Page:The painters of Florence from the thirteenth to the sixteenth century (1915).djvu/289

1519] on the Piazza San Firenze. Here Leonardo lived until he was twenty-four years of age, and had served his apprenticeship in Andrea Verrocchio's workshop. There he grew up in close companionship with Perugino as Giovanni Santi sang in his poem—"Due giovin par d'éate e par d'amore," and made himself beloved by all. "The radiance of his countenance," says Vasari, "rejoiced the saddest heart. Even dumb animals felt the fascination of the man. He could tame the most fiery horses, and would never allow any living creature to be ill-treated. Often, we are told, he bought the singing-birds that were sold in the streets, in order that he might open the doors of their cages and set them free with his own hands. Music and mathematics divided his time with painting and sculpture. He modelled terra-cotta heads of smiling women, and, in his eager search after beauty, followed the lovely faces he saw up and down the streets of Florence. Even at this early age, Vasari tells us, he began many works and then abandoned them. The earliest drawings we have from his hand are a mountainous landscape in the Apennines, bearing the date of 1473, and a lovely sketch of a youthful Virgin, which may be one of the Madonnas to which Leonardo alludes in a note of October 1478: "I began two Virgin Maries." This last was evidently a study for the charming little Annunciation, in the Louvre, with the terraced garden and cypresses, that recall Verrocchio's rendering of the same subject in the Uffizi.

In 1472, Leonardo's name was inscribed on the roll of the Painters' Guild, and soon afterwards he was