Page:Biographical catalogue of the principal Italian painters.djvu/230

Rh called the "Battle of the Standard," is well known, from the print made by Edelinck, from a sketch by Ru- bens : it is extremely ill-drawn and full of grimace, and can give us only the vigorous composition of Leonardo's group.

In 1507-9 Leonardo was again in Milan, and was in the first year ap- pointed painter to Louis XXL, of France, a patron of the Arts. Until 15I4 his time seems to have been divided between Florence and Milan; in that year, Sept. 24, he visited Home for the first time, and in company with Giuliano de' Medici, brother of Leo X. That pontiff employed Leonardo to execute some work in the Vatican ; this the painter proposed to do in oil colours, then little understood in Borne, and when Leo, on the occasion of a visit to the painter, saw oils and varnishes, but no picture, he exclaimed, "Dear me! this man will never do anything, for be thinks of the end before the beginning of his work," —assuming that he was already pre- paring his varnishes. This want of courtesy, and a disagreement with Michelangelo, caused him to leave Rome in disgust. He returned to the north, was introduced to Francis L, at Pavia, and entered into that king's service, with a salary of 700 crowns a year. Leonardo accompanied Francis to France in 1517, but though he sur- vived more than two years, he executed no new work in France; the king could not even persuade him to paint a pic- ture from his cartoon of St Anne and the Virgin (now in the Royal Academy, London), which he had brought with him from Florence. He already felt the effects of age and a laborious life : on the 18th of April he made his will at Cloux, near Amboise, and he died there on the 2nd of May following ; but not, it seems, in the arms of Fran- cis L, as Vasari has reported, for the court was on that day at St Germain. The recorded date, however, of Leo- nardo's death, is not so certain as positively to refute Vasari's story for it has been found exclusively endorsed on a copy of his will, in the possession of his heirs, thus—Morse in Ambosa,

2 Mag. 1519. He appears to have bequeathed all his personal effects, writings, books, pictures, drawings, &c. and clothes, to his favourite pupil, Francesco Melzi, a Milanese gentle- man, who followed painting as an amusement only.

Authentic works of this great painter are extremely scarce, and several of those attributed to him are doubtless by some of his numerous scholars and imitators. He had three manners; the first, that of Verrocchio, his mas- ter ; the second, that of Milan, in which the majority of his works are executed; and the third, that of Florence, in which he suffered a re-action, appa- rently from the rising masters of the cinquecento—Michelangelo, Fra Bar- tolomeo, and Raphael. The Portrait of Mona Lisa, in the Louvre, and his own magnificent Portrait, in the Flo- rentine Gallery, as also the cartoon of the "Battle of the Standard," are examples of this style: in execution, his own Portrait is his finest work.

Leonardo da Vinci was in every sense an extraordinary man: if he had been only an imitator instead of an originator, he would still have been a great painter. His writings are as remarkable as his paintings ; his trea- tise on painting, Traitaio della Pitrua, existing in many editions, and in many languages, is well known; but there are still many unpublished scientific manuscripts in the library at Milan. These were carried by Napoleon to Paris, and a selection from them was published by M. Venturi—Essai sur les Ouvrages Physico-Mathématiques de Leonard da Vinci, avec des Fragmens