1920] on Leonardo da Vinci 115 



ranked with Donatello's Gottamelata at Padua and A^errocchio's 

 Bartolemrno Colleone at Venice as the three great examples of eques- 

 trian statues of the Italian Renaissance. 



So far as it is possible to form an opinion from the very numerous 

 studies in the Royal Collection at Windsor, it would seem to have 

 been in advance of both the others in freedom and vigour of movement. 



The sequence of studies shows a change of purpose from the 

 attitude of the horse galloping to that of it walking. He says in a 

 note in one of his manuscripts, " the trot is almost the nature of the 

 free horse." 



The paintings executed during his stay in Milan seem to have 

 been very few in number. Two portraits of Ludovic Sforza's 

 mistresses figure in contemporary record. Either these have perished 

 or they can no longer be identified with certainty. A Nativity 

 painted at the request of the Duke immediately after his arrival in 

 Milan was, according to Vasari, sent as a present to the Emperor. 

 Vasari derives the statement from the book of Antonio Billi, where 

 however the picture is only stated to be an altar-piece. 



This may conceivably be a reference to the version of the Virgin 

 of the Rocks now in the Louvre, which on stylistic grounds must be 

 considered to have been painted immediately after Leonardo's arrival 

 in Milan. 



The version now in the National Gallery was executed about a 

 dozen years later for the church of S. Francesco at Milan by Leonardo 

 jointly with the Milanese painter Ambrogio de Predis, the associa- 

 tion of the two painters in this commission being established by 

 documents recently discovered in the Milanese Archives. 



The fact that Leonardo is only responsible in part at most for 

 the actual execution of this picture lessens considerably its value as 

 affording an index in comparison with the earlier version of the 

 change which his art had undergone while at Milan. The picture in 

 the Louvre, however, is entirely Florentine in spirit, and pre-eminent 

 in beauty of line, while that in the National Gallery is Milanese in 

 superior smoothness of texture and chiaroscuro, this latter being one 

 of the distinguishing characteristics of Milanese art, even before 

 Leonardo came to reinforce it with the fruits of scientific study. 



The only other painting now in existence the execution of which 

 can be connected with Leonardo's first period of residence in Milan 

 is the haunting ruin of the Last Supper. 



The paucity of the list, even allowing for the inevitable mis- 

 chances of time, confirms the testimony of Fra Sabba da Castiglione, 

 who says that beside the Last Supper few other works in painting by 

 Leonardo were to be seen at Milan in the middle of the sixteenth 

 century, " because when he ought to have attended to painting, in 

 which without doubt he would have proved a new Apelles, he gave 

 himself entirely to geometry, architecture and anatomy." 



The external history of his life is sharply divided by circumstances 



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