Page:Studies in the history of the renaissance (IA studiesinhistor01pategoog).djvu/133

Rh veyed, the exquisite effect woven, counted as an end in itself—a perfect end.

And these pupils of his acquired his manner so thoroughly, that though the number of Lionardo's authentic works is very small indeed, there is a multitude of other men's pictures, through which we undoubtedly see him, and come very near to his genius. Sometimes, as in the little picture of the 'Madonna of the Balances,' in which, from the bosom of his mother, Christ weighs the pebbles of the brook against the sins of men, we have a hand, rough enough by contrast, working on some fine hint or sketch of his. Sometimes, as in the subjects of the Daughter of Herodias and the head of John the Baptist, the lost originals have been re-echoed and varied upon again and again by Luini and others. At other times the original remains, but has been a mere theme or motive, a type of which the accessories might be modified or changed; and these variations have but brought out the more the purpose or expression of the original. It is so with the so-called Saint John the Baptist of the Louvre—one of the few naked figures Lionardo painted—whose delicate brown flesh and woman's hair no one would go out into the wilderness to seek, and whose treacherous smile would have us understand something far beyond the outward gesture