Page:Studies in the history of the renaissance (IA studiesinhistor01pategoog).djvu/144

122 mixture of lights, Italian art dies away as a French exotic. M. Houssaye does but touch it lightly, and it would carry us beyond the present essay if we allowed ourselves to be attracted by its interest.

Two questions remain, after much busy antiquarianism, concerning Lionardo's death—the question of his religion, and the question whether Francis the First was present at the time. They are of about equally little importance in the estimate of Lionardo's genius. The directions in his will about the thirty masses and the great candles for the church of Saint Florentin are things of course, their real purpose being immediate and practical; and on no theory of religion could these hurried offices be of much consequence. We forget them in speculating how one who had been always so desirous of beauty, but desired it always in such precise and definite forms, as hands or flowers or hair, looked forward now into the vague land, and experienced the last curiosity.