Page:Masters in art. Leonardo da Vinci.djvu/31

 preparations and accomplished nothing. It is well known how the prior of Santa Maria delle Grazie complained that Leonardo stood for days looking at his fresco, and for weeks never came near it; how the monks of the Annunziata at Florence were cheated out of their painting, for which elaborate designs had yet been made. A good answer to account for the delay was always ready on the painter's lips, as that the man of genius works most when his hands are idlest; Judas, sought in vain through all the thieves' resorts in Milan, is not found; "I cannot hope to see the face of Christ except in Paradise." "I can do anything possible to man," he wrote to Lodovico Sforza, "and as well as any living artist either in sculpture or painting;" but he would do nothing as task-work, and his creative brain loved better to invent than to execute. …

He set before himself aims infinite instead of finite. His designs of wings to fly with symbolize his whole endeavor. He believed in solving the insoluble; and nature had so richly dowered him in the very dawn-time of discovery that he was almost justified in this delusion. Having caught the Proteus of the world, he tried to grasp him; but the god changed shape beneath his touch. Having surprised Silenus asleep, he begged from him a song; but the song Silenus sang was so marvellous in its variety, so subtle in its modulations, that Leonardo could do no more than recall scattered phrases. His Proteus was the spirit of the Renaissance. The Silenus from whom he forced the song was the double nature of man and of the world.

A VINCI stands alone in the history of art, as one who both conceived and realized ideals which were wholly independent of the antique. In all his numerous writings he never quotes the antique as a means of instruction for the artist. Indeed, he only once mentions the "Graeci et Romani," and then merely as masters of the treatment of flowing drapery. He was the first who ventured to base all art instruction exclusively and entirely upon the study of nature; and it is not too much to say that in his genius the aims of his numerous predecessors culminate, making art no longer dependent upon tradition, but upon the immediate study of nature herself.

Unlike those ideals which contemporary artists set before them, he imparted to his figures a grace and a sensibility at once strange and unaccountable. . None of his paintings awe one in the sense that do the powerful creations of Michelangelo, which as it were enthrall the soul. His charm is reserved for those who by deeper examination are enabled to discern and appreciate those subtle and hidden meanings with which his works are charged. Leonardo da Vinci's name has been and ever will be a popular one; his art can never be that; it is too lofty, too sublime.

T is bv a certain mystery in his work, and something enigmatical beyond the usual measure of great men, that Leonardo fascinates, or perhaps half repels. Curiosity and the desire of beauty—these are the two elementary