Page:Anecdotes of painters, engravers, sculptors and architects, and curiosities of art (IA anecdotesofpaint01spoo).pdf/288

 thus restored a capital performance, representing Charity, under the emblem of a Woman surrounded by three Children. The report of this happy discovery soon spread; all the artists and amateurs ran to behold it. The best judges, among whom was Mengs, acknowledged the genuine style of Correggio, and valued the performance at £2,000. The Earl of Bristol bought it from Lovera for about £1,500. An engraving has since been made from it. The value was afterwards the subject of a suit at law between Hunterspergh and Lovera.

LIONARDO DA VINCI.

This illustrious artist, denominated by Lanzi "the Father of Modern Painting," was also an eminent sculptor, architect, and engineer, the natural son of Pietro da Vinci, notary to the Florentine Republic. Vasari and his annotators place his birth in 1445; but Durazzini, in his Panegyrics on Illustrious Tuscans, satisfactorily proves that he was born in Lower Valdarno, at the castle of Vinci, in 1452.

PRECOCITY OF DA VINCI'S GENIUS.

At a very early age, Lionardo da Vinci showed remarkably quick abilities for everything he turned his attention to, but more particularly for arithmetic, music, and drawing. His drawings appeared something wonderful to his father, who showed them to Andrea Verocchio, and that celebrated artist, great