Page:Biographical catalogue of the principal Italian painters.djvu/228

 VERROCCHIO— VINCI. 197 1483, and weighing 3981 lbs. His style, as a painter, is in no way exempt from the rigid forms of the quattrocento. Though he died at Venioe, his remains were bronght to Florence, by another of his distinguished scholars, Lorenzo di Credi, and deposited in the church of Sant' Ambrogio. VICENTINO, Andeba, b. at Venice, 1539, d. 1614. Venetian School. He 18 called also Andrea Michieli. He painted history in the style of the elder Palma, by whom he was instructed ; and was a bold and effectiTe mannerist, fertile in invention. He was employed in many works in the Ducal Palace, in the Sala dello Scrutinio, and the Sala del Maggior Consiglio, &c.; the churches of Venice also possess seve- ral of his works : some of the best are in the Frari and Ognissanti: in the Academy is a Deposition from the Cross. In the Uffizj, at Florence, is Solomon anointed King of Israel. (Riihlfiy Zanetti, Lanzi.) VINCI, Leonardo da, 6. at Vinci, near Empoli, in the Val d' Amo, below Florence, in 1452, d, at Cloux, near Amboise, in France, May 2nd, 1519. Tuscan School. He was the natural son of Pietro da Vinci, a notary, and in 1484 notary to the Signory of Flo- rence ; by whom Leonardo was placed with the celebrated sculptor and painter Andrea Verrocchio, also the master of Pietro Perugino : and it is related by Vasari that Verrocchio gave up paint- ing in disgust, finding himself siur- passed by his young scholar. The inadequate cause of so much chagrin is still preserved in the figure of an Angel, in the picture of the Baptism of Christ, by Verrocchio, in the Flo- rentine Academy. Leonardo appears to have been a universal genius; painting was but one, and apparently not the principal, of his accomplishments, in his own estimatiou, as he lays no particular stress upon his qpalifications in this respect in his letter to Ludovico IL Moro, about the year 1480, when he offered his services to that prince : he states — " I will also undertake any work in sculpture ; in marble, in bronze, or in terra-cotta: likewise in painting, I can do what can be done, as well as any man, be he who he may." He appears to have excelled in sculpture^ architecture, painting, music, engineer- ing, and mechanics generally ; mathe- matics, astronomy, botany, and ana-. tomy. The duke took Leonardo into his service with a salary of 500 crowns a year, and about 1485 he established an Academy of the Arts, at Milan, un- der Leonardo's direction. It was his zeal in the service of the students of this Academy, that appears to have led Leonardo into his laborious anatomical studies, of which very valuable memo- randa are preserved at Windsor. Some portions of the human body, supposed in the history of Anatomy not to have been known even to anatomists till near a century later, are well defined in Leonardo's drawings ; they are, how- ever, though so careful and minute^ not always correct, and they were made evidently more for his own guidance than for the inspection of others ; very few could be made serviceable as stu- dies for artists.* He is supposed to have made these studies, chiefly minute pen-and-ink drawings, while attending the lectures and dissections of Marc- antonio della Torre, at Pavia, about the year 1490. Minute observation is demonstrated as one of Leonardo's faculties in his style of painting, and in the majority of his sketches of character; he ap- pears to have been singularly precise studies, by Leonardo, at Windsor, was published by Chamberlain in 1812.
 * 'A volume from these, and other