Page:Masters in art. Leonardo da Vinci.djvu/36

 Some complain of Leonardo that he enticed men from the pleasant paths of primitive art, so that after him it was impossible to paint with the old simple directness. The observation is just, but the reproach unfounded. A man who innovated so much as Leonardo, who converted the works of Jiis predecessors into relics of the past, and lifted art to a higher and a broader plane, necessarily bore it away from many a sweet dell where at times we still delight to linger; but his services were none the less conspicuous. He did nothing to degrade art; he only exalted it to a perfection where certain charming qualities of the delicious primitives became impossible.

Leonardo is the most thoughtful of all painters, unless it be Albrecht Dürer. The mind and its infinite suggestions are his realm. With Raphael it is beauty and harmony; with Michelangelo it is passion and strength; with him it is thought and feeling—thought so deep that voice can never utter it, feelings so sensitively delicate, so preternaturally refined, that they elude our grasp; and he is full of all sorts of curious questionings, of intricate caprices mingled with sublime conceptions. No mind of power so versatile and penetrating was ever devoted to artistic effort. The time that he spent in scientific investigation has been regretted, but it was not lost, even to art. Had he been less intent to know the hidden mystery of things he might have produced more; but would it have been worth the smile of the 'Mona Lisa' or the faces of the London cartoon? His mind was too vast, too subtle, for him to be a largely creative artist. He saw too deeply into the essence of things to be content with facile hand to depict their surfaces. His visions were so beautiful that he despaired of giving them tangible shapes, and preferred to leave them in the realm of dreams. Perhaps he wished to do more than art could do, and so accomplished less than it might. But the little that we possess gives us a deeper insight into nature and the human heart than we should otherwise have had, and is as precious as it is rare.

HERE remain in the world but five known pictures which are without dissent assigned to Leonardo da Vinci. So far as we know, no voice has yet been raised to question the authenticitv of the ruined 'Last Supper,' the unfinished 'Mona Lisa,' and the but just begun 'Adoration of the Magi.' In addition to these are the cartoon study for the 'St. Anne' in Burlington House, London, and the barely outlined monochrome sketch of 'St. Jerome' in the Vatican Gallery. Endless controversy has raged and still rages over the authorship of the 'St. John,' the 'Virgin of the Rocks,' and the 'St. Anne,' in the Louvre, and the angel of Verocchio's 'Baptism,' in the Academy at Florence. The greater number of authoritative modern critics