Part 2

Through all his dreams, through all his scientific, human, and grotesque imaginings, he never ceased from the quest of beauty, that obsession of the true artist, which he expressed so often in the faces of his women, their hair and hands, in the looks of children, in the fall and fold of draperies, and in the figures of armed knights setting forth to tourney or to battle. One only has to recall the face of St. Anne in the Louvre picture, the curling, plaited hair about the head of Leda in the Windsor drawing, the strange sexless charm of the smile of St. John the Baptist in the Louvre picture, _Monna Lisa_, the "sceptical" angel in _The Virgin of the Rocks_, and the head of St. Philip in the Windsor drawing, to be impressed again by the enigmatic beauty, always new, never palling, that Leonardo gave to the world. In the cartoon of the _Virgin and Child with St. Anne_ which hangs in the Diploma Gallery at Burlington House, one of the nation's greatest treasures, which so few Londoners ever visit, this country possesses a characteristic and unapproachable Leonardo. It differs materially from the picture in the Louvre, the heads of the Virgin and St. Anne being nearly on a level; St. Anne is gazing at the Virgin, not at the Child, her hand is upraised, the finger points upwards, and the Baptist is included in the composition. But in each the face of St. Anne has the Leonardo inward, extenuating smile, suggesting that attribute of aloofness of which the mediaeval schoolmen write. The upward-pointing hand of St. Anne is almost identical with the motion of St. Thomas's hand in _The Last Supper_ at Milan, and with the hand of St. John in the Louvre. Comparing the Diploma Gallery cartoon with the finished picture in the Louvre, and with the sketch at the Venice Academy, we realise the years of labour that Leonardo gave to a picture before he would call it finished. One of the drawings of drapery reproduced in this volume is an exquisite study for the garment that enfolds the Virgin's limbs in the Louvre picture.

The series of heads of women reproduced in these pages show again his love of hair, either flowing or in plaits, or confined in strange and delicate head-dresses about the sweet, severe brows. And always the eyes of his women are cast down, an attitude that he rarely gives to his men, whose heads often have a touch of caricature, a hint, but never pushed to the extreme that he allowed himself in the grotesque.

In the bust of a woman in profile at Milan we have a sketch that in the unflattering presentment of a likeness is akin to his remarkable drawing of Isabella d'Este, now in the Louvre. The firm contour of the face, the thin nose and round, protruding chin, the long neck and ample bosom, betoken that on this occasion his eye, not his imagination, held the mastery. But the drawing of Isabella d'Este is larger in conception, and this grave and simple presentment of a distinguished lady of the Italian Renaissance is so informed with an assured power that it is justly hailed as one of Leonardo's finest efforts. It was made at Mantua, and was designed to serve as the study for the portrait of the Marchioness which Leonardo never completed, if indeed he ever began it. Five years later Isabella d'Este wrote to Leonardo reproaching him for his delay: "When you were in the country and drew our portrait in chalk you promised you would one day paint our picture in colours." But Leonardo was not, like Mantegna, ductile in the hands of the Marchioness. He did not succumb to her blandishments. There is no record that he ever gratified the lady by painting a certain small work that she made petition for--"a little picture of the Madonna full of faith and sweetness, just as his nature would enable him to conceive her." Leonardo had pursuits more engrossing than the making of a picture to please the vanity even of so great a lady as the Marchioness of Mantua.

The flame of Leonardo's imagination did not burn with the desire to provide little pictures of the Madonna full of faith and sweetness. He must do things in his own way, and that way would inspire him to produce such a drawing as the head of a young Bacchus with long, curling hair, clothed in a costume, just peeping from the sketch, of a similar material to the dress of Isabella d'Este; or a kneeling Leda, such a drawing as we find at Chatsworth, showing how the artist gradually evolved the design for the final picture of _Leda_, which was seen in the collection of King Francis at Fontainebleau, but is now lost. Here, too, the eyes of the woman are downcast. She turns to the children who are breaking from the eggs, while one of her arms clasps the swan. The broken shells, and the children just scrambling into existence, are as characteristic of Leonardo's passion for the episodes of life as the Child playing with the cat, or dipping his fist into the bowl of porridge. _Leda_ is the only mythological picture that he painted. The preparatory drawings like the drawings for others of his lost or destroyed works, such as the _Sforza Statue_, and the _Battle of the Standard_ are numerous. There is no mistaking the drawings for the Sforza statue, although it is not easy to decide which of the many designs of equestrian figures were for the Statue of Francesco Sforza, and which for the Trivulzio Monument. One of the Windsor drawings shows no fewer than four sketches on one sheet for the group of horse and rider, which, we are told, was twenty-six feet high. It would seem that Leonardo's first intention was to make Francesco Sforza's charger trampling on a fallen enemy, but that he abandoned this tremendous conception for a quieter design. It is clear from contemporary records that Leonardo spent sixteen years over the statue: to-day no trace of it, except in the drawings, remains. There is some doubt as to whether it was ever successfully cast in bronze, which explains Michael Angelo's taunt that after Leonardo had finished the model he was unable to cast it. Probably it was Leonardo's model that was destroyed, or at any rate severely damaged, when the French entered Milan in 1500. Fra Sabba da Castiglione wrote at the time: "I have to record--and I cannot speak of it without grief and indignation--so noble and masterly a work made a target by the Gascon bowmen."

