Verrocchio's studio, and whose wild doings often scandalised the good citizens of Florence,1 and formed a characteristic trait of Florentine manners. For if in the Umbrian schools the embryo painter (such as Raphael, for instance) had all the gentleness and timidity of a girl, in Florence, from Giotto's time, practical joking never ceased to form an integral part

of the education of an artist.

The most brilliant of these fellow students, who cultivated art as amateurs rather than as professionals, was Atalante dei Migliarotti, born. in Florence in 1466 of an unlawful union, like Leonardo himself, which was perhaps a bond the more between them. Like Leonardo, he excelled upon the lute, and it was in the character of musician, and not as a painter, that he accompanied his friend to the

court of Lodovico Moro. His reputation increased so greatly that in 1490 the Marquis of Mantua, wishing to have the Orfeo of Poliziano represented, called upon Atalante to fill the principal part. Later on,

1 A calumny long rested on the memory of Leonardo, which was only dissipated when at last the keepers of the Archives of Florence were prevailed upon to give publicity to the documents connected with certain law proceedings. An anonymous person had denounced him, with three other Florentines, as having had immoral relations with a certain Jacopo Salterello, aged seventeen, apparently apprenticed to a goldsmith. In consequence, the accused appeared, on April 9, 1476, before the tribunal sitting at San Marco. They were all acquitted, on condition that they should come up again after a fresh enquiry. At the second hearing, which took place June 7, 1476, the case against them was definitively dismissed. We see therefore that his contemporaries had already exonerated him. (Archivio storico dell' Arte, 1896, PP. 313-315.)

having sown his wild oats, Atalante, like so many others, resigned. himself to a subordinate position, and became a kind of bureaucrat sorry climax to a career that had begun so brilliantly! In 1513, the same year in which Leonardo made his triumphal entry into Rome surrounded by a constellation of pupils, Atalante filled the post of inspector of architectural works at the Papal Court. It was, at least, a last slight bond between him and Art; twenty-two years later, in 1535, on the eve of his death, he was still occupying this obscure situation, which left him ample leisure to meditate upon the follies of his youth.

As to Zoroastro di Peretola, the pupil, and not the fellow-student of Leonardo, we shall consider him later on.

The reader knows something of the atmosphere that reigned in Verrocchio's studio. Let us now endeavour to trace its action upon so impressionable a mind as that of the youthful Leonardo. First and foremost, the beginner found himself constrained to submit to a certain discipline. How did he bend to the yoke? Did he bind himself to the programme which he recommended later on to his own disciples, and which he laid down as follows?" This is what the apprentice should learn at the beginning: he should first learn. perspective, then the proportions of all things; after this, he should make drawings after good masters in order to accustom himself to giving the right proportions to the limbs; and after that, from nature, in order that he may verify for himself the principles he has learned. Further, he should, for some time, carefully examine the works of different masters, and finally accustom himself to the practice of his art" (Trattato della Pittura, chap. xlvii.).

Further (chaps. lxxxi.), Leonardo lays stress upon the importance of independence and originality: "I say to painters, Never imitate the manner of another; for thereby you become the grandson instead of the son of nature. And, truly, models are found in such abundance in nature that it is far better to go to them than to masters. I do not say this to those who strive to become rich by their art, but to those who desire glory and honour thereby."

A noble programme, and, what is more, a noble example! The

long career of Leonardo da Vinci is a standing witness to the fact that, from youth to old age, he set glory and honour before riches.

With such tendencies as these, the models created by his predecessors would have but little influence upon the youthful beginner. "He was most assiduous," Vasari tells us, " in working from nature, and would sometimes make rough models in clay, over which he then laid moist rags coated with clay; these he afterwards carefully copied on superfine Rheims canvas or on prepared linen, colouring them in black and white with the point of the brush to produce illusion." (Several of these studies have come down to us.) "He drew, besides, on paper," Vasari adds, "with so much zeal and talent that no one could rival him in delicacy of rendering." Vasari possessed one of these heads in chalk and camaïeu, which he pronounced divine.

However, Leonardo soon abandoned this practice. In the Trattato della Pittura (chap. DXxxviii) he strongly advises students not to make use of models over which paper or thin leather has been drawn, but, on the contrary, to sketch their draperies from nature, carefully noting differences of texture.1

However refractory Leonardo may have been to contemporary influences, it was impossible that there should have been no interchange of ideas and no affinity of style between him and his master. The better to make them understood, I shall compare the various stages in the development of Verrocchio's art, as I have endeavoured to define them (pp. 22—26), with some of the more salient landmarks in the evolution of his immortal pupil.

We do not know for certain when he entered Verrocchio's studio, but it was long before 1472,2 for at that date, being then twenty years of age, he was received into the guild of painters of Florence;

1 Among the artists of the sixteenth century who made use of clay models similar to those of Leonardo, we may mention Garofalo and Tintoretto (see my L'Histore de l'Art pendant la Renaissance, vol. iii. p. 148).

2 Müller-Walde puts the date at 1466, which is quite within the range of probability, Leonardo being then fourteen years old.

in 1473, as is proved by a study to which I shall revert immediately, he already used the pen with perfect mastery; we may add that the intercourse between the two artists was kept up till 1476 at least.

Shall I be accused of temerity if, armed with these dates, I venture to maintain, contrary to common opinion, that between pupil and master there was an interchange of ideas particularly advantageous to the latter; that Leonardo gave to Verrocchio as much, if not more, than he received from him? By the time that a fragrance of grace and beauty began to breathe from Verrocchio's work, Leonardo was no

The Baptism of

longer an apprentice, but a consummate master. Christ, to which I shall refer later, is not the only work in which the collaboration of the two artists is palpable, and the contrast between the two manners self-evident; this contrast is still more striking between the works of Verrocchio which are anterior to Leonardo's entry into his studio, and those he produced later.

In their drawings, we have an invaluable criterion whereby to measure the respective value of the work of the master and that of his disciple. It is true that Morelli and his followers have excluded from the works of Verrocchio the twenty-five sheets of the Sketch Book