Page:Studies in the history of the renaissance (IA studiesinhistor01pategoog).djvu/113

Rh from the main scope of his work. By a strange fortune the works on which his more popular fame rested disappeared early from the world, as the 'Battle of the Standard'; or are mixed obscurely with the work of meaner hands, as the 'Last Supper.' His type of beauty is so exotic that it fascinates a larger number than it delights, and seems more than that of any other artist to reflect ideas and views and some scheme of the world within; so that he seemed to his contemporaries to be the possessor of some unsanctified and secret wisdom; as to Michelet and others to have anticipated modern ideas. He trifles with his genius, and crowds all his chief work into a few tormented years of later life; yet he is so possessed by his genius that he passes unmoved through the most tragic events, overwhelming his country and friends, like one who comes across them by chance on some secret errand.

His legend, as the French say, with the anecdotes which every one knows, is one of the most brilliant in Vasari. Later writers merely copied it, until, in 1804, Carlo Amoretti applied to it a criticism which left hardly a date fixed, and not one of those anecdotes untouched. And now a French writer, M. Arsène Houssaye, gathering together all that is known about Lionardo in an easily accessible form,