvre), of a man defending himself against wild animals by means of a burning glass (p. 57), has been wrongly attributed to the engraver Jean Duvet. Passavant claims this work for Cesare da Sesto, and Galichon ascribes it to an unknown Milanese engraver, probably a goldsmith.2

Francis I., as we know by Leonardo's certificate of burial, had engaged his services, not as his painter only, but as his engineer, architect, and mechanician.

As an engineer, Leonardo was soon at work. One of his most important undertakings was the plan for digging a canal near Romorantin, at the confluence of the Sauldre and the Morantin. This canal, which was to be partly fed by the waters of the Cher, was to be used both for irrigation and navigation. The impounding locks, which he introduced into this plan, and on which he had lavished all his care, were then, according to M. Kucharzewski,3 a great novelty in France, where navigable canals did not come into vogue until the reign of Henri IV. "Nowadays," adds M. Kucharzewski, "there are more than two thousand of these locks on the network of canals that covers the country, and their invention has long been ascribed to Leonardo da Vinci."

Leonardo was much interested, on the occasion of an excursion to Blois, in the canal and irrigation works carried out there, some twenty or five-and-twenty years previously, by his fellow-countryman Fra Giocondo, the learned Veronese monk.4

1 See Chronique des Arts, June 15, 1895.

2 Gazette des Beaux Arts, 1865, vol. i., p. 547-550. M. Julien de la Boullaye (Etude sur la Vie et sur l'Euvre de Jean Duvet dit le Maître à la Licorne; Paris, 1876, p. 124-125) does not give an opinion on this point.

3 Revue scientifique, August 22, 1885, p. 244.-Cf. Ravaisson-Mollien, and Richter, vol. ii., p. 251–255.

4 A plan published by Richter (vol. ii., p. 250) bears the following note: "C. D. Giardino di Blès, A. B. è il condotto di Blès, fatto in Francia da Fra Giocondo."

In connection with this residence in Touraine, we have a sketch which is evidently the plan for a house to be built beside the road leading to Amboise, with a huge hollowed out space near it, surrounded by tiers of seats for spectators.'

Leonardo also seems to have collected information as conditions of the tide at Bordeaux.2

to the

Did woman woman claim any share in the latest thoughts of the aged artist? A passage in his will would almost lead us to think so. Amongst his legatees is a poor woman of the humblest sort, a servant, old and ugly, in all probability. Item, I leave my servant Mathurine a gown of good black cloth, trimmed with fur, a cloth cloak, and two ducats, to be paid her once only, and this also to reward the faithful service of the said Mathurine, until this day."

Had the illustrious painter, natural child as he was, unmarried, unencumbered by family ties, ensured himself the possession of some obscure and absolute devotion, like the devotion of a watch-dog? Had some fellow-countrywoman of his own carried her self-sacrifice to the point of following him into a foreign land? For a moment I had hoped and almost believed it. But, alas! the name of Mathurine has a terribly French ring about it! The clause in the will refers, no doubt, to some prosaic housekeeper, belonging to the province, whom Leonardo had taken into his service when he settled at Amboise. Thus, to his latest hour, the artist who created so many and such matchless female types-virgins, mothers, matrons, prophetesses and sibyls-seems, by some strange contradiction, to have banished the sex from his own inmost existence, and denied it all communion with the sublime secrets of his thoughtful and poetic soul.

This independence of all female affection explains the ease with which the master moved from one home to another, leaving Florence for Milan, and Milan for Florence, following the fortunes of Cæsar Borgia, of the Maréchal d'Amboise, of Giuliano de' Medici, of Francis I. of France, and venturing, at last, when over sixty years of age, to try his fortune beyond the mountains.

But Leonardo's health had been declining for some considerable

1 Richter, pl. lxxxi., fig. 2.-De Geymüller, Les derniers Travaux sur Léonard de Vinci, p. 43. As to the design for Marshal Trivulzio's monument, said to have been made at this period by Leonardo, see vol. i., p. 156.

2 Richter, vol. ii., p. 250.

1

time already. The numbness or paralysis which affected his right hand was but the premonitory symptom of worse troubles. The noble old man thought it well to make his last arrangements. The fine maxim he had himself composed: "As a well-spent day ensures happy slumbers, so does a well-spent life ensure a happy death," might have been appropriately applied to his own case. A week before the final catastrophe he sent for Maître Boreau, an Amboise notary, whose descendants carried on his business till 1885, and dictated his will to him.

The original will is lost; but M. Scribe, a professor at the college of Romorantin, has recently had the good fortune of finding an old copy of the Italian text, dating from the seventeenth century, and bearing every sign of scrupulous exactitude.2

This copy enables us, in the first place, to solve a serious chronological problem. The will is dated April 23, 1518, and it was a question whether the year was to be reckoned on the Italian system (at Rome, for instance, it began on December 25, and sometimes on January 1), or on the French one-that is to say, from Easter. Only a few years ago, Signor Uzielli contended that 1518 was the correct date.

The learned Turinese professor overlooked the fact that in the will the date was preceded by the words "before Easter." In the notice prefixed by Anatole de Montaiglon to M. Scribe's publication, this valuable entry is not allowed to escape reference. In 1518, Easter Day fell on April 4. In 1519, it was on April 24. 4 The correctness of this latter date is therefore definitely established.

Here is the translation of the will, as it appears in the Italian copy discovered by M. Scribe :-" Let it be known to all men, present and to come, that at the Court of our lord the King at Amboise, duly assembled in our presence, Messire Leonardo da Vinci, the King's painter, now dwelling at the place known as Cloux, near Amboise, considering the certainty of death, and the uncertainty of the hour of its approach, has acknowledged and confessed before us, in the said

1 Richter, vol. ii., p. 293.

2 Réunion des Sociétés des Beaux Arts des Départements (1893, p. 780, etc.).

3 Ricerche, 1st edition, vol. i., p. 99.

4 I borrow these dates from M. Giry's Manuel de Diplomatique, p. 102.-Réunion des Sociétés des Beaux Arts, loc. cit.

Court to which he has submitted, and does submit himself, as to what he does and orders for the using of these presents-his will and the order of his last desires in the following manner

First he commits his soul to our Lord God and Saviour, to the glorious Virgin Mary, to S. Michael, and to all the blessed Angels and Saints in Paradise.

Item, the said testator desires to be buried in the church of S. Florentin at

Amboise,

and that his body may be borne thither by the chaplains of that church.

Item, that his body may be attended from the said place to the said church of S. Florentin by the clergy of the said church-that is by the rector and the prior, or by the curates and chaplains of the church of S. Denis at Amboise, and with them the brothers of the minor orders in the said place; and before his body is carried into the said church the testator wills

that three high Masses,

with deacon and sub

deacon, shall be celebrated in the said church of S. Florentin; and on the day when the three high Masses are said, thirty low masses of S. Gregory shall be said likewise.

Item, that in the said church of S. Denis the same service shall be celebrated (as above).

Item, that in the church of the said friars and minor orders the same service shall be celebrated.

Item, the undermentioned testator gives and grants to Messire

VOL. II.

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