Page:The painters of Florence from the thirteenth to the sixteenth century (1915).djvu/287

1452-1519] absorbed his attention. He filled volumes of manuscript with his observations on artistic and scientific subjects, modelled statues and designed buildings, planned canals, and discovered the use of steam as a motive force. Humboldt pronounced him to be the greatest physicist of his age, and scholars of our own day have recognised in him a man who was not only an excellent artist and a veritable Archimedes, but a great philosopher—a "thinker who anticipated the discoveries of modern science, and a master of literary style who knew how to express lofty thoughts in noble and eloquent language."

Painting, as we know, was only one of the varied forms in which his activity was displayed, and occupied a comparatively small part of his time and thoughts. But he exerted the most extraordinary influence upon contemporary artists, and was the true founder of the Italian school of oil-painting. And profoundly interested as he was in other studies, he always considered painting to be the work of his life, and wrote his celebrated Treatise with the express object of maintaining the supremacy of Painting over all other arts. Unfortunately, little of his art is left us. All contemporary writers agree in saying how few pictures he ever completed. Not only was he distracted by a multitude of other occupations, but he was never satisfied with his efforts, and spent infinite time and pains in trying to realise his idea. "When he sat down to paint," writes Lomazzo, "he seemed overcome with fear. And he could finish nothing that he began, because his soul was so filled with