Page:A Treatise on Painting.djvu/56

 Disgusted with his treatment at Rome, where the former antipathy between him and Michael Angelo was again revived by the partisans of each, he the next year quitted it; and accepting an invitation which had been made him by Francis the First, he proceeded into France. At the time of this journey he is said to have been seventy years old, which cannot be correct, as he did not live to attain that age in the whole. Probably the singularity of his appearance (for in his latter years he permitted his beard to grow long), together with the effect which his intense application to study had produced in his constitution, might have given rise to an opinion that he was older than he really was; and indeed it seems pretty clear, that when he arrived in France he was nearly worn out in body, if not in mind, by the anxiety and application with which he had pursued his former studies and investigations.

Although the King’s motive to this invitation, which seems to have been a wish to profit by the pencil of Leonardo, was completely disappointed by his ill state of health, which the fatigues of his journey and the change of the climate pro- Rh