18161 The whole world without Art would be one great wilderness." BY JEAN PAUL RICHTER, PH.D. SAMPSON LOW, MARSTON, SEARLE, & RIVINGTON, CROWN BUILDINGS, FLEET STREET. 1880. (All rights reserved.) LONDON PRINTED BY WILLIAM CLOWES AND SONS, STAMFORD STREET AND CHARING CROSS. MORE or less successful biographies of Leonardo da Vinci have of late years appeared from the pens of Charles Blanc, Charles Clément, Mrs. Heaton, and Karl Brun. In this work, which Mr. Percy E. Pinkerton has kindly translated for me, I have sought to keep within the limits proper to a mere biography, endeavouring mainly to verify the facts of the artist's life, and to confirm the authenticity of those works which he has left behind. Happily in this instance it has been not wholly impossible to add somewhat to our former personal knowledge of the great painter, as the best and most reliable sources of information are Leonardo's own unpublished documents, which have hitherto met with but scant attention from the student of art. The researches undertaken by me in the four Leonardo MSS. in London, and the numerous memoranda in the Royal Library at Windsor-access to which has been most graciously accorded to me-have led to results which throw new light upon several facts relating to Leonardo's biography, and to the history of his works. Certainly, a painter's character is to be gauged from a study of his pictures rather than from the actual incidents in his life; yet in discussing Leonardo da Vinci's works, it is primarily with historical questions that we have to do. In this volume I have purposely treated only of such paintings by the master which I can conscientiously pronounce to be his. Of these the list is so short a one, that to some my remarks thereon may savour of hypercriticism. Yet for this the master himself is to blame; we can only echo the universal lament as to the dearth of pictures which he has given to posterity. In Leonardo's own day, even, his contemporary Ugolino Verino wrote thus reproachfully of him: ". . . forsan superat Leonardus Vincius omnes, Tollere de tabula dextram sed nescit, et instar It would have been outside my purpose to sift and weigh the reasons no less obvious than unwarrantable whereby so vast a list of spurious pictures has been traditionally ascribed to Leonardo. Possibly also such a task would have been quite barren of result; for when called upon to refute the assertions of prejudiced egoism, the pen of the art-critic falls powerless. Painting has a language of its own—a language with dialects not understood by all. Leonardo himself has justly said, "Thirst shall parch thy tongue, and thy body shall waste through lack of sleep and sustenance, ere thou canst describe in words that which painting instantly sets forth before the eye." In the words of a celebrated Italian connoisseur, “There is still very little known about Leonardo da Vinci, not only |