In his writings Leonardo describes war as a "bestial frenzy," and in this grand conception of a rearing horse trampling upon a warrior, who is trying to protect himself with his shield, it was perhaps his intention to pillory the horror-of-war, while at the same time producing a heroic design. The splendid vigour of this group, and of the maddened figures in the _Battle of Anghiari_, stimulate us even in the slight sketches. We hear the shouts of barbaric warfare as we draw them from their quiet resting-places in orderly portfolios. The "bestial frenzy" of war was never depicted with greater force than in Leonardo's studies for the last _Cartoon for the Battle of Anghiari_, where horses gnash at each other, and soldiers, filled with the lust of war, scream incoherent cries. The heads of two men in a drawing in the Buda-Pest Gallery, in the very act of slaying, mouths wide open, breathing fury, are almost painful to look upon. Leonardo abandoned this battle picture while still in the midst of the task, as if disgusted with continuing to portray the "bestial frenzy." But the horses in the battle pictures probably interested him. There is a galloping horse in a drawing of _Horsemen and Soldiers_ at Windsor that reveals a marvellous knowledge of the action of the horse at high speed. Indeed, the horse was one of Leonardo's favourite subjects. Vasari states that a book of such studies was destroyed when the French entered Milan. In the large and minute drawing that he made as a preparatory study for the background of his picture of _The Adoration of the Magi_, which was changed and curtailed so much in the final composition, there are horses, curvetting and prancing, and in the foreground a camel is seen reposing. Actuality is introduced in the persons of the retainers of the kings, busy with their own affairs, amusing their leisure with a mock combat. In the drawing in the Uffizi, of which we give a reproduction, the retainers are shown below the great double staircase engaged in a joust. One wonders if Velasquez, who did not reach his usual standard of perfection when he drew a prancing steed, ever saw any of Leonardo's drawings of resolute and spirited horses.

Velasquez, when he painted the head of Christ in his _Crucifixion_ at Madrid, veiled the face with the long hair as if he shrank from attempting to portray the sacred features, although nothing deterred him from painting the head boldly and freely in his _Christ at the Column._ History tells of a similar meticulous modesty on the part of Leonardo in regard to the head of the central figure in his _Last Supper_, which he left unfinished, on the suggestion of Zenale, that could not surpass the majesty of certain of the Apostles' heads.

Several preliminary studies for _The Last Supper_ exist, many of which modern criticism refuses to accept as authentic. The most prominent in the eye of the world is the pastel of the head of Christ in the Brera at Milan. Of the beauty of the head, feminine in its softness and sadness, there cannot be two opinions, but it has not the sense of virility of the head in the Milan fresco, although the pose of the drooping face and the downcast eyes are identical. The authorities of the Brera Gallery at Milan assign the pastel head to Leonardo, and Dr. Richter describes it as "a genuine half-life size study in pencil for a head of Christ, which is in a deplorable state of preservation." In Mr. McCurdy's opinion, the Brera pastel "in its present state is none of his, whatever its inception may have been, and of that it is impossible to judge." But whatever vicissitudes of retouching the Brera pastel may have undergone, it remains a beautiful thing. The full-sized heads at Weimar, bold and inspiriting drawings, of Judas and St. Peter, St. Thomas and St. James the Elder, St. Andrew, and St. Bartholomew are not by Leonardo.

There is no doubt about the authenticity of the heads of the Apostles in the Windsor Collection, or of the two preparatory sketches for the composition of _The Last Supper_ also at Windsor, or of the drawing in red chalk at Venice, containing Leonardo's hand-writing, in which the figure of St. John is shown grief-stricken, his body thrown forward upon the table, his face hidden at the mere idea of the awful words, "One of you shall betray me."

Leonardo's will, executed on April 23, 1519, in the chateau of Cloux, near Amboise, is extant. He commends his soul to God, orders the celebration of four high masses and thirty low masses, and wills his vineyard, without the walls of Milan, to Salai and Battista de Villanis. In taking leave of this restless, richly endowed and rare spirit, we turn again to the last lines of Pater's essay, and with him wonder how the great Florentine "experienced the last curiosity." Then, perhaps, for the mind is always alert when thinking of Leonardo, we recall a note in one of his manuscripts wherein he expresses his conviction that some day with the help of steam a boat may be set in motion, and another passage in his handwriting, perhaps really nearer to his real self than the order for those four high and thirty low masses--this: "When I thought I was learning to live, I was but learning to die."

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