112 Mr. Edward McCurdy [March 19, 



upholders of the scientific tradition in Italian art, are realised with 

 singular completeness in the work of Leonardo da Yinci. 



Born in the year 145*2, the illegitimate son of a Florentine 

 notary, descended* from a long line of Florentine notaries, having 

 shown, according to Yasari, marvellous talent as a boy in the 

 art of design, he was placed by his father in the studio of Andrea 

 Yerrocchio, who is described by the same writer as at once gold- 

 smith, master of perspective, sculptor, inlayer of woods, painter and 

 musician. It was apparently a sort of clearing house for ideas for 

 the art world of Florence, and there Leonardo became acquainted 

 with Botticelli and Perugino. 



His apprenticeship had ceased in 1472, for in that year his name 

 occurs in the Red Book of the Guild of Painters of Florence. 



Records tell of two commissions for altar-pieces in the years 

 1478 and 1480 respectively. The subject for the first was theYirgin 

 appearing to Saint Bernard. But apparently it never proceeded 

 beyond the stage of preliminary studies. For the second he com- 

 menced the large Adoration of the Magi, now in the Uffizi, which 

 although executed only in ground colour reveals such knowledge of 

 perspective and space-composition, together with truth and subtilty 

 of modelling, as shows his genius already in comparative maturity. 



The only other works now in existence assigned with certainty to 

 this first period of Leonardo's activity at Florence are the small 

 Annunciation in the Louvre, and the Saint Jerome in the Gallery of 

 the Yatican. The first of these — undoubtedly the artist's earliest 

 extant work— a little panel five inches high by two feet wide, has a 

 suggestion of timidity in the drawing, but yet united with such 

 delicacy and grace as robs timidity of its reproach. The folds of the 

 drapery are simple yet inevitable, fulfilling Leonardo's words in the 

 Treatise on Painting that " drapery should be let fall simply where it 

 is its nature to flow." 



The small panel of Saint Jerome, executed only in ground colour, 

 would seem from stylistic considerations to be closely associated in 

 date with the unfinished " Adoration of the Magi." 



The modelling of the emaciated figure of the saint is carried to 

 an intensity almost painful to contemplate. There seems already a 

 premonition of the time when the zeal of the scientist should invade 

 the harmony of the artistic conception. 



In the year 1483 Leonardo, being then in his thirty-second year, 

 left Florence and went to Milan, where he entered the service of 

 Lodovico Sforza. 



I have enumerated all the existing paintings assigned to this first 

 Florentine period, as to the authenticity of which there is unanimity 

 among critics. Add also the half-dozen works mentioned by Yasari, 

 all trace of which has disappeared, but which may be conjecturally 

 assigned to this early period, together with those works in sculpture 

 which Yasari mentions as having been executed by Leonardo in his 



