Page:Masters in art. Leonardo da Vinci.djvu/35

 ancient paintings of half their charm, has but added charm to his, by deepening- the shadows in which the imagination loves to wander—shadows like veils, which half dissolve to show the vision of a secret thought; colors that are dead, like the colors of things in moonlight. Leonardo's figures seem to have come from some superior sphere to glance at themselves for a moment in a glass darkly, or rather, in a mirror of smoked steel, and, lo! their reflections, caught by some such subtle alchemy as that of the daguerreotype, remain forever fixed. Truly we have seen them before—not on this earth indeed; but perhaps in some far pre-existence of which they awaken the faint echo of a memory.—

EONARDO DA VINCI was the first perfect painter among the moderns. Compared with him his predecessors are all primitives. Between their art and his there yawns an immense chasm. They are striving, with doubtful success, to give tangible form to simple ideas; he bodies forth with consummate power thoughts too subtle and profound for vocal utterance. Childlike and sincere, their vision ranges over a narrow field, and depicts imperfectly the things that it beholds; while his powerful mind grasps the most hidden secrets of nature and of the human heart, and his wizard fingers transfer them to the canvas with unerring skill. They are still mediæval, while he is modern, belonging not to the past, but to our own and all succeeding generations. Their art is an attempt; his the perfection of achievement. They are fascinating by their immaturity; he by the plenitude of his power. They are suggestive because we seek to realize what they are trying to express; he is infinitely more so because he represents more than our minds can seize. We feel that he was familiar with all the thoughts that haunt us now, perhaps with some that will only come to our remote descendants. He was the first modern artist in whom absolute technical skill and a great creative mind went hand in hand, and in neither respect has he ever been surpassed.

No man has ever made greater changes in the technique of painting. Before his day men were content with line and color as the means of artistic utterance. He was the first to perceive that light and shade were equally important, and were capable of producing the most poetical and illusive effects. He did not invent chiaroscuro, but he was the first to handle it as a master. In his pictures lights and shadows are treated with all the truth of nature, and they are full of bewitching loveliness, of mystery and charm. His chiaroscuro is not brilliant like Correggio's, it is not full of luminous splendor like that of Rembrandt; but it is deep and true. He experimented much with pigments; and as the effect of time upon them could only be determined with the lapse of years, he fell into errors, never sufficiently to be deplored, the effects of which are only too visible in all his works, and which have lost for us 'The Last Supper' and the portion of 'The Battle of the Standard' that was executed upon the wall. To deepen his shadows he painted upon a sombre groundwork, and the pigment of this having come through, it has darkened all his pictures. …