Page:The history of medieval Europe.djvu/662

 606 THE HISTORY OF MEDIEVAL EUROPE his composition, his use of light and shade, and for his type of face; but some of his works have suffered from his ex- cessive zeal in experimenting with uncertain colors. Like Perugino and another great artist named Lorenzo di Credi, Leonardo had been a pupil of Verrochio, the sculptor of the Colleoni statue. Leonardo spent much time at Milan and in France. He was a man both of beauty and grace and of great physical strength. His mind also was remarkable, and from notebooks which he left behind him, although they are somewhat cryptic owing to such habits of his as writing backwards with his left hand, it has been inferred that he was interested in and more or less of an adept at almost every branch of art, science, and philosophy. He was some- thing of a humanist and musician and also had a mechanical turn of mind. Some of the sketches in his notebooks seem to forecast modern inventions. Raphael of Urbino was "the great harvester" and "se- rene perfecter" whose art formed the climax to the previ- ous period of experiment and evolution in painting. He was blest with an even temperament as well as the greatest genius, and so was able to cooperate harmoniously with others and in the course of his brief life to amass the largest fortune of any artist of his time. He was given such a multi- tude of commissions that he had to have a corps of assistants and died at thirty-seven of overwork. This participation of assistants makes some of the works attributed to him un- equal in execution and defective in detail. - Michelangelo, who was perhaps even greater as a sculptor than as a painter and who also was a distinguished architect and engineer, had a long career extending beyond the end of our period. Both as painter and sculptor he displayed the greatest daring and ability in representing the nude human body in every variety of posture. His personal habits are interestingly described by Vasari: "In all things Michel- agnolo was exceedingly moderate; ever intent upon his work during the period of youth, he contented himself with a lit- e bread and wine; and at a later period, until he had fin- ished the [Sistine] Chapel, namely, it was his habit to take