Page:Masters in art. Leonardo da Vinci.djvu/38



OW mysterious, how charming, and how strange," writes Théophile Gautier, "is this 'Virgin of the Rocks'! A kind of basaltic cave, in which flows a stream that through its limpid water shows the pebbles of its bed, shelters the holy group, while beyond, through the arched entrance to the grotto, lies a rocky landscape, sparsely set with trees, wherein a river runs;—and all of this is of such an indefinable color that it seems like those faint wonderlands through which we wander in our dreams. And the adorable Madonna, with the pure oval of her cheeks, her exquisite chin, her downcast eyes circled by a shadowy penumbra, on her lips that vague, enigmatic smile which Da Vinci loved to give the faces of his women,—she is a type all Leonardo's own, and recalls nothing of Perugino's Virgins or of Raphael's. The attendant angel has, perhaps, the finest head and the proudest that ever pencil traced on canvas. Half youth, half heavenly maid, she must belong to the highest order of heaven's hierarchy, with that face so pure, so ethereal in its loveliness, the omnipresent smile half hidden at the corner of her lips. Hers surpasses all human beauty, and her face seems rather that face of which men may only dream. The little St. John, whom the Virgin presents to the divine Child, kneels among delicate flowers on the sward; while the latter, with upraised fingers, blesses him. Nothing could be more admirable than the foreshortening of the two tender little crouching bodies, nothing more finely modelled than the little limbs, with their infinitely delicate gradations of shadow. The coloring of the picture, though time has blackened it, still keeps a subtle harmony, more in accord, perhaps, with the subject than fresher and brighter tones. The colors have faded in such perfect accord that there results a sort of neutral tone, abstract, ideal, mysterious, which. shrouds the forms as if with some unearthly veil."

HOUGH very similar in general effect, 'The Virgin of the Rocks' in the National Gallery differs from that in the Louvre in one important particular. In the former the angel does not look directly out of the picture nor point to the infant Baptist. The ill-drawn gilt nimbuses over the heads of the three principal figures, as well as the clumsy reed cross which rests on St. John's shoulder, are additions of a comparatively late period, probably of the seventeenth century, and the right hand of the Virgin has been coarsely repainted. In general the National Gallery picture is softer in outline and less severe.

There has been almost unending controversy as to which of the two pictures is by the hand of Leonardo; but the weight of criticism is now in favor of the hypothesis that the Louvre picture is the original, and that 'The Virgin of the Rocks' in the National Gallery is a replica, probably painted under the master's supervision and perhaps in his studio. A recent writer in 'The Ouarterly Review' has summed up the conclusions with which most critics now agree. "There can be little doubt," he says, "that in the