ANIMAL LIFE IN ITALIAN PAINTING 



The incident appears in the Stigmatisation of St. 

 Francis (Florence, S. Trinita, Capella Sassetti), where 

 there is also a frightened hind. The same birds are 

 in the Call of the First Disciples (Rome, Sistine 

 Chapel), where there is also a bee-eater, and in a Last 

 Supper, in the refectory of the Ognissanti (Florence), 

 which he painted in 1480. In another on the same 

 plan at S. Marco, which may be entirely, and is cer- 

 tainly in part, by a pupil, in addition to the birds in 

 the sky, a cat sits by our Lord, and a peacock is in 

 one of the windows and a dove in the other. The ox 

 and ass and lamb in the Adoration of the Shepherds 

 (Florence, Accademia) are uncommonly good. There 

 is a goldfinch in the foreground. 

 Leonardo da With Leonardo da Vinci comes the noontide 

 i4«-imo hour of the Renaissance itself. " More than any 

 other artist who has ever lived," says Symonds 

 ** (except perhaps his great predecessor Leo Battista 

 Alberti), he felt the primal sympathies that bind 

 men to the earth their mother, and to living things 

 their brethren." ^ 



This sympathy is expressed in a curious way in one 

 of his note-books. "Man," he says, "has great power 

 of speech, but the greater part thereof is empty and 

 deceitful. The animals have little, but that little is 



* The Renaissance in Italy, vol. iii. p. 232. 

 42 



