244 



THE POPULAR EDUCATOE. 



life or any one style of thought : it spread into every sphere of 

 human action, and animated alike the political or religious 

 thinker, the man of science, and the artist. The Renaissance 

 was, in fact, a sudden shaking loose of the Italian mind from all 

 the conventional trammels of medisevalism a revelling of the 

 emancipated human intellect in the perfect consciousness of 

 freedom and individuality. This change was intimately bound 

 up with the renewed study of Greek and Latin literature, the 

 revival of philosophy, and the casting loose of the stricter 

 doctrines of the Church of Rome. 



Lionardo da Vinci sums up in his own person better than 

 any other man the wide and varied culture of the Full Renais- 

 sance. Painter, sculptor, 

 architect, anatomist, ma- 

 thematician, and physicist, 

 he turned his attention to 

 every kind of science or 

 art with equal ardour, and 

 made important improve- 

 ments or discoveries in all 

 alike. No better example 

 can therefore be found of 

 the versatile genius which 

 distinguished the great 

 Italians of the Renaissance 

 period. 



Lionardo was born at 

 a castle near Florence in 

 1452, just one year before 

 the fall of Constantinople ; 

 and he died at Amboise 

 on the Loire, in France, in 

 1519, just two years after 

 Luther had affixed his 

 theses to the church door 

 of Wittenberg. As a mere 

 boy he showed his aptitude 

 for drawing, as is indeed 

 the case with all great 

 artists ; for the artist 

 above all men is not made 

 but born. Training may 

 do much, but it can only 

 do much where the innate 

 gifts already exist, and 

 exist in a very high degree. 

 Sent as a pupil to Andrea 

 Verrocchio, one of the 

 greatest and most versatile 

 of the later pre-Raffaelites, 

 Lionardo threw himself 

 with ardour into all studies 

 which bore directly or in- 

 directly upon his art as a 

 painter. In order to under- 

 stand the human figure, 

 he set to work to learn 

 anatomy and physiology ; 



and he pursued his researches in this direction so far that ] 

 he became, in the emphatic words of William Hunter, " the I 

 greatest anatomist of his time." In order properly to design i 

 buildings, he became a master in mechanics and engineer- I 

 ing ; while his universal thirst for knowledge led him even j 

 to study botany, and to make some progress in Oriental j 

 languages. At thirty years of age, an accomplished painter, j 

 sculptor, and physicist, and a man of encyclopasdic culture, he \ 

 offered his services to the Duke of Milan, who made him a sort j 

 of fine-art minister in his ambitious capital. For this patron ! 

 he performed his greatest work in sculpture, the model of a j 

 etatue of Francisco Sforza, the duke's father and predecessor, 

 never executed in bronze on account of the expense involved, j 

 It was at Milan, too, that he produced by far the best known ! 

 of all his works, the famous "Last Supper," which has been | 

 reproduced in engravings of every sort oftener, probably, than i 

 any other picture ever painted. It was painted in oils, as a j 

 wall-piece for the refectory of a convent ; but unfortunately ] 

 we can now only judge of it by the numerous copies, for the 

 Anginal perished rapidly through decay, and in half a century 



LIONARDO DA VINCI. 



was hardly recognisable. One of the many copies, however, is 

 now in the English National Gallery, and affords a sufficient 

 idea at least of Lionardo's general manner and the principles of 

 his art, even if it does not convey to us any full conception oi 

 Ms touch or of his more minute peculiarities as a colourist. 



Without disparagement to the great painters who had pre- 

 ceded him, it may fairly be said that Lionardo's " Last Supper " 

 was the first perfect picture in the really modern style which 

 was ever produced. Previous artists had possessed many and 

 great merits ; but these merits are most perceptible to connois- 

 seurs, who can see the true artistic instinct even when veiled 

 under comparatively stiff and conventional forma. For the 



general public, however, 

 all painting before Lionardo 

 is simply mediaeval; or- 

 dinary people, as a rule, 

 notice in it only the want 

 of perfect naturalness, the 

 quaint antiquated hardness 

 and archaic conventional- 

 ism of the figures and 

 attitudes. They cannot 

 discover the real merits 

 of high feeling and ex- 

 quisite touch when pre- 

 sented in so unfamiliar a 

 guise. But in Lionardo's 

 work they recognise at 

 once a modern picture 

 that is to say, one painted 

 in accordance with that 

 fuller anatomical know- 

 ledge, that truthfulness to 

 nature, and that ease of 

 attitude, which we now 

 find even in the works of 

 artists far inferior to those 

 who drew the stiff Ma- 

 donnas and saints of the 

 earlier period. For in 

 painting, as in all other 

 departments of human 

 effort, much depends upon 

 the first initiative. After 

 Watt, any man can make 

 steam-engines ; after Lion- 

 ardo, any man, however 

 little fancy and artistic 

 power he may possess, 

 can draw with a com- 

 parative correctness and 

 naturalness which would 

 have astonished the 

 Florentines of the four- 

 teenth century. Thus 

 Lionardo da Vinci's re- 

 markable picture of the 

 "Last Supper" may be 

 looked upon as one of the greatest epoch-making works 

 in the whole history of modern art. 



But it was not in painting and sculpture alone that Lionardo 

 made himself useful at Milan. He assisted in building the 

 great cathedral, that vast and somewhat over-decorated mass 

 of spires and pinnacles, which marks the passage from mediaeval 

 to pure Renaissance architecture in Italy ; and he also engaged 

 in numerous practical engineering works. In the last year of 

 tke fifteenth century he was driven from Milan by the French 

 invasion one of the most famous epochs in modern European 

 history and returned to his native Florence as a state servant. 

 Here he drew his famous cartoon, "The Battle of the Standard," 

 a portion of a larger work never completed for indeed 

 Lionardo was unfortunate, as a rule, in the actual carrying out 

 of his great undertakings, which were both too numerous and 

 too vast for a single hand and mind to carry them all out success- 

 fully in one man's lifetime. In 1517 he went to France by 

 invitation of Francis I., and there two years later he died. 

 The catalogue of his actually existing achievements is shorter 

 than might be expected from his universal energy and accom- 



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